GOD IS LOVE

A bit of gender reversal...

God was furious, and because she was immortal and had created everything in the first place, she had every right to be furious.

They still referred to her as “he”! Even mortal women thought she was a male, as if anything could be further from the truth!

Of all the damned cheek! Couldn’t they see with every day that passes that it’s the lasses who do the creating and the lads that just get in the way? God could see that, plain as plain. There was no doubt about it. She even hovered around in the guise of a midwife when babies were being born, just to make sure she was right, and she loved it when a new born infant cried for the first time. It confirmed every truth under the known sky.

And she loved the way the mother held the little mite next to her breast, and it tried to suckle from her. It would have no chance if the new mother was a new father!

For as long as she could remember she’d tried to come up with an argument that would explain to the human males what they’re proper place in her creation was, but they always dismissed the thought that females were anything more than a means of new life being stored for nine months before being born.

Men, they said, were far too busy to be doing anything as sedentary as incubating babies inside them. They had to go hunting in the big wide world, and if they didn’t go then who would? Pregnant women and their swollen bellies? The idea was laughable.

“But when do you have to go hunting?” asked God in a dream she’d hammered into the feeble male brain of an archbishop, and he’d used the word metaphorical as if it answered everything when, of course, it answered nothing. But then, that’s what testosterone does to a person, removes all logic and replaces it with itchy genitals.

“I could go hunting it I wanted,” replied that archbishop in his dream, and the bland image of whatever else he’d been dreaming of was replaced with a jungle and wild beasts and trees, and all the excitement and rawness of the wild

“This is my territory,” he grinned. And you never did see such a grin as the average archbishop can produce when he believes he’s won a point.

“Go on,” said God wisely, “if that’s your territory then go hunting. Take a lance or a spear or even a bow and arrows with you, and bring me back some meat!”

And the archbishop, in his dream, felt truly uncomfortable.

“But I’m vegetarian,” he said, “I wouldn’t eat a poor little animal from the wild! I’d urge it to live and be happy, and cuddle its furry offspring like furry offspring need to be cuddled.”

“But haven’t you been preaching that’s what they were created for? To be hunted by men and fill human bellies when they’ve been cooked?” asked God. “I think it says something along those lines in that old book you attribute to me as author?“

“The women do the cooking,” spluttered the Archbishop, “it’s of no interest to me where my food comes from. I’ve got mightier and much more cerebral things to worry about, like the purity of wine nd whether whiskey’s safe for vegans to consume. And, I mean, sausages!”

“So it’s all right for you to eat meat as long as you pretend you don’t know what it is and when it lived? That’s you men all over! You tell yourselves lies and proceed to believe them. Like you believe that fancy tale you’re always prattling on about, you know, the baby in the manger nonsense? The angels singing carols of joy welcoming a baby boy to the world?”

“That’s no fancy tale!” barked the Archbishop in his dream, irritably because he rather suspected it was in the odd moment of doubt that spoiled the beauty of his faith.

“And it was a baby boy?” laughed God, “that’s laughable, that is! Why a boy, I wonder?

“Because… that’s what everyone knows!” snapped the Archbishop with so much vehemence that it woke him up and he groaned because the woman standing at the foot of his bed was naked as any woman ever was, with the most glorious breasts and legs to die for, all of which annoyed him because he wasn’t particularly fond of the female sex. His particular favourite chum was Aaron Bystander who’d been a choir boy when they’d first met and now was a curate in one of the local churches just a short drive in his posh limousine away.

In a way, he told himself, he had a particular affinity for Aaron because once, years ago, they’d spent a night together under canvas and the boy had admitted something to him that he still treasured.

“I love you,” he had said.

“God is love,” replied the Archbishop, and he wept at the beauty of so much sentimental loveliness.

And he looked at the woman standing at the end of his bed. Why did she have to be so naked? It wasn’t reasonable. And wasn’t it indecent? Weren’t women supposed to cover themselves up from head to toes or ordinary men, not him, obviously, but lesser men, might lose their minds at the sight of so much flesh?

“I know I am,” she whispered, sticking the tip of her tongue out and standing with her legs indecently apart, “real love, glorious love, and you naughty man, you must always worship God...”

© Peter Rogerson 15.08.21

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