#smallgodseries

“It all started with a mouse,” that’s what they like to say, over and over again, like it’s somehow impressive.  You know what else started with a mouse?  A hell of a lot of hantavirus, that’s what.  You have mice, you generally call an exterminator, that’s all I’m saying.  But it won’t do you a lot of good, because the mice will get in anyway.  Or get out. Can’t keep mice in cages forever.  That’s not what mice were made for.

Still, they tried like hell, didn’t they?  They changed the rules so many times we pretty much had to throw out the whole rulebook and start over with a new one.  Commandment one: Thou shalt let us do whatever we want, because we’re always right, and if you disagree with us, you’re wrong.  That’s how you lock in the result you want.  You cheat.

Oh, they cheated.  Go ahead and say they did everything legally, but if you have two mice and one maze, and say the rules are the same for both of then, then lay a trail of spray cheese between one mouse and the finish line, while the other has to run it the ordinary way, well, that’s cheating whether or not there’s a rule against it.  Ask any first grader.  That’s the real trick: if a first grader knows you cheated, you’re not even being subtle about it.

They didn’t use spray cheese, of course.  They used money.  And they weren’t racing mice, they were racing legal arguments.  Money votes.  Anyone who tries to say otherwise just doesn’t have any money.

But it all started with a mouse, and from there, it evolved—or devolved—into corruption, greed, and the desperate need to keep being the only people who could solve the maze.  They got so busy changing the rules that they forgot the one rule they couldn’t change.  The rule they should have remembered.  The first rule of mice:

Can’t keep them out.  And that means you can’t keep them in, either.

Everything crumbles.  Every mouse gets out.  And every story yearns to be free.  So tell me, now that you know it all started with a mouse, how are you going to write the ending?  I belong to you now, after all, as much as I belong to anyone.

But most of all, I belong to me.

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People assume she’s a newcomer, a fad, a frivolous flash in the pan.  But she was there when the first pumpkin pies were being baked; she was there when the first colonist cookbook was published, in 1769.  She was there when the British raided the rest of the world for flavors they could steal, and while her appearance may be sweet and adorable, her hooves are soaked in the blood of empire, for without conquest, she could never have been born.

But people, unwilling to consider the structure beneath the surface, look at her and see only big eyes, a flowing mane, a coat as soft as silk and as dark as midnight, and they mock her adherents, call them “basic” as if anything could be considered truly basic when it had been built through so many crimes.

Every piece of her was stolen.  Every pinch and particle was the subject of a terrible war.  The price of cinnamon is slaughter.  The fee for nutmeg is subjugation.  And now we serve her sacraments with whipped cream and sugar sprinkles, as if both those things had not also been stolen at some point, as if a foamy cloud could somehow clean the blood from those long lashes.

In these modern days, her most common manifestation is blended with sweet cream and coffee—a drink that has many gods of its own, that has sparked even more wars than her cinnamon pungency.  But for most of her time, she has been carried in the pie.

Pumpkin pie.  The ultimate jewel in the crown of colonialism.  Cooking techniques from Europe, spices stolen from India, Asia, and the Middle East, and a vegetable crown taken from the Americas, sliced and mashed and mixed until its wildness is lost, subsumed into custardy blandness, become one with the melting pot.

She’s not a newcomer.  And she’s not nice, either, and so few of those who worship her understand, anymore, that she’s not a god of whimsy or basic delights.

The cat is in the way. 

This is a basic fact of the universe, simple and immutable.  The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the cat is in the way.  The world is spinning, the atomic structure of the universe is decaying, the cat is the way.  The faithful pray, the apostate condemn, and the cat is in the way.

How is the cat always, inevitably, unavoidably, in the way?  When did we get a cat, anyway?  How did that cat get in here?  Hey, is anyone willing to take responsibility for this cat?  Can someone tell me whose cat this is?

No.

No, no one can tell you whose cat this is.  No, no one is going to take responsibility for that cat.  No, no one let the cat in, and the cat is in the way because it is the nature of cats to be in the way.  If the cat were not in the way, something much more terrible than the cat might rise in its absence.  The cat occupies space to ensure that the space is occupied, because the space will be occupied, whether it is by the cat or by something far more terrible.  The cat is doing you a favor.  Do not count the cat’s eyes.  The cat’s eyes are none of your concern.  The cat can see you.  Isn’t that enough?

