Mister God, This is Anna

in the dark you have to describe yourself. In the daylight other people describe you.

The sun is nice but it lights things up so much that you can't see very far... The night time is better. It stretches your soul to the stars.

Mister God made everything, didn’t he?” There was no point in saying I didn’t really know. I said “Yes.” “Even the dirt and the stars and the animals and the people and the trees and everything, and the pollywogs?” The pollywogs were those little creatures we had seen under the microscope. I said, “Yes, he made everything.” She nodded her agreement. “Does Mister God love us truly?” “Sure thing,” I said. “Mister God loves everything.” “Oh,” she said. “well then, why does he let things get hurt and dead?” Her voice sounded as if she felt she had betrayed a sacred trust, but the question had been thought and it had to be spoken. “I don’t know,” I replied. “There’re a great many things about Mister God, we don’t know about?” “Well then,” she continued, “if we don’t know many things about Mister God, how do we know he loves us?” I could see this was going to be one of those times, but thank goodness she didn’t expect an answer to her question, for she hurried on: “Them pollywogs, I could love them till I bust, but they wouldn’t know, would they? I’m million times bigger than they are and Mister God is million times bigger than me, so how do I know what Mister God does?” She was silent for a little while. Later I thought that at this moment she was taking her last look at babyhood. Then she went on. “Fynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.” She hesitated. “He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love the pollywogs, but they don’t love me. I love you Fynn, and you love me, don’t you?” I tightened my arm about her. “You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly but he don’t love me.” It sounded to me like a death knell. “Damn and blast,” I thought. “Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.” But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping stone. “No,” she went on, “no, he don’t love me, not like you do, its different, its millions of times bigger.” I must have made some movement or noise, for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. The she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut from the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon. “Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, cant I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love outside, and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so its different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.” It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of the similarities, but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love, and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable. “You see, Fynn, Mister God is different because he can finish things and we cant. I cant finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so its not the same kind of love, is it?

If I was the only one I wouldn't be littler or bigger, would I? I'd be just me, wouldn't I?

The diffrense from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside.

Anna had bypassed all the nonessentials and distilled centuries of learning into one sentence: "And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don't forget to love yourself." The whole business of adults going to church filled Anna with suspicion. The ide a of collective worship went against her sense of private conversations with Mister God. As for going to church to meet Mister God, that was preposterous. After all, if Mister God wasn't everywhere, he wasn't anywhere. For her, churchgoing and "Mister God" talks had no necessary connection. For her, the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message whenyou were very little. Once you had got it, you went out and did something about it. Keeping on going to church was because you hadn't got the message or didn't understand it or it was "just for swank.

The daylight schooled the senses and the night-time developed the wits, stretched the imagination, sharpened fantasy, hammered home the memory and altered the whole scale of values.

The difference from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside." These are the words of six- year old Anna, sometimes called Mouse, Hum, or Joy. At five years, Anna knew absolutely the purpose of being, knew the meaning of love, and was a personal friend and helper of Mister God. At six, Anna was a theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet, and gardener. If you asked her a question you would always get ananswer in due course. On some occasions the answer would be delayed for weeks or months; but eventually, in her own good time, the answer would come: direct, simple, and much to the point.

In here was the image of God. It isn't the devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it's his God-likeness. It's the fullness of the Good that can't get out or can't find its proper "other place" that makes for loneliness.Anna's misery was for others. They just could not see the beauty of that broken iron stump, the colors, the crystalline shapes; they could not see the possibilities there. Anna wanted them to join with her in this exciting new world , but they could not imagine themselves to be so small that this jagged fracture could become a world of iron mountains, of iron plains with crystal trees.It was a new world to explore, a world of the imagination, a world where few people would or could follow her. In this broken-off stump was a whole new realm of possibilities to be explored and to be enjoyed. Mister God most certainly enjoyed it, but then Mister God didn't at all mind making himself small. People thought that Mister God was very big, and that's where they made a big mistake. Obviously Mister God could be any size he wanted to be. "If he couldn't be little, how could he know what it's like to be a lady -bird?" Indeed, how could he? So, like Alice in Wonderland, Anna ate of the cake of imagination and altered her size to fit the occasion.After all, Mister God did not have only one point of view but an infinity of viewing points, and the whole purpose of living was to be like Mister God. So far as Anna was concerned, being good, being generous, being kind, praying, and all that kind of stuff had very little to do with Mister God. They were, in the jargon of today, merely "spinoffs." This sort of thing was just "playing it safe," and Anna was going to have none of it. No! Religion was all about being like Mister God and it was here that things could get a little tough. The instructions weren't to be good and kind and loving, etc., and it therefore followed that you would be more like Mi ster God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn't help but be good and kind and loving, could you?

I suppose that the human mind can only stand so much grief and anguish. After that the fuses blow.

A fact was the hard outer cover of meaning, and meaning was the soft living stuff inside a fact. Fact and meaning were the driving cogs of living. If the gear of fact drove the gear of meaning, then they revolved in opposite directions, but put the gear of fantasy between the two and they both revolved in the same direction. Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off.

Some people collect stamps or beer mats; Mum collected waifs and strays, cats, dogs, frogs, people, and as she believed, a whole host of "little people." Had she been confronted that night with a lion,she'd have made the same comment "The poor thing.

After it had all been explained to me, my first thought was for poor old Mohammed. He had to go to the mountains, but not Anna. She neither went to the mountains nor did she fetch the mountain to her she merely said "Scat." And they scatted. Mind you, although I knew by then that the mountains were not really there, and that I could move about freely and unhampered, there are occasions not many, I'm glad to say when I get the distinct feeling that I've been brought up pretty sharpish-like by a clunk on the head. It certainly feels as if I have walked into a mountain, even though I can't see it. Perhaps one day I shall be able to walk about freely, without ducking occasionally. As for my problem about the heres and the theres, the explanation went like this : "Where are you?" she had said. "Here, of course," I replied. "Where's me then?" "There!" "Where do you know about me?" "Inside myself someplace." "Then you know my middle in your middle." "Yes, I suppose so." "Then you know Mister God in my middle in your middle, and everything you know,every person you know, you know in your middle. Every person and everything that you know has got Mister God in his middle, and so you have got his Mister God in your middle too. It's easy.