God Letter

Do I have to dress up or can I wear jeans? Dear Joaquin,

casual Sunday is a plus! Can a woman be fully present in heels?

Remember the other day at the shops, we saw the T-shirt that

read “Blessed” across the front? I know

you picked it up for me as a joke, but it made me pause. I think

I am blessed in the way I understand people to mean it: having

good fortune. But this is where faith messes with my clean concept,

because practicing Christians don’t believe blessings come

out the clear blue sky. So here’s God again, all up in the Kool-Aid.

I’m dating myself, but I mean that He gets in the way of

spiritual minimalism. He is at once contained and uncontainable,

which, intellectually, is hard to understand. So being blessed

must require that one acts in such a way that presses God to bestow

blessings, which isn’t the same thing as good fortune, but I want

to believe that people are saying, “You have such good fortune,

I hope for good fortune, too,” because it means that no one is

preaching at me like, “You have good God-God,” “Father

God I hope He Gods for us, too,” “You got God?” Et cetera.