Just My Soul Responding.

Chapter IV: Dear God.

'I think I think too much about God, and that it is not a bad thing I guess. I am taking upon myself this journey to search for God. I have known many changes with this concept and I am trying to grasp that idea. You see the concept of God has taken many forms and religions. God has been given many names. Some claim that god is simply a fiction, a myth, that we are simply on a race governed by stories. The stories we tell ourselves are inescapable without letting go of the ego, but fiction and storytelling is simply embedded in our DNA. I thought as I am laying here in the grass, watching the clouds pass by. I felt an urge to leave the house. I just could not stand one more moment in that house. I thought I would go to my place but after all it is just another four walls place with the same noisy mind; my mind. It seems no matter where I go this noise haunts me. I decided to take a drive to the coast. I found a nice place on east Algiers. The grass could not be any more greener here. I laid down, lit a cigarette and enjoyed the perfect blue sky.'

'So what are we thinking about today?'

'Ooooh god.' Yelling in frustration.

'OH, you are thinking about God. What made these thoughts pop up?'

'I mean .... ahhh never mind. What do you mean what made thoughts like this pop up. Who knows? I can't even control when you show up. I wish I did. Perhaps this green grass and this beautiful sky made me think about the magnificent of its creator. I am obsessed with the sky. I look up and I wonder how satisfied God must feel after painting them.'

'The journey of finding God is very struggling. We are not that good in it anyways. We have a very basic understanding of how the universe or the brain works.'

'I know.' The thought of Monica Geller of my favorite show FRIENDS came to mind. As soon as I spoke the words her voice came to mind. Isn't it weird how that happens? Indeed, I really don't have clue how the mind works.

'I have no clue why I or any of us are here and what are we supposed to do. Sometimes I feel like life is piling up on my chest and throat and it seems I can't get the air that I need to breathe and other times, I'm simply fine, I'm alright. I know the search of God and understanding God would make me feel like the former instead of the latter. Because I realize as well that many people look towards God to answer those entire impossible questions, and yet so much that it is done for the name of God and so much it is using this three-letter word. It's still doesn't make sense to me. What about all of the insane, the injustice, the poverty, the pandemics... that exist in this world? What about the suffering that occurs in all of our lives? Why all things has to end? Those questions are still ambiguous to me, and every time I think about them, it feels like I keep trying to add one plus one and end up getting five or twenty-eight. I also think about why I am doing all of this and whether I would have still wanted to search for God if my life was perfect and everything I need is already fulfilled. Would I still give a damn if there weren't bad moments in my life? If I was raised with a different religion and in a different place and environment. What if I was Indian, or Australian or Spanish would I still give a damn?'

'I don't think anyone can really understand God.'

'Why is that?'

'I mean how can you explain the color blue to a blind person.'

'True. God is a mystery but when I think of God, I look how everything in our world function as half to a whole. Through days and nights, winter and summer, men and women I wonder if God splits itself into all the billion halves our world knows just to refined itself again. God is everywhere. When I think about halves I wonder if I will ever find someone to love. The other half. Being here in nature makes me feel God. I mean look at this simply yet wonderfully made grass. Just this single one. Subhanallah. I don't think this grass question itself why is it here. It is just here. I mean I look around and see these trees, these rocks. They don't think they think that they don't belong. I am a human being I am supposed to be. My existential crisis go away. Nature makes me feel as an expression of creation. Deliberately wonderfully made. Made with purpose.'

I realized that I have smoked two joints already. I decided to stop with all of this and just go home. I put on The Dark Side of the Moon and drove back.

Art by: Julliet Fogra.