99 Stories of God Read Online Free Page B

privacy, and they strove to provide the illusion of privacy so that even with all the feeders and tree guilds provided, the birds were as invisible as God when we went over to visit the Lancasters for cocktails at dusk.
    Our houseguest, who had been responsible for Victoria Secret’s water bra marketing fiasco of the decade before but still pulled down a good salary in retail, was astonished that the Lancasters would put up bird feeders where no one—neither the Lancasters nor the guests they were ostensibly entertaining— could see the birds. She said it was contrary to the very wiring of the modern brain, even the altruistic part of the brain. In her position of analyzing consumers’ habits and decisions, she took pleasure in attending seminars on the brain. She did grant, however, that there was a great deal about the brain and consumers’ buying and leisure habits—particularly consumers who owned their own homes—that she did not know. That was why hers was such a fascinating field.

The Brain
     

38
     
    The child wanted to name the rabbit Actually, and could not be dissuaded from this.
    It was the first time one of our pets was named after an adverb.
    It made us uncomfortable. We thought it to be bad luck.
    But no ill befell any of us nor did any ill befall the people who visited our home.
    Everything proceeded beautifully, in fact, until Actually died.

Actually
     

39
     
    The girl from the pharmacy who delivered Darvon to Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer, wore a golden fish necklace.
    “What does that mean?” asked Dick.
    She touched it and said, “This is a sign worn by the early Christians so that they would recognize one another.”
    “In that instant,” Dick writes, “I suddenly experienced anamnesis, a Greek word meaning, literally, loss of forgetfulness.”
    Anamnesis is brought on by the action of the Holy Spirit. The person remembers his true identity throughout all his lives. The person recognizes the world for what it is—his own prior thought formations—and this generates the flash . He now knows where he is.

Buried in Colorado All Alone
     

40
     
    She was a brilliant painter, really an exceptional, exceptional artist, and she suffered a lot of pain. She’d been in a car accident that injured her pelvis and spine, and although she initially seemed to recover from her injuries, her body was really broken beyond repair. She had numerous operations and amputations, none of which did her any good, but she continued to paint. At the end, critics point out, her work became looser, hastier, almost careless, probably because of all the painkillers she had to take. All she could paint was still lifes of fruits and vegetables. Even so, she insisted upon referring to these as naturaleza viva instead of naturaleza muerta . At the very end her attempts at painting consisted of only a few dabs.

Señor Xólotl
     

41
     
    I was in jail for shoplifting. It was so stupid. Really, I must have wanted to get caught and I was. It was a ring.
    But the point of my story is that there was a woman in my cell. She was there before I got there. I was afraid she’d been arrested for something heinous.
    Are you acquainted with the Bible? she asked me.
    If I had had something to pull over my head like a hoodie and be concealed I would have, but I didn’t.
    I know the Lord’s Prayer, I said.
    What about the Book of Q? she asked.
    There is no Book of Q, I said.
    Vanity, vanity, she said. All is vanity.
    Oh yes, I said. That’s Ecclesiastes.
    Ecclesiastes just means one who assembles. Qoheleth was the assembler. So it is the Book of Q. Most modern scholars use the untranslated Hebrew name of Qoheleth, who was the writer. I bet you think vanity means pride or conceit, I would bet that.
    Yes, I said. Sure.
    In the original the word means “breath,” the merest breath, vapor, something utterly insubstantial and transient. Some translators even suggest the word means futility or absurdity.
    Yes, yes. I