"What are gods?"

            “What are gods?”  The question came in an email from a student in my mythology class who was frustrated by discussions in which the word gets tossed around without a clear sense of what it signifies.  Cody’s message was quite long and full of wonderings, “Are gods just a placeholder for the unexplainable processes of a given phenomenon, like thunder, growth of wheat, etc.?”  At the center of such swirling suggestions was a question couched as a request for the teacher to address:  “I want to know more about what it’s like, in our (my) understanding, to “speak” with the gods, if they are the humanization of processes.”  I got the message late Wednesday afternoon.  I’d been teaching all day and was preparing to take my daughter and puppy to puppy training class, but Katya wanted spaghetti.  I printed off Cody’s email, and as we waited for our plates of spaghetti, while she played with her phone, I jotted ideas on the back of Cody’s message.  Duty bound, I went back to the text of Gilgamesh, as if I could find the answer by surveying the array of supernatural beings (gods of sky, earth, water, wisdom, cattle, serpent, sun).  I have no doubt that my anxious and hurriedly written email was confusing at best and incomprehensible at worst.  He said he didn’t need an exhaustive definition, but I could read his need between the lines.  When I surveyed the text, typed a reply, and pushed send, I was just being the good teacher.  But what I really felt awe—that this student trusted me enough to ask such a question.  I was really in awe of the question because it was honest and because it was also mine.  Every time I opened my email that weekend and saw that Cody had not responded, I knew that I had not given him what he needed.  What if he didn’t want a definition?  As we move from the mythologies of Mesopotamia to Greece and on to the stories of the Hebrew Bible, God becomes increasingly subjective and impossible to pin down—“I am what I am.”  Cody gave me a gift with that question.  Whether he knew it or not, he invited me to search my own experience for an answer.  “You always find reasons not to think of your own life.”  Maybe it is time to put down the books, return some of the stacks around my bed and desk to the library, and come out of the cramped room in which I spend the majority of my time.  Maybe we find the answer to such tremendous questions only when we dare to live.  

            Over that weekend, I got swept up in life—thanks to Katya.  Paul had gone away for the afternoon, and she and I took our new puppy out for a walk.  She was quieter than usual, and when I asked what was wrong, she said that she felt like Trevor (her “boyfriend”) was going to break up with her, and she wanted to do it “to just get it over with.”  When I began to probe, she explained that he had been “acting weird,” and had said “that his feelings were beginning to fade.”  Ever since the photo of her wearing a cheap engagement ring (which I purchased at Plato’s Closet for $3.00) hit SnapChat and circulated among the Valley School parents—Trevor’s crazy Mom saw it—she forbid him to see her.  That night as it was getting dark, I could see her legs—back and forth—she must be on her swing, but she was yelling at someone on the phone.  A few minutes later the back door slammed, and she pounded through the kitchen—“leave me alone”—and up the stairs slamming her bedroom door behind her.  A few minutes later, I went into her room.  I said something meaningless like “how are you?” or “how’d it go?”  She seemed to feel proud that she had done it, but she was still upset.  Then she came out with it:  “Mom, I kind of want to tell you something, but I’m afraid you won’t like me.”  I told her that whatever she could say would not change my love for her.  Then, she told me that in June, just after graduation, she asked me to drop her at the Mall so she could hang out with girlfriends.  That was the plan, and I believed her.  Trevor picked her up, took her back to his house, where they had sex.  Suddenly, I felt very small, very naïve, very ineffective—a failure.  Much stronger than my own feelings of failure was my sadness for her.  She was carrying that around all summer.  She accused me of thinking her a slut.  She had even expressed interest in going with me to confession.  Oh.  And how much harder the break-up must be given that she had been so intimate with him.  Oh.  My poor daughter.  I felt my virginity lost, taken, violently, felt it all over again.  I think I hugged her, but I do not really remember.  It hurt.  I was hurting with her.  Maybe that is all she needed. 

            The next morning, I woke her up to go to Church with me.  She went without an argument, and we made it to our old pew, unoccupied all summer while we both were going through our own different crises.  Barbara quietly slid in behind us, and at some point, complimented Katya on her hair (as she always does).  At the sign of peace, I hugged Katya and she began to sob.  I held her for a long time, and I felt a surge of maternal power and love.  She shook hands with all the usual people.  Stan, the man who has sat behind us for years, asked me if she was alright, and I indicated that it was boy trouble.  “Men are dogs,” he joked.  “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.  Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.”  During this prayer she stood with her head on my shoulder.  We knelt.  We processed to the altar, all unworthy but loved anyway, to receive the bread and body that mark our participation in Christ’s body—broken and whole—today, tomorrow, forever.  There is fullness.  There is love.  There is forgiveness.  Forgiveness is so often out of reach and even unimaginable for human beings, living within the limits of our judgmental natures.

            The next day was Monday, and in Greek mythology class, I opened discussion with Cody’s question.  Certain students were more sure-footed with their answers, giving lengthy anthropological explanations or stating matter-of-factly that gods were human projections.  I told the story of the weekend (omitting sensitive details) of heartbreak healed at Sunday Mass, when my daughter leaned on me.  I told about the powerful feelings of forgiveness and love.  I said that I didn’t think we could have gotten to that place of deep connection had we been standing in her room.  In church, our sins, our sadness, our forgiveness—green shoots in the wilderness—didn’t die in an otherwise parched landscape of closed doors, constant work, and YouTube videos.  Our small efforts were encased in a loving kindness that wrapped us up together in an embrace.  That is what it feels like to be in the presence of God.  It was an inkling of transcendence.  Seek the Lord while he may be found—when a daughter needs her mother to lean on and the mother (me!), for once, felt like she was there for both girls.  News flash:  we objectify or idolize God when we imagine him up or out there somewhere.  God happens where we love people, our neighbors.