Of course the truth is that all these cataclysms and badnesses have nothign to do with God, any more than the erosions of sand cliffs can be blamed on Neptune, the God of the Sea. The two things are of entirely different orders of magnitude, and it is as foolish a conceit to blame an entity described as infinite for the losses of human idiocy, or the legends others generate about It, as it is to think such an entity will hear prayers for a better sex life or more money or saving cousin Polly from her emphysema. Such an entity -- the ultimate Cause of Universe -- is not going to worry about you touching your peepee or whether or not the West Coast falls into the ocean on some third-rate ball of mud stuck on the fringes of a second-rate galaxy somewhere.

On the other hand, there is a local composite right here on Earth that might have some effect on these concerns. It is not God or even a god; it simply the web of interconnected life force that beings make in their ordinary connectedness through friends, groups, nations, life forms, breathing and eating and wrassling with dogs and girlfriends and strangers from the gummint and soccer moms and folksingers. There is a great deal of potential spirit-power in this web, which can be directed or tapped into by individual thought under the right conditions. And it is more responsive to human concerns than any postulated infinity.

AND it is not imaginary, in the sense of one individual's fantasy, since we are all subscribers to it.

Maybe I'll start a New Church. I dunno. The guys down at the Temple would miss me something awful.


A