NO OTHER GOD BUT ME

“I am the Lord thy God! Thou shalt have no other God but me!” It seemed reasonable. He was a lot taller than me. Especially up there in his promontoried pulpit. “You are welcome in the House of God. To be in the presence of the Lord!” He owned the biggest house in the neighborhood. Plus he was the only guy who dared to walk around in a skirt. And everybody did exactly what he told them to do, they’d sit when he told them to sit, stand when he told them to and kneel when he told them to kneel. Even me mam and dad. “All sinners are welcome in my house! Let those who are free from sin, speak now!” Nobody said a word. “Ye are all sinners!” In hindsight maybe he said ‘we”, but at the time all I heard was “ye”, you, us, the rest of everybody, me, everybody who wasn’t Him. He was God. Spoke in very crisp, clear vibrant tones, this man in black with the silvery halo round his neck to prove it, which I figured would only shift to the top of his head when he needed to spiral-helicopter-levitate back to visit his heavenly home. When he told us he’d sent his only son to save us, I couldn’t help nervously looking around at the other kids. Till He informed us that His son had already died to save us! Thank God, I thought, didn’t have to worry about bumping into him on the playground, could definitely put a crimp in my playfulness! I couldn’t help wondering if it was a sin to look forward to the sinning more than the salvation? And was it a sin to feel relieved when God had left the building? Cause there was a generally palpable sense of relief as the congregation filtered out and on to the pub or the neighborhood shopping-plaza. Where decorum could be cast to the wind? Where did decorum end and sanctity begin? Where does sanctuary end and feeling free as a bird begin? By the time I was six or seven years’ old I was already in deep ecumenical debate with myself. Cause I couldn’t help feeling I needed to be better than I was or God the vicar might at least verbally smite me with his wrath!

Of course by then the Queen had turned up, entered my consciousness via the television. To whom everybody, including the vicar, seemed to owe allegiance. She owned an even bigger house. Several bigger houses, some castles and palaces for God’s sake. Put the vicar to shame! So he obviously wasn’t God after all, probably didn’t even own his own house! And the Queen had even deeper divine credentials cause she only appeared when she wasn’t really there. Along with Alfie Bass. Though nobody seemed to owe allegiance to Alfie Bass, even though he was vastly more entertaining! But the Queen never claimed to be God, only “ordained by God”. And her scripturals seemed even duller and blander than the vicar’s. Though like him she did have some key-note catch-phrases which every now and then fired something in the blood : “My loyal subjects!” (most definitely the heir presumptive!). “Our Great Nation!” “The British Empire!” (on which the sun never set without some subjects behaving disloyally and righteously having to be brought to justice!) “This glorious England!” Because of the Queen we English were guaranteed to be favored by God (she was daily putting in a good prayer for us?). She’d turn up trooping her colors and crown-jewels surrounded by a passel of spectacularly garbed armed and dangerous cavalried musketeers devoted un-questioningly at her Majesty’s service, and it was very hard to believe she didn’t really mean business. The poor may be poor but they will always have their pride to keep them warm, so they’re not really poor they are English! They’re British, so they’ll never be slaves, cause Brittannia is ruling the hair-perms and air-waves! If anybody was meant to be blessed and saved she definitely had first dibs. Way before the vicar. I couldn’t imagine catching a whiff of her after-shave as she mingled in a crumpled cassock with the hoi-poloi over tea and crumpets at the church-hall socials. That vicar and his pulpit now looking like they both needed a new coat of paint. His vickery varnish had worn off in the sunshine of Her Majesty’s caviar-gorging-Tower-of-London-laced-loaded-and-locked grimace that was pasted on and passed off as a smile! She was so far above me I knew I would at least have to win a world-war to be allowed into her actual presence. Even then I’d have to bow my head and speak only when spoken to, otherwise she might chop off me legacies! Cause she was the instrument of a “jealous fearful and utterly hierarchical God, who cherished His chosen blood-line far more than any commoner’s varicose veins! Not my vision of Paradise. But at five, six years’ old still terribly convincing…

