THE GOD of the WRITING HOUSE

The twenty minute in-class writing exercise for this week's Writing House workshop was...

Copy this text and then continue:
"What God thinks about, most of the time, ___"

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What God thinks about, most of the time, is his collection of people.

He places each new one that he gets upon one of the neatly dusted shelves in his library. Some are still in their blister packs, in mint condition, untouched. Others have been battered and weathered, paint scuffed away near joints. Some are broken, a forearm gone missing, or a head that won't stay in place, popping off because the hole is larger than the pin. But, he loves each and every one of them.

He dotes on them, painting color back onto their clothes with a fine-tipped brush, polishing their exteriors to a brilliant shine.

He takes down a few of his favorites and has them play in mock battle—red and yellow, black and white—one from the shelf labeled "American" versus one from the "Middle East" shelf, Iraqi or Afghani.

New people arrive every day. A tiny one, having succumbed to leukemia. A slow one, hit by a bus. A thin one, malnutrition or asceticism.

He picks them up and turns them over, examining them in detail. They squeak back at him with tiny chirps of voice. God likes these small noises. He finds them soothing, even though he doesn't understand them.

When he feels sad or mischievous, God pulls the labels from the shelves and mixes his collection up. Women with men, adults with children, followers of Jesus or Buddha with followers of Mohammed or Moses.

Occasionally, he opens a blister pack. "It's not worth having if I can't play with it," he bellows to himself.

At night, when he crawls into bed, he chooses one that he will hold close as he sleeps, that person tucked between pillow and the roughness of the cheek, his breath warming him or her as he snores and dreams of tomorrow's delivery, tomorrow's toys.

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Another writer said he liked the idea of the "nerd collector" god. It was just fun to write something fun for the workshop since my work to date therein has focused on various meditations on death. This brought a little levity to another serious topic.