Dear God:

The BBQ Pit
1

Hey, I know we haven’t really talked since I was a kid. To be honest, I don’t really believe in you. I believe in karmic justice of a sort, and I hope that people get what they deserve in one way or another, but I’m willing to change that now. I’m willing to believe again. I’m not sure how I can’t, given what’s going on down here right now. Some people are saying this proves you don’t exist, but I figure this has to mean something, somehow. This can’t have no point. There can’t be no Being to be watching this horror and seeing how we conduct ourselves in the aftermath.

So, now that you got our attention, I have a request. I’d really like a do-over, okay? I was talking to a bunch of my friends and we voted and everything. It was unanimous. We all just want to go back to early Monday morning and get another chance. I know you think we’ll fuck it all up again, and you’re probably right to be honest. But, and I swear, I at least will try to do better. So many people are hurting. Almost the entire world. I just don’t know what to do. My Winnie-the-Pooh isn’t helping much, and he’s always helped before. I haven’t asked for much, I don’t think. Just one little do-over. Just one. I don’t want a war. I want to keep learning and growing up and get married and have kids and get old and give people love and be loved and…

Fuck, I’m finally crying. I haven’t been able to cry yet, but now I am. How did we get here? How did this happen?

Just one do-over, God. I’m begging here.

2

weeps

3

Wish I could help, Nym. I don’t even think me flying around the world really really fast would help this time.

4

beautiful Nym. I’d do anything to go back to 11:00 Monday night when I said “Ed McCaffrey broke his leg, what a tragedy”

I wish that was all I had to be sad about.

jarbaby

5

…there’s gotta be a saved game I can load somewhere.

I still haven’t cried over this. I wonder if I will, and I wonder why I haven’t.

6

God, please, just let this be another horrible dream. I’ll wake up, with my cats, and have to go to class, and everything will be fine.

But please, don’t let this come to war. Don’t let it come to more killings. Please, can we just find out who is responsible and deal with it then-please. I’m so scared of nuclear war…I’m so frightened right now. This is the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life…

7

Amen Tonya. I’m an active church member, I believe in God, go to church and say my prayers. Tuesday morning though really shook my faith. I prayed and have been praying since I first heard of these tragedies. I have no answers to give, I have no words of wisdom but I truely believe all of those who have lost their lives are angels now and trying to help us all deal with this. I prayed Tuesday night and asked God to help me understand how people can do this in HIS name. How can people honestly believe that killing people in the name of religion is the right thing to do? I don’t understand how people can do something like this. I never got an answer, I never got insight but I did cut my questions short because I realized HE was really busy that night and other people needed him more.

Having rambled enough there I have to agree, yes I want a do-over. I know we will learn alot from this tragedy but what a price to pay for the lessons learned. Everyone out there, go hug someone you love, call them and tell them what they mean to you, tell everyone that you love them and be sure to remember how petty things are in the face of real tragedies. Don’t let the chance pass, who knows if you will get the chance again. I love you all, take care and be careful.

8

{{{{{NYM}}}}} I haven’t had any faith in years. I’ve actively denied the existence of any force greater than chance and entropy. I’ll tell you, though, I’ve had the same thoughts going through my head since 8:33 (Local) Tuesday morning.

So, how about it God? Care to take advantage of a two-for-one special? Two atheists back in the fold for one do-over?

Please.

9

nod

I haven’t prayed in a long, long time, but I have repeatedly the past few days. And like you, Nym, I kept saying “Please. I don’t ask for much. Please just let it stop now. Please let it be just a bad dream.” And then, when I took inventory of my friends that work in and around there: “Please, let Jeremy be ok. Let Martin and Joshua be ok. Let Brian be ok. Please. I don’t ask for much. Just let them be ok.” These are my friends. It’s not faceless, nameless terror anymore. This shouldn’t happen. But, it did.

It’s hard to remember that there was a normal world before this, when all I had to worry about was finding a job.

[sub]For the record, everyone I know, save Jeremy, is accounted for and is ok. Jeremy’s too much a New Yorker to let something like this kill him though, so I’m confident he’s fine.[/sub]

10

When I was tidying the living room this morning, I found Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune in the pile of coats and junk by the front door. Somehow on Tuesday morning I never got around to even taking out of its blue plastic bag, let alone reading it. And when I took it out of its bag and laid it on top of the stack of “recycle” newspapers, and glanced at the headlines, all I could think was, “How stunningly irrelevant it all seems now.”