Till suddenly it struck me like a lightning-thunder-bolt, smashing to pieces this ton of bricks in my head.. When somebody asked the vicar in Sunday School what was the difference between what God said and what your conscience said? And the vicar replied “God is your conscience, your conscience is God speaking to you.” By eleven or twelve years’ old, feeling like I’d already spent a minor lifetime relentlessly talking to myself, I realized in fact I’d been dialoguing with God “Thou shalt have no other God but me!” I was God. It wasn’t the vicar. It wasn’t the Queen : I am the Lord my own God! Or as close to it as made no practical difference. And everything this world had to offer was being filtered through my own divinity. I owed no fealty but to my own conscientiousness. It was a revelation. I had to love everybody and everything, cause if I didn’t I’d be undermining my own creation. Damning myself to hell. And I’d be damned if I did that! I was the eternal spirit made manifest, in my own documentary of my own scripture. And soon after that I began writing poetry to prove it…

Let’s face it, worshipping anybody or anything else apart from not doing much for your self-esteem was tantamount to heresy, led you into all manner of treacherously ceremonial waters of doubt, fear and self-abasement. In the name of respect for your elders and betters? If anybody was to keep this ship from sinking into graceless platitudinous oblivion, it had to be me. I had no choice. I felt like I’d been through the whole A to Z children’s compendium encyclopedia of facts and fictions and histories and found not one mention of myself! And this flaw in the world’s design was so obvious and glaring it ripped the blindness from my mind’s eyes. Because in truth I and my own conscience were the only God that mattered to me. If I could love myself I could love everybody and everything! And if that’s not a definition of god, then the Devil may as well be given a free rein..

Anyway, if I was even contemplating being God I decided my soul mission in life had to be figuring out who the Devil was, the black-sheep rebel angel who needed to be brought back into the fold. I knew it wasn’t me, I just wasn’t bad enough. Could it be Mick Jagger? It wasn’t Elvis, he was just The King and only if I chose to crown him. Albert Einstein? Who seemed to have been sent just to confuse me. If not the Devil Himself obviously a witting or un-witting agent, muddling up enlightenement with mathematics, so I couldn’t possibly understand it, must be the work of The Devil? Same with mechanics. If I couldn’t fix a car how could I possibly have created it? All these lost souls trying to confuse the issue and tempt me to becoming dependent on things I didn’t understand. Religion, I didn’t invent it. I felt like I was evolving, so I had no problem with evolution. Nothing scientific about it, it just happened. You wake up in the morning and there it is, going on. Like the Irish. I knew I invented the Irish, if only to save myself from being merely English. Being English was the craftiness of the possible. To the Irish impossibility was the art of just getting up in the morning and letting things happen. If it didn’t it just wasn’t possible and everything was therefore irrelevant and could never really be part of the Irish Question. So I knew God couldn’t be English. Which is why I came to America which seemed to want to become impossibly everything. I couldn't speak Chinese, so there was no point even pretending to live in Bejing. If my scriptures were in English, I had to live in America, if God really wanted to make His presence felt!

Though after half-a-lifetime in America and failing to make my presence felt, I’m beginning to suspect this is where the Devil is. Cause something is definitely getting in the way of God ruling the world! Not that I ever personally wanted to rule the world, I mean, if I didn’t invent the ruler who was I to judge how long a yardstick should be? God cannot and should not measure eternity in feet and inches, otherwise He would always be of average height and at least a third of the world would never get to read His scriptures or look up to Him.. Did I invent midgets? If I don’t know how to make them any taller? The Devil is terribly unfair. But I knew it was my job to make the best of it. As for growing old and dying, I’d never inflict that on anybody, least of all myself. So I have to imagine if God didn’t have any imagination the Devil would definitely be winning the battle. Cause it’s not really about what you invent, it’s about what you imagine somebody else did. That’s what matters, in the light of eternity, they did it all simply for me to prove my point, that there is no other God but me. And the Chinese will just have to deal with not knowing what they’re missing. As for the Irish, they dealt with it before they were born. Which always gives you an edge on godliness, knowing what you’ve already missed even before it hasn’t happened yet!

Does anybody here know what I’m talking about? Probably not. If they did, it might undermine my divine incredibility…