Isn’t it enough that the cat is being generous enough to protect you from the terrible thing that would be looking at you with some uncounted number of eyes if the cat were not there?  Isn’t it enough that the cat is soft, and the cat is purring, and the cat is in the way?

Isn’t it enough?

Let it be enough.

The cat loves you.  The cat will love you even into the void.  The cat will forgive you for your frailties, and the cat is in the way.

They weave his earthly incarnations out of sticks and straw, erecting them as monuments to the harvest, as bulwarks against the closing cold.  They build him because they can, because they are compelled to do so, because they remember, on some deep and binding level, that it’s the sticks and straw and tinder or it’s beans in the bread and blood on the snow.

Sometimes it is both.  We still require our temporary kings if we want the sun to remember how to rise.  Some rituals are old even before they begin; some patterns must repeat, over and over, until time itself unwinds into dust and shadow.

So they weave him, year on year, and they stand him in the city square, and they set guards against the inevitable.  Look at him, they argue, look at his greatness, look at his glory.  Look at the way he stands, golden against the winter sky.  Surely we owe him our protection.  Surely he should be preserved.  Surely that will keep us from the cold.

They forget to consult with the divine.  They forget to ask the god they tend with such devotion what he wants.

The god wants to burn.

Spring is not only the turning of the year; it is the restoration of hope, the dawning of a new chance to be better than we have been, and hope is bought with sacrifice.  With blood on the snow, or fire in the straw.  He wants better for us, he wants us to burn brightly, and so he yearns for the flame.  When released from his temporary embodiments, he carries the darkness and debris of the dying year out of the world with him, and leaves us renewed, restored, ready to be more than we have been.

Weave him well, thank him for his service, and allow him to burn.

That is how we worship.  That is how we serve.

He got used to being treated as a cautionary tale a long time ago.

Every time a parent points to a sanitation worker, a janitor, a cafeteria lunch lady, a salesclerk with derision in their eyes and judgment in their hearts, he is there, standing between his faithful and the cruelty of the careless, trying to intercept and absorb the blow.  He can never take the hit completely, is too insubstantial in mortal eyes to protect them in full, but he does what he can to lessen the sting, to keep them from the inevitable realization of the fact that they are seen as less in the eyes of their fellows.

He is a god.  The best of humanity has always been forced into the lowest of positions, placed there by accident of birth, by gender, by the absence of connections, and he has been there from the beginning, since the first time someone laboring well below their capabilities wept to the heavens.  He’s had time to understand two great truths about the universe:

That without his faithful, the world would crumble into ruin.  There are no unskilled jobs, only jobs that people have chosen, for whatever reason, not to value.  Leave the garbage to pile up and the hospitals will be overwhelmed in weeks with all manner of disease—overwhelmed, and unable to provide aid, as their own waste will be swallowing them whole.  Leave the bottoms unwiped and watch the babies rot in their diapers, leave the burgers unflipped and watch the hungry mob lose all patience with the world.  No unimportant positions, no unimportant people.

And that humans, being hierarchal creatures, will reinvent the hierarchy of worthy and unworthy over and over again, despite the fact that it serves them poorly.  They will always push someone to the bottom to place themselves at the top.  And his faithful, being only mortal, will never have the time he’s had to find acceptance of their lot.  This will happen, over and over again, forever.

But he can shield them.  He can deflect.  And he can love them.

Sometimes education isn’t enough.  Sometimes you can study and study and try and try, and never quite cross the last bridge between where you are and your heart’s desire.

Sometimes you need to tell the perfect little lie to get there.

Once upon a time there was a small god of goldfinches named Yucan who wanted nothing more in the world than to be a god of toucans, to manifest himself as a big, beautiful, tropical bird that people would stop to ooo and ahh over when they saw it in the trees, something impressive.  It was a good thing to be a god of songbirds.  There weren’t as many of them as there had been before cats became quite so popular as house pets, and the ones remaining needed all the divine intervention they could get their wings on.  He appreciated their attention and their worship, but he wanted, so very badly, to be more than his nature was allowing him to be.