Remember what we were all talking about Tuesday morning? “Bush Seeks Solutions, Capital gains cut seen as an option to spur economy”. The budget surplus that suddenly wasn’t a surplus, and Chandra Levy, and Illinois schoolkids’ math scores, and whether Michael Jackson really had another Top 40 hit in him. And flipping open the paper to the Tempo section, there’s Britney and The Donald.

All so–simply not relevant anymore. To anything.

A “do over”? To go back to Britney and The Donald and Bob Dylan’s 60th birthday and the AOL/ATT talks and the possible comeback of Michael Jordan? Go back to all that–trivia? I don’t think we could, or should (and no, I’m not saying it was a good thing thousands of people died so we could all have a “learning experience”, please don’t even suggest that).

I really think America’s gone through a fundamental shift in national consciousness here, and in a hundred years we’ll look back and say, “Yeah, that was when Americans stopped being so cocky. That was when they grew up a little and joined the rest of the Real World, in a world with suicide bombers and pointless, random death for mass quantities of people, not just for a few people caught in the crossfire when a disgruntled employee goes postal, or in an e. coli outbreak.” This is how most of the rest of the world lives, with African civil wars and Cambodian genocide and Armenian earthquakes and Pakistani floods and overloaded Indian ferries sinking.

Yes, it would be nice if we could have a “do over” that would bring those thousands of dead people back, but I don’t want to be the person I was before Tuesday morning.

And FTR, I do still believe in God. The thing that keeps me going through shit like this is a quote from C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, addressing the issue of “free will” vs. “predestination”.

Dunno why, but it works for me.
Rasa: from what I hear, NYC is still basically back in the Stone Age. Not much is working yet. Have you checked the “I’m alive” databases?

11

Google has these linked on their home page.

The Berkeley list.
http://do.millennium.berkeley.edu/

The Berkeley page has links to other similar websites.

The NY list.
http://www.ny.com/wtclist.html

12

::hugs Nym::

What do you say, God? Rewind…Nick deserves a mom, and you could give him his back, and you could make us believe again. And just the one doover. Another take.

I don’t want a war. I’m eighteen and I’m selfish. I don’t want to die, don’t want to watch others die. I’m so scared. And remember the time that I wanted Eepa not to die, and You took him anyway? And all the other things you never gave people, all those broken promises that drained our faith? You owe us.

Please, God…just make it go away.

13

Amen.

[sub]…from another atheist…[/sub]

14

Dear God

15

Oh, Cyni, that song’s been going through my head for so long now… sad.

16

Dear Sir or Madam:

This is Your big chance. All that “free will means I can’t reveal Myself” stuff? Don’t worry about that.

I am earnestly asking You to make the rubble vanish. There are many people still alive in there. Most of them are probably asking You the same thing right now.

Think about it. By making those thousands of tons of steel suddenly disappear, You wouldn’t only save the lives of the people in there. You’d show the pricks who did this that they picked the wrong deity. And maybe this shit won’t happen again.

For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about all the nasty things I’ve said and thought about You in the last few days. I’m sorry I had that Darwin fish on my car in college. I’m sorry I laughed this past weekend watching “Dogma”, thinking it was hilarious You might be Alanis Morrisette and You like to play skee-ball. I’m sorry I’ve made many vulgar indirect references to You while on the freeway. I’m sorry I don’t think You’re there.

If You want, You can do this one thing and then leave us alone. If we know You’re there? And we have videotape of an undeniably divine event that we can show our children later? That would be a huge step in the right direction for us. Even if You came back later with fire and brimstone, we’d sing hymns to You until our throats bled.

Make the rubble vanish. Please? I capitalized all the “you’s”.

[sub]P.S. I don’t need Your help to cry. But thanks anyway.[/sub]

17

Three. And You can even pick the religion.

18

No god caused this to happen and no god can make this go away. It’s sad and it sucks, but begging and handing in your Atheist Hat isn’t going to make it disappear. It just isn’t possible.

Yeah, and I’m a non-believer.

19

And this one has been going through mine :frowning:

20

What beautiful spirits all of you have! Though you are atheists and I’m not, I feel a bond with you, not unlike the bond all Americans feel right now. I too, given my own druthers, would have God simply reset all this (and presumably imbue someone with the ability to intercept and alter it.)

Your promise to believe in Him were He to do so is touching beyond words. I do have one question, however. Were He to turn back time and reset the events, how would you know that He had done so, since the tragedy would now not ever have occured, and you would not be able to know that His miracle had been performed.

For that matter, how do you know He has not done exactly what you’re requesting many many times already?