The God I know will have to be okay with my lust for life. He will not lay still so often in the quiet places. He will stir us with clever winds and circuitously falling leaves. If you look and see nothing, it is possible that nothing is there. But to a philosopher or a theorist, it is also possible that something is. The ones who see nothing ought to respect and befriend the ones who see somethiyng. Unless you don’t like thinking. Unless you don’t like people.
The patches of grass dot the landscape in mounds like snow on the hill. What stillness. What mystery. And yet what predictability. These small towns speckling the expanses between large Texas cities always have some of the same: emptiness, God, Come and Take It posters in the bathrooms, people who vote Republican but don’t read politics and only want someone xenophobic and staunch to represent them. It’s hardly poetic, but having lived in Texas, it unfortunately can be true. Ease trumps access. Trump trumps so much. This moment in history of our country is aiming to be a totalitarian state where ignorance tips the Capitol scales.
The other day I went in to my local Walgreens looking to develop some 35mm prints quickly. They said they can do it, but they have to send it out, so it’d take some time. While I was considering my options, a young southeast Asian girl came to the counter looking to get a passport photo. I asked her where she was traveling, and she said nowhere, just getting it done for a Visa. Then the employee taking the photo interjected, addressing me, “I’ve been taking a lot of passport photos lately. I think it’s a Trump thing.” Trump thing? What do you mean? “Well people come in here needing them for job applications now. I guess if you’re an immigrant they require a photo of you on your job application now.”
. . .
I need a God that is not satisfied with the state of things. Illiteracy, hunger, willful ignorance, homelessness, brokenness, sloth. A God that loves us all but demands our best. A God that does not want us to decay far before we are buried underground.
What else dots the landscape? Factories, oil rigs, gas stations, many strange exit signs. We’ve done this drive before. Done this, this very drive, forever.
©️ Erika S. Haines
