The Peace That Surpasetheth Understanding

Last updated on: September 8, 2008 at 12:55 pm by John Shore

The Peace That Surpasetheth Understanding 2008-09-08T12:55:05-08:00 John Shore

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Ah, peace. How I want some. Luckily for me, I have all of it—so no worries for me, literally. Still and all that leaves no peace left for others, who are therefore stuck struggling with their lives—worrying about their hair, their diet, the quality of their moral character, the air pressure in their tires—whilst I, enjoying a relationship with God not unlike the ever-chatty one between Chip and Dale, do maintain about my very soul and person a benevolent, radiant calm that keeps those near me in awe, and those away from me astonished that I figured out their street address and keep stopping by a nice hot cup of whatever they have on hand.

I would like to share with you my secret for an elevated consciousness—but I hate a crowded elevator. And if you don’t think two is a crowd, then you’ve never held hands in a phone booth. Let it be said that I personally do not fear crowds, for verily do I contain unto myself the power to part them, which I accomplish with nary but the confounding plenitude of my prodigious presence and a little something I like to call fake dollar bills that I throw. Besides, it’s inevitable that as I struggled to lead you upward, you’d tumble back. I’d use words like “cosmic integration” and “Godhead”—but, alas, what you’d hear would be “comic imitation” and “blockhead.” And then where would we be? I would be, again, merging my mind with the very mind of Mr. Mind Me himself, and you’d be down there somewhere, wondering if you have your shoes on the wrong foot, or if you’ve eaten the last bon-bon.

No, you must go your way, and I must go mine. With aimless ferocity you must seek the next temptation, the next diversion, the next person you can lure into stopping and petting the cute but exhausted and secretly bitter little dog you walk for that very reason. And I must away again, to be with the God who awaits me, who watches me, who keeps looking at his enormous watch and tapping his gargantuan foot at me.

Do fear not, you, for meet again we will. It will not be long (well, it won’t seem like long, to you) until one day you, too, hear the rich, pure symphony that as yet falls unto your searching ears like an asthmatic with a kazoo. What a joyous day for you that will be! I, of course, won’t be there. Not in body, at least. But in spirit? Not there either, Boscoe. For at that moment of glorious enlightenment, you will know what I have yet to forget—what all wise folk have known since ‘ere the word “folk” began its apparently unrendable association with dulcimers, humility, and wooden teeth. And that is that, in the end, it doesn’t matter what you think of God. It doesn’t even matter what God thinks of you.

What matters is what you think of what God thinks of what you think God thinks you think of him.

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