99 Stories of God

by Joy Williams

  Recently, some of his personal items were auctioned off by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the proceeds of which would go to the victims’ families, who had no intention of ever forgiving Ted Kaczynski. It must be said that Ted Kaczynski did not ask for their forgiveness.

  Some of the items offered were the notorious hooded sweatshirt he often wore, a number of tools, including a wrench, and two Smith Corona portable typewriters, one of which he had used to type the manifesto. The FBI would not verify the authenticity of the other typewriter. In other words, they could not unquestionably state that Kaczynski had written anything of note upon it. Nevertheless, the winning bid for this other Smith Corona was well over eleven thousand dollars.

  Preference

  47

  An employee at AJ’s Fine Foods, 2805 E. Skyline Drive, said two females had approached the store’s outside Christmas display area. The younger one grabbed two plastic lambs from a Nativity scene, and both women fled.

  Law enforcement was able to obtain an address using the vehicle’s license plate number; however, the address did not actually exist.

  Get Out As Early As You Can

  48

  A nursing home is not like one of those exclusive institutions like a Mountain Oyster Club or a Wharf Rat Club, where it’s only members (and only men) and where accomplished and important people dress down and pretend to be ordinary fellows.

  Of course not, might be your response.

  A nursing home is more progressive. Both men and women are represented, some of whom even fall in love of a sort. Formerly very important people mingle with former homemakers and mechanics.

  They tend not to talk about their previous lives, neither the little hens nor the senators, because it does not matter now.

  Whereas members of the elite and transitory clubs on the outside of the door, which will prove to be very much unlocked, are only pretending to be modest.

  Participation

  49

  One should not define God in human language nor anthropomorphize that which is ineffable and indescribable.

  We can only know what God is not, not what God is.

  We can never speak about God rationally as we speak about ordinary things, but that does not mean we should give up thinking about God. We must push our minds to the limits of what we could know, descending ever deeper into the darkness of unknowing.

  Naked Mind

  50

  Dr. Lucas Mix and his wife were driving in their car outside Laramie, Wyoming. The next thing they knew was that they were in the wilds of Mexico, thousands of miles away, although only twenty-four hours had passed. They had no idea how they had come to be there.

  Of course, the usual questions arose: Who are we? What have we become? Wherein and why have we been cast? Whereto are we hastening? From what have we been freed?

  The only clue was that their car was scorched on the outside.

  Buick Le Sabre

  51

  South Korean scientists say they have engineered four dogs to glow red, using cloning techniques.

  The four, all named Ruppy—a combination of “ruby” and “puppy”—look like typical canines by daylight. But they glow red under ultraviolet light, and their nails and abdomens, which have thin skin, look red even to the naked eye.

  Professor Lee Byeong-chun of Seoul National University, the leader of the research team, called them the world’s first transgenic dogs carrying fluorescent genes, an achievement that goes beyond just their glowing.

  “What’s significant in this work is not the dogs possessing red colors but that we planted genes into them,” the professor said.

  Significance

  52

  Some parents of children with cognitive disabilities are seeking out cosmetic procedures to make the children appear younger than they are.

  Parents who inquire about surgery want either to align the child’s visual appearance with his or her mental capacity or intellectual age, or erase a “delayed” appearance altogether, such as altering the face of a child with Down syndrome.

  In one case a few years ago, a child named Ashley, with profound cognitive disabilities, had her sex organs removed and went through other procedures to prevent puberty and growth. Her parents did not wish to institutionalize her but felt they could not care for her at home if she grew to adult size.

  Doll House

  53

  Jack and Pat were in their seventies now and had no pets, although they had had several in the course of their days, mostly dogs, but once a bird as well. Their most remarkable dog, Jack and Pat said, was a pit bull, Peggy. She was the sweetest, smartest dog, they said.

  This was long ago. The boy they adopted as an infant is in his thirties now. When they brought the baby home, Peggy was curious about him and protective and adoring in a way Jack and Pat increasingly found to be alarming. Jack, a physician, decided that for everyone’s peace of mind, Peggy should be put down. From the pharmacy at the hospital where he worked, he procured a large amount of expired valium. The plan was to mix the crushed valium with a pound of ground sirloin. Ground sirloin was Peggy’s favorite food. When she was a very good dog she received it, and Peggy knew that when it was presented to her she had been a very good dog or for one reason or another had pleased Jack and Pat.

