April 12, 2019: The subject is God, through the simile (metaphor?) of my goldfish, Glenn. Glenn Gold.
I think Glenn relates to me much the same way I relate to God. He only looks for me when he needs something, which is mostly when he’s hungry and wanting food. He needs a lot of other stuff from me, too, but he seems unaware of that. He has absolutely no idea who or what I really am. He gets really freaked out when I drain the old nasty water out of his tank, and he thinks for sure I’m going to take it all and leave him to drown in thin air, but in reality I’m getting ready to give him a tank full of fresh, clean water. He has no idea how completely dependent he is on me for everything he needs to live. I don’t think he is at all aware that I care about him and what happens to him, and that I will take care of him. And I think he’s pretty amazing and beautiful, even if his brain is roughly the size of a grain of rice, and he acts like it, and when he’s not hungry he’s way more interested in his own reflection than he is in me.
My sister asked me, “When Glenn talks to you, do you talk back, or do you remain silent and leave him totally in the dark?”
I answered: Of course, the comparison of goldfish:me and me:God only goes so far. But it does go a little way. I can’t actually make out what he is trying to say, if indeed he is trying to say anything. There is the question of intent, and, unlike God, I lack the ability to search Glenn’s mind or know his heart. Reading his lips, it looks like he is saying, “Oh, ugh, hm, ah, oh, hm, uh, uh, ah, slurp, slurp,” etc. or things to that effect. If that really is the essence of what he is saying, then I really don’t have anything to say in reply. If he interprets my silence as not caring, he could be partially correct, at least in certain instances. Sometimes the wisdom of Glenn may be foolishness in my sight. I might choose not to respond to such foolishness, and yet my silence or lack of response doesn’t mean that I don’t care about him as a person, or about what I deem to be ‘the important stuff’. However, his words also appear possibly devoid of real substance. Like God in relation to me, I exist beyond the medium in which Glenn lives out his ordinary day-to-day earthly incarnation (though I can and do put my hand in there on occasion at my discretion). Unlike my prayers to God, my little friend’s words don’t penetrate / traverse the more ethereal medium in which I live and breathe and have my being. So there is potential for a breakdown in communication. BUT, more than his words, I observe his behaviour. Actions speak louder. In this way, for example, I can tell when he is hungry, and I feed him, albeit ordinary, physical food, not spiritual food. Or I can tell when he is stressed and might need, for example, his water changed out. (This raises the tangentially-related question of what baptism would look like for a fish. Immersion in air? Sprinkling from below with bubbles? Should this be done to them as fry, or fingerlings, or as adults able to make a confession of faith that is freely chosen?) Sorry, back to ‘listening’ to Glenn’s actions: I haven’t gone so far as to number the scales on his head, but I am paying attention. To the matter of me answering Glenn versus remaining silent and leaving him in the dark: I think my usual speech sounds to Glenn like distant thunder. If I get right up next to the tank and raise my voice, or worse yet, actually put my face right in the water and raise my voice, to make certain he hears me, it stirs things up a lot, and seems to scare him quite badly. He definitely trembles and tries to hide when I get too close. I think it is better to ‘speak’ to him through action by loving him and caring for him from some distance that he can tolerate as less awe-ful. It’s up to him whether he believes in me or not. He seems to believe in me more when I scare the shit out of him. Whether he knows it or not, he is definitely worth at least as much to me as one sparrow.
ReligioMedici 