GOD:
Is that Capital or Small G/g?
I was a young girl when I went to my first Confession. At the church, the nun and my mom stuffed me into the confessional box with a small sheet of paper in hand. Kneeling, face against the wall, I read from the note and thus confessed the sins of a seven-year-old: “Forgive me Father for I have sinned: I poked my brother in the hand with my fork at dinnertime. He deserved it. He elbowed me earlier, but didn’t get caught. Yesterday I hit my other brother because he broke off the new shoot on my peanut plant that was germinating in a dish of wet red wool. I got the seed kit for Christmas. He deserved it too.”
After I read and explained my transgressions, I went to get up when suddenly a voice spoke to me. I glanced about. The nun had told me a priest would be in there to talk to me but I suddenly became painfully shy. I couldn’t see him and figured that he couldn’t see me, so while he tried to coax me to talk, I casually tried to locate the door handle so I could exit. After a long silence, the priest finally gave up and said I could leave, and the door miraculously opened. I rubbed my knees and walked out. The nun looked down at me and nodded knowingly. When I saw my mom’s questioning smile, I buried my head into her legs.
Our parents sent us off to Catechism every Saturday morning while they smoked cigarettes, drank coffee, and hung out in their underwear. My oldest brother (fork-poked) attended a separate class, but my other brother (peanut plant breaker) and I got to stay together. Joey and I found the reading of the class roster to be the funniest thing we had ever experienced. Why all those Italian names brought buckled-over wheezing fits of laughter from our small bodies, accompanied by bursting red faces and tears, I cannot honestly say. It was even funnier when the nun read our own “normal” names amid the sea of “Vito Michael Angelo Spagettinos.” My brother and I would punch each other in attempts to counteract our idiotic behavior. Reproachful eyeballing from our pious classmates as they twisted their necks around to get a good look, and the killer glares from the nun also seemed to be a source of humour for us. I believe that nun would have liked to whack the laughter and obvious joy right out of us.
At the end of the year students were awarded tokens as acknowledgment of their religious education during the session. All the other kids got large trophy-ish icons of Mother Mary or of Jesus: they were big enough that the kids needed two hands to hold them. My brother and I both received St. Christopher medals. I think they were made of plastic. Mine fell through the hole in my pocket on the way home and I lost it.
Throw in a couple of funerals and a First Communion, and this, alas, was the extent of our parents’ attempts at Catholicizing us. They didn’t do such a bad job really. Although none of us developed an affinity for church life, we did, I think, all come away with inherent guilt and an implicit belief in God. God was a given.
I got married in a Catholic church. It had immense stained glass windows stretching from floor to ceiling, complemented by lots of dark warm wood that made it a popular wedding venue regardless of denomination. Because I could produce Catholic papers, I was able to secure a booking at this perpetually booked, beautiful cathedral. When the priest asked me privately if I would be going to Confession before the wedding ceremony, I said no. I had already been when I was seven. He frowned and confided with raised eyebrows that my fiancé would be attending. I frowned back with my own eyebrows raised. My husband-to-be was a lying, scamming, white-collar crook. He’d evidently hoodwinked the priest. Did he think he could con God too?
After my divorce fourteen months later, I faced all the standard life challenges—single parenthood and the stereotypical baggage that goes with that: poverty, loneliness, some educational upgrading, and a malevolent ex-husband who continued to marry regularly. Along the way I met folks who did not believe in God and I was puzzled. I wondered how daily life worked without God hanging around. Who did they talk to when they couldn’t find their socks? Or thank when a family dinner ended without any utensil-provoked injuries. They seemed just as mystified by my unwavering certainty in God’s existence. To be honest, I don’t think they were swayed to become believers when they looked at how my life was playing out with the Big Guy on my side. Still, the lives of the Non-Believers seemed to be running smoothly. I could only imagine how much richer their lives would be if God were onboard.
And then I hit forty. After nineteen years as a single mom—including three years as a single mom of a belligerent, angry, infuriatingly lazy, smelly, and hairy adolescent—my monster of a son left home, thus confirming my sneaking suspicions I was a failure as a parent, and I suddenly found myself alone. I was left with the company of a lazy, smelly, and hairy, but benevolent, couch-hogging, ninety-pound bullmastiff. Bitterness seeped in: I had done everything Walt Disney and God taught me, but I was definitely not experiencing happily-ever-after. I wondered for the first time about the possibility that God was a sham. Upon close examination of my lot, I realized sadly that with a friend like God, I didn’t need enemies. And when I managed to glance outside of my private world of woes, I saw that bombs were going off around the globe and that bits of bodies were being strewn in the streets. I concluded I had been an idiot for believing that an invisible force was watching out for one and for all. In my depressed state, I put away my crucifix and joined the God-free masses.