  Jack and Pat discussed at length the sad necessity of putting Peggy down for everyone’s peace of mind, but when the moment came, Jack could not bring himself to lace the ground sirloin with the crushed valium. Nor could Pat perform this act. Peggy was a good dog, she would not harm their little child.

  Relieved to have made their decision, Jack and Pat filled Peggy’s bowl with the untainted meat and placed it before her.

  But Peggy would not touch it. She gazed at it, then gazed at Jack and Pat and left the room.

  Sometimes, for years, when Jack and Pat had friends over for dinner or cards, they would put a bowl of ground sirloin before Peggy and she would never touch it. Of course the story was told again and again. The guests were always amazed.

  Peggy

  54

  CANCER DOESN’T STOP HUNTER, 86, WHO KILLS MOOSE FROM HIS RECLINER

  “My son and I cried because it was a miracle … there’s no other explanation.”

  Divine

  55

  The Lord was asked if He believed in reincarnation.

  I do, He said. It explains so much.

  What does it explain, Sir? someone asked.

  On your last Fourth of July festivities, I was invited to observe an annual hot-dog-eating contest, the Lord said, and it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever witnessed.

  Neglect

  56

  We were in the bar after golf and this acquaintance of mine says, “My gardener said the damnedest thing to me today.”

  And I say, “Yeah, well, gardeners.”

  “He’s from Czechoslovakia. He was somehow involved in the shooting of all those giraffes back in the seventies. Forty-nine giraffes. It was the largest captive herd in the world at the time.”

  What can you possibly say in response to something like that? I said nothing.

  “But he’s been my gardener for years, and there’s nothing he doesn’t know about lawns and trees. But he’s getting on. The crew he hires to help him are assholes.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “So he fires them almost as soon as he hires them, because they’re ignorant, they don’t want to work, but he works ceaselessly, he never stops moving. It makes me nervous just watching him sometimes.”

  “Not good,” I say.

  “So he’s working all by himself today, running around, going from one thing to another, and he tells me he feels God at his elbow. All morning he tries to ignore this feeling of God at his elbow, because he knew God had some questions, he knew God wanted to initiate a dialogue with him and he was frightened. But finally he stopped what he was doing and faced God and God said to him, I want to give you something.”

  End of story.r />
  “That’s the damnedest thing,” I said, wondering if it would turn out the old guy died on the spot or something.

  Giraffe

  57

  The formation of dew begins soon after sunset. Evaporation of water vapor cools the surface of plants as they rapidly lose heat collected from the sun. As the surface of a plant or flower becomes cooler than the surrounding air, it causes the transpired water vapor to condense into droplets of dew.

  Dew is made of tiny crystals that constantly form, dissolve, and collect energy.

  Walking barefoot through dew assists one in acquiring energy from the magnetic earth.

  Dew has long been a subject of interest.

  Dew

  58

  You should have changed if you wanted to remain yourself but you were afraid to change.

  Sartre to Camus

  59

  “I want chiseled features,” she said. “I would be so happy.”

  I didn’t know her. We were volunteers digging up fountain grass at the Ironwood Forest National Monument. Those were the first words she’d spoken. She was round and pale and not very tall either.

  “You can get them,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Plastic surgery. Sure.”

  “They don’t call it plastic surgery anymore,” she said. “The Devil’s going to be on TV tonight at seven. KGUN. It’s not generally known but a fact nonetheless.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. I moved away from her toward an old man chopping at a large clump of big, plump, vigorous adaptable fountain grass with a hoe. But I left him shortly as well, fearing he might have a heart attack in the heat. He would have been offended by my concern, I felt. He probably wanted to die in the desert anyway, helping the earth, one of those people who wanted to die a clean, hard death in the desert.

  He didn’t look at all like my father, but I thought of my father, who was in Westerly, Rhode Island, living it up on dialysis. He wasn’t going anywhere. There was so much wrong with him, so many things, but “I want the dialysis,” he’d say. “Nobody’s shoving me into that next room.”

  “Don’t you want to know as you are known, standing before the Father’s throne,” I’d tease him. It’s from a hymn called “Innocents.” He used to be a pastor. “Nope,” he’d say.

  He’s changed. People change. Even I have changed, though not much. But if I watched KGUN at seven and saw the Devil there, I’d be a different person.

  Looking Good

  60

  The Lord was invited to a gala. Beautiful women, beautiful men, beautiful flowers. Astonishing music from the moment’s finest string quartet. All that was served was champagne and mountains of Kamchatka caviar.