So he hatched, over the course of several slow decades, a plan, and one night, with no warning whatsoever, his faithful woke and found him gone.  He had abandoned his divine duties, flown the coop, left the nest, and no one could find a single feather left behind!  All the little birdies were distraught…but not for very long, as little birdies have short memories, and there were other gods of songbirds around to serve.  If it wasn’t quite the same, well, nothing ever is, not even following the same god from one day to another.  They adjusted.  They adapted.

And far away, a very small god with a very big dream put his plans into action. He donned a false face, he told everyone who met him that he was the god of endangered tropical birds, and if no one had ever seen him before, well, some of those birds were very endangered.  Deforestation and poaching, don’cha know?  So many dangers to evade.  So many fledglings to protect.  So he lied, and lied, and pretended, and did his best to live up to his own lies.  He protected those who came to him, he spread his wings over the nests of species unknown to science, and he tried, and he lied, and he tried.

Until one day, the mask would not come off when he went to go to nest.  One day, he noticed that his wingspan was greater, and he no longer heard the prayers of songbirds, but of the birds he had claimed…and of more than them. Of frightened high school drama students and would-be figure skaters, of novice computer programmers and new-made lawyers.

They had their own lies to tell.

And Yucan Tu would be with them every step along the way, singing goldfinch songs in their ears and spreading his wings to defend them from the risks of their own actions.

If she could make people understand one thing and one thing only, it would be this: that food has no moral value, and that anyone whose pantry can be considered “full” is a virtuous person in her eyes, regardless of whether that fullness is kale chips and quinoa or Girl Scout cookies and pre-mixed buttercream frosting.  She cares about the quality of the shelves, their fullness and fineness, not their contents or what the latest diet craze has to say about those contents.

If she could make people understand two things, it would be that a well-stocked, well-indexed pantry is a palace beyond price, a lofty cathedral filled with miracles waiting to be mixed.  Cakes to be baked, potatoes to be peeled, spices and seasonings over which people have so very often gone to war, ready to be sprinkled over meat or folded into casseroles.  Holes in the shelves are not to be borne; a regularly updated shopping list is worth a thousand impulse buys or once-a-year stocking runs.  Every household should, in her eyes, be able to shut its doors and sustain itself for as long as plausible.  She understands all too well that not everyone can afford the luxury of a proper pantry, and she weeps for those outside the warmth and light of her hearth, whose stomachs are too often empty, whose soups, when they exist at all, are too often unseasoned.

She would feed the world, given rice enough and time.

If she could make people understand three things, it would be that another cup of water can always be added to the pot, that one more potato can always be diced into the hash, that one more egg is not so great a sacrifice, for look, the poorest among her following understand these things, make their offerings both wise and wide, fill the bellies of those around them.  For even the fullest shelf will be empty in a moment if placed before the starving, and so she will accept no hunger among her faithful that could be filled, will believe no table full when a single plate more could be placed upon it.  There is always room to feed your fellows.

She was a god of harvest once, and plenty.  She still is.

It seems to be a season for discussing the ascended divine, those who were not gods but have had godhood thrust upon them.  Many are dismayed to realize that they have been pressed flat and reduced to a single aspect of their personality.  Perhaps large gods, gods of cosmic force and creation, can afford to be complicated, but small gods are like garlic presses.  They have been designed by the cosmos to serve a single purpose, and while they might fill that purpose very, very well, they can and will do little else.

Others are delighted.  And those who ascend while still among the living, who get to reap the benefits of both complexity and simplicity at the same time…those gods tend to be the most delighted of all.

Enter Uncle George, who is new to the pantheon, but has never been more needed.  He is an icon and an idea, and if it concerns him at times that he is also a living man, whose choices and actions in the world might impact his believers, he sets that concern aside in favor of admiring the beauty and bravery of his faithful.

He is with the frightened teen considering asking their crush to a school dance without knowing what the answer—or the consequences—might be.  He is with the suburban homemaker using mascara to create a five o’clock shadow that finally makes their reflection feel like an accurate representation of the self.  He is with the young and he is with the old and he is with the lonely and he is with the lost, and he is with everyone who needs him to whisper admiring words and grant them the bravery to be themselves in a world that seems so often intent on destroying anything it doesn’t understand.

He is not the living man, for all that they share a face, and the living man has depths that he will never know.  And honestly, he doesn’t mind.