CHAPTER 4 God is a physical being? When we flipped the page there were two men waiting inside for us. They were holding up signs, like chauffeurs at the airport. "God is a man," the signs declared. They were each standing in front of wheelbarrows, and they waved their hands for us to climb inside. I looked at Bo but he just shrugged. We decided to go for a ride. The wheelbarrows sort of smelled like a barnyard, and I thought about climbing out at first, but the men started off, racing down a yellow brick road that was studded with sharp diamonds. I watched in awe as the two men jumped in pain with each step they took, and with yet another sigh, I held my nose until we got to an ivory castle. As we passed through the castle gates, a red carpet unraveled in front of us, racing up the steps and into the castle. Our escorts dumped us at the feet of an old man. "Oh, hi. Glad you could stop by," the old man drooled. He was wearing golden pajamas that didn't quite cover his stomach. His white beard was speckled with crumbs and bits of food and coffee stains. "Yep, I'm God. I created the universe." God sighed. "Took me six days. I don't really keep up with it much anymore. Too busy resting up from all that work," God said with a yawn. "Wait a second," I snorted as I stood up and brushed off my knees. "This is the same situation as the many gods scenario. It's just not possible!" The old man looked puzzled. "It's not?" "I'm sorry, sir, but no." "But I created your universe." "Even if you did, you wouldn't be the ultimate god." "I'm afraid I don't follow you. Here, let me turn up my hearing aid. I must be missing something," God said, fumbling with the controls as he yawned again. "Look, let me try to explain this. When I'm awake, I could whittle a puppet out of some wood. I created it. But something created me and the wood I used for my puppet. If you're a physical being, then you're in a physical place, and there's got to be something above you that created you and the material you used to create your creation..." "Sounds terribly confusing," the old man shrugged. But he hadn't been paying attention, because a messenger had dashed into the room while I was speaking and had handed him a royal proclamation, which he was busily reading. "Looks like you were right," God sighed. "This says I'm not God after all. God's over there." The old man pointed to a veiled bed across the room. "Apparently God is dead. Shall we go have a look?" "That won't be necessary. If he's dead, then he was alive before. Which brings us right back where we started!" I protested. The old man's face suddenly went white as a sheet, and dumfounded, he pointed behind me. I turned and we all cringed as we saw a giant woman outside the stained-glass windows. She was crushing the countryside as she approached the castle. "GOD IS ALIVE! AND GOD IS NOT A MAN. GOD IS A WOMAN!" the giant Amazon roared, and she reached inside and grabbed Bo and me by the scruffs of our pajamas. "Excuse me," I wheezed, "but this is the same situation as if God were a man -- alive or dead. It won't work." "Are you sure?" She-God said rather threateningly as she held us about sixty feet off the ground. I thought about reevaluating my conclusion. A sixty foot drop, even in a dream, could be mighty uncomfortable. "Excuse me, Ma'am," Bo yelled as he dangled beside me. "He was just kidding, honest." "No, I'm quite sure," I swallowed. Bo glared angrily at me. The Woman-God refused to be put off so easily. She started laughing. "What is the vessel in this life that brings new life into the world -- woman! And who but a woman could have painstakingly brought this universe into existence?" "Look," I gulped, "do you think a female God would have made women go through so much pain to deliver a baby...not to mention PMS!" The Amazonian God sighed -- I'd definitely hit a nerve there. "Leave it to a man to cut a woman down any time he can!" She clicked her tongue. And then she tossed us over her shoulder and climbed up through the clouds to her own castle in the heavens. A tornado whipped by before we hit the ground, and whisked us high in the air. Far below we could see the tiny castle of God-the-man, and then God-the-woman's larger palace above the clouds. We floated higher and higher, until we were beyond the planet, and still we rose until we were at the edge of the universe. And then we burst through the box that the universe rested in. Looking down I saw that the box was lying on a conveyor belt, and there were aliens working away at creating more universes, which they neatly packed into cartons. "LUNCH BREAK!" a whistle sounded. "Hey, wait, you guys!" I yelled as I climbed up on top of my universe's box. "No go. It doesn't work! It's still the same story. If aliens created our universe, there would have to be something that created them." "Darn," one of the workers moaned. "I'm sure we won't get that Christmas bonus now!" They waved goodbye as we floated higher, out of the factory, out of their world, and out of their universe. And still we floated up until we "POPPED" out of someone's mind. And as we floated on the ceiling, I looked down and saw that it was my mind we had popped out