  The hosts were somewhat nervous about the Lord’s reaction to the caviar.

  After all, the lives of many thousands of female wild salmon were sacrificed for their eggs, and the renewable potential of their offspring lost forever.

  But the Lord never showed up.

  Party

  61

  We were not interested the way we thought we would be interested.

  Museum

  62

  The Lord was trying out some material.

  I AM WHO I AM, He said.

  It didn’t sound right.

  THAT’S WHO I AM. I AM.

  It sounded ridiculous.

  He didn’t favor definitions.

  He’d always had the most frightful difficulties with them.

  Essential Enough

  63

  The Vandewaters were extremely beachy and boaty. Their den walls were lined with the tops of smashed champagne bottles mounted on plaques of teak denoting the many wooden sailboats they’d built to specification and launched.

  Dick Vandewater was commodore of our little yacht club as well as being a deacon in the church. He was quite the sailor and preferred to make his trips solo. He claimed that once at night he saw God amidst the dark waters and God spoke to him but he couldn’t remember what he said.

  We were at a garden party last week—it’s been a fantastic year for the hydrangeas—and there was an intense young man from the Merchant Marine Academy there. Dick was having a good time, recounting his adventures, and the boy said,

  What is it you wish to say, perhaps you wish to tell us something.

  Dick exclaimed, I remember! and at that very moment he was felled by a massive stroke, a shrimp on a toothpick still between his fingers.

  His wife said that on two other occasions, Dick had recalled what this apparition had said but had been interrupted, once by a ringing telephone and once by a terrific crash in the streets, after which he could no longer remember. Of course these interruptions were not at all meaningful, not like this massive stroke, which proved for poor Dick to be fatal.

  Apropos of Nothing

  64

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison:

  “The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us.

  Before God and with God, we live without God.”

  I Pity the Fool

  65

  Temporal lobe epilepsy often causes changes in behavior and thinking even when the patient is not having seizures. These changes include hypergraphia (voluminous writing), an intensification but also a narrowing of emotional response, and an obsessive interest in religion and philosophy.

  Dostoevsky often wrote of the rapture he felt during a seizure when he was in the frightful presence of the universal harmony.

  A Carmelite nun whose visions during her epileptic seizures caused many to view her as a spiritual master feared that her gifts were symptoms of illness rather than grace and submitted to surgery, which was successful.

  Life without epilepsy was quite dull, she discovered.

  It was as though she had tumbled from a sacred mountain into a ruined village, she said.

  Dull

  66

  Three strange beings called angels visit Abraham to tell him and his wife, Sarah, that they will have a child. They are both ninety years old.

  Sarah laughs at the angels and then denies that she did and is not quite forgiven.

  Nay, but thou didst laugh, one of the angels says to her.

  Why was Sarah given the opportunity for understanding, for evolution and transformation, the chance to kick herself up to the next level, when she was so dim-witted? She thought they meant an actual child, a baby!

  They did not mean an actual child, a baby.

  Still, anyway, if you take it literally, as you might, as well as morally, allegorically and mystically, why did God want to exact that dreadful sacrifice once the child was born?

  It was Abraham’s idea to make the poor, unsuspecting kid, Isaac—whose name may or may not mean laughter actually—carry wood, the very wood that would incinerate him, up to the altar. That was Abraham’s rather unnecessary contribution to the story, not God’s.

  Finally, God stepped in and said, No, you don’t have to do it, and just in time.

  Rebirth

  67

  In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was poised to launch nuclear warheads—the Temple Weapons—rather than suffer defeat at the hands of the Arabs. At the time, Israel had at least thirteen twenty-kiloton atomic bombs—the Hiroshima bomb was sixteen kilotons. Armageddon was avoided only when the U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, acting in the vacuum left by the travails of his “drunken friend,” President Richard Nixon, authorized an emergency resupply of high-tech, though conventional, weaponry to the Israelis.

  Prime Minister Golda Meir said:

  “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”

  Forgiveness

  68

  Jakob Boehme was a German mystic to whom God revealed himself in a ray of light being reflected in a tin plate. Some describe it as a pewter plate, though after all pewter is merely a number of alloys, including lead, of which tin is the main component.

  So it was light str
iking a tin plate and Boehme saw God. In an instant he experienced the total mystery of God.

  This was the revelation upon which all his writings are based. For years he did nothing but painstakingly attempt to translate this vision’s shattering significance into language.