It should come as no surprise I've overthought the implications of what it would mean if my vision of God as a Playful Little Girl were the truth. It gives answers to some questions, but at the price of them not being the answers many people want.

Divine Plan? What Plan?

Well, that's just the sort of thing She'd say. The idea that God even has a plan is something we came up with to soothe ourselves. We worry "Why do bad things happen to good people?" by which most people mean my problems in my life.

So we came up with the idea that God is in charge of everything that happens, that he has his reasons but is so much smarter than us we can't even understand them, but in the end, it's to save the most souls. It's for our own good, even if we can't see it. It's the Divine Plan.

The thing is... well, the God I know is a Playful Little Girl. Operating on intuition and emotion, not logic and planning. She's no all-knowing Mastermind, carefully tinkering with every little thing in the world and in your life. She's an Artist. She's the type to splash cans of paint on the canvas and smear it with her body until it looks funny. That canvas is the world.

C'mon, the platypus and dinosaurs and parasites with spikes all over them make a lot more sense if a Little Girl were populating the world with creatures drawn in crayon. If there is a Divine Plan at all, it's the kind of plan a Little Girl would come up with.

You Want Whaaaaat??

I think this is what She was trying to tell me when She appeared to me in the form of a simple country girl. I tend to have all these complex thoughts, and in a subtle, but powerful way, She let me know She's not all about that.

...which means, a complicated question, a prayer for that job, or that car... might not even really be understood by Her. You're talking to a being who has more in common with a Farmgirl or Wild Child.

Think about it. God made nature. We made civilization. God didn't make all this technology, material goods, laws, rules, money... we did. Maybe She doesn't really get all this stuff, so when we pray about it... how is She supposed to answer? But in my conversations with Her, the impression I get is we're the ones who are clueless. We don't understand what really makes us happy.

You're Supposed To Enjoy It, Silly!

The Little Girl's voice most often comes to me when I'm being too uptight, or feeling that twinge of Catholic guilt over something. If I hold back from feeling lust at watching a real person, She'll just giggle and say "That's what I gave her a pretty body for!" or "I made this feeling so you could enjoy it!"

That seems to be Her entire Plan - make a world of pretty things and give us feelings and instincts to enjoy it with our entire being. When we look at things, we feel them in every pore of our bodies... if we let ourselves.

Commandments? What Commandments?

I once asked Her: what about morality? "What do you mean?"

I then explained, or tried to, Christian morals, like not being oversexual. She thought for a moment, then said "Well... if that's what makes you happy..." though by Her tone and incredulous look on Her face I got the impression she found it hard to believe anyone could be truly happy straightjacketing their own behavior that way. (Which, coming from the girl who designed us in the first place, means something.)

This is hardly the Grumpy Old Man of the Old Testament.

Life Is Fun!

By all the seemingly inappropriate times She's thought I should be having "fun"... like when I'm sick and vomiting, I've come to realize that either we're dealing with a truly alien intelligence... or we completely misunderstand the world She created for us, including our own bodies and feelings.

She seems to think pretty much any visceral, physical sensation is "fun", and if you think about it, any feeling can be exhilarating, given the right mindset. There are endorphins to make pain feel like a rush. Though this does remind me of the Dwarf Fortress definition of Fun.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Fun

Then I realized, it's all right there in Genesis. "And God saw that it was good." All of it. Even the predators and diseases and parasites and injuries are good, from God's perspective.

You're Not Praying, You're Chanting A Cheatcode

I wonder if the Dwarf Fortress analogy is spot on. Life is, after all, the Ultimate Sandbox Game.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png

We pray to have our lives be like the path on the left, but I can just hear the Playful Little Girl I know saying "But the stuff on the right is so much cooler!" Because dayamn... slicing out of that snake is so. awesome.

Maybe we have it all wrong. Maybe the point isn't for life to be pleasant or easy, but for us to have as many opportunities as possible to have crazy experiences. Maybe this is why so many of the "worst" times we ever have are the funniest to talk about later... when we have the sort of distance between us and our lives that God does.

...and if reincarnation is real, then [Game Over. Try Again? Y/N] might be the way God intended life to be lived. Until you get enough experience to start winning.

(Hmmm... I think this counts as inventing a new religion. Shit.)