of. Jill was lying down there beside the sleeping me. "You're dreaming the universe?" Bo offered as I looked over at him questioningly. I listened to myself snoring, and I wished I were that me. I shook my head. "Nope. It's the same thing, Bo. It couldn't be possible." We started floating up out of the dimly lit room, away from my warm, cozy bed. "I guess you were right," Bo said as we kept rising. I sighed sadly. "Bye, Jill. I hope I'll be back soon." We drifted up, up out of that universe and popped out of someone else's mind. We fell to the ground and looked up. "HELL-O!" the man was saying as he walked along in his sleep, knocking on people's heads with his knuckles. "I'm just dreaming you," he whined. "You are all subjective illusions I've created in my mind!" He came towards us and knocked on my head. "Uh, no," I said as I listened to the hollow sound his knuckles made. The nut opened his eyes and snapped his fingers. "Drats," he groaned. Then he "popped" and we started drifting upwards again. "ENOUGH is ENOUGH!" I yelled. I was getting quite tired of this chapter. "God is not a physical being! PERIOD." I looked down and saw each universe nestled around the one before it, and I kicked them, and they tumbled over like dominoes. The end of the Chapter floated into view, and Bo handed me the pencil. I was just about to write IMPOSSIBLE in, when the page pulled itself away. "Must have remembered another possibility," Bo mumbled. He was tired of the Chapter, too. "I guess," I groaned. And then it started raining. Or at least I thought it was rain. "Hey, look," Bo yelled over the sound of the water. "A bar of soap." "Oh, great. We must be taking a Cosmic Shower," I gurgled. "Well, the soap smells good, and we sure have put on a lot of dust," Bo yelled, and he started singing as he lathered up. "But I've still got my pajamas on," I muttered. A bottle of shampoo floated by. "Oh, what the heck," I sighed, and decided I could go for a shampoo after all. Just when my head was good and lathered, the water suddenly went cold and I gasped. Then the water stopped. "Bo!" I yelled. I couldn't open my eyes. "Jack, where are you? I've got soap in my eyes, and I can't see a thing!" "Me neither," I groaned as we groped in the dark for a towel. "Hey, Jack. I found something over here," Bo yelled, and I followed his voice. "What is it?" I called. "It's big and round and rough. I think it's a tree trunk." "Oh?" I had reached where he was, and what I felt was thin and long, like a whip. "No. It's not a tree trunk. It feels like a giant boulder," someone said next to us. I assumed it was someone else caught in the Cosmic Shower with soap in his eyes, too. "No. It feels like a long pipe!" another voice declared. "No. It's thin and wide and flappy, like a Chinese fan," still another voice insisted. Then something squirted me with water and threw me a towel. When I opened my eyes I saw Bo was wiping his face off too. A bunch of other people with lathered hair wandered off with soap still in their eyes, muttering about showers and how they were the ones with the right answers. Then we spun around and saw...an elephant. "Oh!" I laughed. "The old Elephant Parable." "What's that?" Bo asked as he handed me a hair dryer that was floating by. "Well, it's supposed to illustrate the many different ways that the different religions of the world look at God," I yelled over the roar of the hair dryer as I swung it into my other hand and dried the other side of my head. "They all see something very different. But each is only looking at a small part of a greater whole. So, actually they're all right." "And all wrong, too," Bo pointed out. I was about to agree with him when the elephant turned its head and looked at us. "That's not why I'm here. God is an elephant. That's all they said." "Oh. Well, sorry. It can't be," I sneered. "It's the same as all the rest. Impossible!" "Humpf!" the elephant snorted, and he pointed his trunk at us and blew us off our feet. When we landed, we looked up, and there was this Dog. I mean, it was like a dog, only backwards, sort of. We watched while Cosmic crap was sucked in through the back end, and life-giving food came spewing out in shiny cans out the front. "FOOR, FOOR!" it yelped. I rubbed my hands over my eyes, not believing what I was seeing. "This is ridiculous!" I moaned. "FOOW, FOOW!" it continued. "KRAB, KRAB!" it added. "Let me guess," I hissed, rolling my eyes as I helped Bo to his feet. "God is a dog, right?" "Well, you know God backwards is dog," Bo pointed out. "IMPOSSIBLE!" I grunted. "WOB, WOB," the backwards dog offered in defense. "IMPOSSIBLE!" I screamed. "Get the Chapter, boy," Bo laughed. Obediently, the creature sulked off into the shadows and then returned an instant later with Chapter 4 in its mouth. It was covered in slobber. God-the-dog held the page for me while I retrieved the pencil and finally wrote in "IMPOSSIBLE." As an afterthought, I started underlining it again and again. It wasn't until Bo tapped me on the shoulder that I noticed the page had crumbled up and disappeared already. Chapter 5 was waiting for us. Table of Contents | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter