Parallels

A girl stooped down to tie her shoe. She was thinking about God.

Not THAT God. NEVER that God. The other one. The loving one.

She knew He was there. Or He/She. Or it. Whatever the ‘Source’ wanted to be called. There – in that spot that is unknowable, but relatable –  He resides.

She continued on with her walk to get coffee. The buildings surrounded her with weight and substance, but were not quite relevant. Brick and stone mortared to the world they stood, but not rooted.

Yet the more she walked this path in her life, this one she walked every day to get coffee, every day past these same soulless blocks of architecture that loomed overhead, she came to like them. There was a familiarity and ordinariness of how they stood by, in the same places, day after day. They were like the embrace of family for the flesh and bones of the humans that occupied them day after day. Humans who implanted and projected the blank buildings full of meaning and memories. Thus calling them ‘home.’ Because of this, the buildings then grow unseen roots that are not bound to this world, but the world that lives just below the surface. The one of feeling, of emotion and spirit. A world no less real then the one seen with her eyes.

From this, the buildings become something else. Something like an extension of the humans living amongst them. Buildings that cradle them and the humans loving them back. A coexistence of sorts. The humans loved and appreciated these brick blocks in a way that they themselves would not recognize: they loved them by paying them no mind. They loved them because they were not a threat. They loved them because their existence was to help us find meaning and roots of our own by standing by every day, in the same place, accepting and implanting whatever we give them. By reflecting our own meaning back to us.

Is this how God works? she thought quietly.

Does he help us by mirroring our meaning? Does he protect and guide us by being there everyday, offering familiarity and safety, but not interfering?

This was a comforting thought. That God was ordinary and stationery, standing over her day after day, never judging or emoting. Just being there, helping her to find meaning and build purpose and love without her ever realizing.

She smiled to herself and ordered her coffee. She saw the coffee shop with new vigor. New appreciation. All the drab window frames and coffee-stained countertops were now there in a way they were not before. Like they were smiling back.

She put her extra change in the tip jar and went out the door, past the dull bricks and stone, past the other humans, and felt in her a new coziness.

Maybe the cradle of the buildings.