Miraculously, the moment I left God in the dust, my life took a great upswing. I limped out of that dark abyss into a world of shocking wonder and joy. I fell upon an urgent passion for rock climbing; a sport that introduced me to Nature’s beauty, to awareness of my own physical strength and spirit, and to new, rewarding relationships. Angels watched over me as I surpassed dangerous and exhilarating feats while scaling rocks and tall buildings and other, more mundane hurdles. My son and I began to eat meals together, and we laughed and we forgave. Rex, the bullmastiff, became my comfort and companion in solitude. And out of all that joy, even more came to me: I was inspired to write.
I sat down and wrote my climbing memoirs: a twenty-page tome of the past three years of my joyful Godless life. I sent it off to a climbing magazine, and Dave the Editor promptly replied via email to say he was interested in publishing it. I was thrilled, and my head grew to grotesquely large dimensions. It was divine luck that I had connected with Dave. His confidence in my work fuelled my urge to write more, and he willingly gave me instruction and guidance.
It was not easy, however. My head quickly deflated to regulation size as my writing, and thus my ego, was fed through Dave’s abattoir. With each edit and subsequent email, he reassured me that he liked my story as he hacked brutally and bloodily away at it. Dave was a pedantic expert in grammar and style, but I was a senior English teacher at a public high school and at first stepped confidently onto the grammatical battlefield with him. Alack, when I asked him to explain his reasoning for rewriting my perfectly penned phrases, he would shoot off wordy, rambling, and—I was pretty certain (but not totally sure)—bogus, elucidations: “This sentence has a misused ellipsis that seems to be replacing an adverb, but when you replace that adverb, you find that there is a change in tense.” And, “There are many fragments. One can get away with a few of them, but their effectiveness is inversely proportional to the frequency with which they are deployed.” It was futile. I decided I would battle the smaller war to save the lives of my ideas. Dave could fight to maintain syntactical world peace.
At half its original size, my story was much better, in spite of its perfect style. We were down to the final draft. I had unconsciously mentioned God in my story. I wrote, “I had to go take care of my dog. Thank God for the dog.” (Well, it may not have been a literary tour de force, but it was being published.) Dave emailed back his revisions which included yet another change in my simple syntax. “Thank god I had to go take care of my dog,” he amended. I was weary and knew I couldn’t win, but I was suddenly presented with an unanticipated coup: He hadn’t capitalized “God.”
A surge of energy ignited in me. Hah. Dave may have won the war, but finally, I would claim one modest victory. I shot back an email stating that my version was funnier, but that his was okay, too. “However,” I typed confidently, “God should be capitalized.” It was understated, yet plainly exultant. Just as I was to stand and roar, my computer beeped: another message from Dave:
Dear Alison,
Re: G/god
God no longer needs to be capitalized, unless you are
referring specifically to a putative personal deity.
You can leave it capitalized if you like.
Dave
Huh. God no longer needed to be capitalized; He was no longer a proper name. Good grief. This was taking things a bit far wasn’t it? Well, God hadn’t been my own personal deity for some time now, so what did I care. Look at how well I’d gotten on without H/him. Deflated, I emailed Dave back and half-heartedly attempted a casual recovery from yet another blow to my ego:
Dear Dave,
Yeah, I wondered about that. Your way’s good. God, small g.
Sincerely,
alison, small a.
I shut off my computer and sighed. I lay down on my bed to read but could only think of how God was now a common, generic interjection in this contemporary, ungodly world. I absently patted Rex who was perpetually pushed up beside me, and I peered over my book. Out my bedroom window was blue sky and sunshine, and a hard falling rain. How odd.
The phone rang. It was my son calling just to say hello. After the phone call, I dreamed excitedly of my upcoming climbing trip to California. In my head, ideas popped up for the next story I would write. I looked back outside, and amid the sun and rain, a rainbow appeared to be emanating directly from my window.
I smiled. I got up. I turned the computer back on and sent off another email:
Hi Dave,
Re: G/god
Uh, God’s been staring down at me since my last email.
I really do thank God for the dog, and God knows that.
I’m pretty sure He wants to be capitalized.
Sincerely,
alison
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I confess: I have always believed in God.
Copyright 2006 by Alison Cerney
