’23 A To Z Challenge – S

S S S S S S s s s s s s

That hissing sound that you hear is the all the inspiration and creativity, leaking out of my head.

Here follows a tale of woe – of procrastination and poor planning.

With two weeks of lead time, I didn’t have a Challenge post for the letter S ready for Monday.

With two additional days of lead time, I still didn’t have one ready for Wednesday, and refurbished an old joke I told five years ago.

When I dropped the TILWROT post on Monday, it was all about names/words, and their meanings.  It’s not good form to then follow it with yet another one about definitions and word history.  I should have chosen one more socially significant, to interest my readers.

I have lists of arcane and archaic words for each of the letters of the alphabet.  Usually, it’s easy to pick one, and wrap a little (his)story around it.  Not so this year, with the letter S.  I just couldn’t get inspired.  I had the following list.

Seemly
Sough
Sciential
Scientism
Somnolent
Stodgy
Stolid
Stultify
Saxatile

I thought I might do something with SAXATILE – living or growing on or among rocks or stones, but even Rocky Mountain spotted fever is more interesting and exciting.  Who wants to read a story about moss and lichens, although….

The ‘Manna” that is mentioned in the Bible has been found to be a quick-growing form of lichen – a symbiotic mixture of tiny algae vegetation, and small fungus.  It would grow on the warm desert sand overnight, and break down and vanish in the heat of the day.  See, no miracles involved.  😮

Flash Fiction #276

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Anne Higa

IN VINO VERTIGO

Try some tequila they said.  Experience something new.  Waking up on a couch, not knowing who owned it, or where I am, was new.  I had to put a hand on the floor, to stop the room whirling around.  That water-tower outside the window better settle down, too, because I don’t know where the bathroom is.

At the Miracle of Fatima, several people said they experienced visions, and the sun moved around in the sky.  I can believe it.  Didn’t that happen in Mexico, where tequila is king?  I have a vision of Coors Lite for me, from now on.

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If you’d like to join the Friday Fictioneers fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Wrong For The Right Reasons

A very atypical Christian Apologist published a post where he admitted that he accepted that the Universe came into existence 13.8 Billion years ago, and the Earth and the Solar system coalesced about 4.5 Billion years ago. He believed in Evolution but, desperate to keep his God’s fingers in, he posited a Creator which nudged and guided Earth’s development, until Mankind reached the exalted pinnacle.

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I could believe in a Creator like this. The 2 problems are; such a being would not need or want, to be worshiped, obeyed, or called “God.” Second, it would not be the omnipotent, create everything in a snap of a non-existent finger, prayer-answering, miracle producing, sin-punishing “God” that most Christians (especially Apologists) believe in.

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Why would such a being not want to be recognized as what he is: God? And if he made everything to work a certain way, why would he not want us to avoid screwing that order up and breaking things, i.e., obey him?

Also, if he has the power to create all things, which would imply that he has the power to make things be different than they are, wouldn’t this constitute at least some loose sense of “omnipotent”?

***

I am amused, but confused, with your use of the phrase, “loose sense of ‘omnipotent.” This joins ‘a little bit pregnant,’ and ‘partly dead!’ It’s either/or, yes or no, it either is, or it isn’t.

What you have described is a version of the ‘Watchmaker God,’ wind the Universe up, and let it run, or the ‘Power-Steering God,’ which lets existence pilot itself. You have invented a Gardener God. Actually, perhaps ‘He’ is not God. Perhaps ‘It’ is not omnipotent, and is unable to create the Earth and mankind instantly, through ‘magic’, but only through careful tending. Maybe this creature (not ‘The Creator’) is fertilizing and planting Someone else’s garden.

It is not the all-powerful Being, who wants – needs – demands – to be blindly obeyed, and worshipped as “God.” Do ants in an ant farm worship the little boy whose bedroom they are in? Does a tulip pray to the gardener, to become a rose? Would the gardener hear? Or care? Or be willing or capable to do it?? What you have described is not ‘God,’ but merely a being with more knowledge and power than we have – yet.

Why would you specify a predetermined order, and fear altering it? The purpose of doing, is learning. Change, and variety, is good. The wife raised some pepper plants on our deck. In one large planter, along with six jalapenos, we had a big tomato plant, apparently from a seed in the compost. It wasn’t wrong. It didn’t need to be controlled, or corrected. It was an interesting and educational occurrence. Vive le BLT!   😀

The Saddest Funny Story

We recently had to attend a funeral service for one of the wife’s sisters. That was only the beginning of the sadness. A nephew of the wife’s sat down opposite us, and related his sad tale.

For about five years, he’s been fighting a neuropathy, a neurological syndrome which has been causing increasing pain in his extremities. First his hands, then his feet, became agonizingly sore. He was up to gobbling eight Oxycodone tablets a day, just to keep the pain level down to a 2.

He married a New Order Mennonite girl who increasingly involved him and the kids in their church. There had been a two-day weekend Salvation Convention. The church brought in speakers to lecture on different sins, and what to do to get rid of them.

After one seminar session, the moderator paired each attendee off with another church member who they were not particularly close to. They were to go to small tables, where each one would confess his/her sins to the other, who would then pray for them and forgive them. Then the process would reverse.

He said that he hunched over the table and told the other man about all his sins. The farmer devoutly prayed for him, and told him that he was forgiven. He said that he suddenly realized that he could no longer feel the continuous pain in his hands and feet. He called the pastor over and told him this, and the whole room had a Glory, Halleluiah, Praise-The-Lord, prayer session of thanks. God had cured him.

I manfully tried not to smirk, and wondered if his posture had kinked, or un-kinked, a spot on his spine, or if the power of suggestion had caused a psychosomatic (perhaps temporary) cure. He might even provide the possibility of a God-answered-prayer miracle. I was all ears!

He continued his tale. He can now not feel anything with his hands. His legs are numb from the knees down. When he had to call an ambulance for his wife’s apparent heart attack, he stood outside for ten minutes, in a foot of February snow in his bare feet. This condition is dangerous, especially for him, because he works in HVAC. This is like leprosy, or diabetes. If he cuts or burns himself and doesn’t notice it, he may have to have an amputation, if infection sets in.

This is the normal, worsening progression of the disease. GOD didn’t cure him, but he believes that happened. I just sat there in stunned disbelief, thinking that it was his belief that was stunned.
What’s the problem with a comfortable delusion?
There are none so blind as those who will not see.