Conversation With God

If time can fly, then why can’t it stand still?

CAPPY: Hey God, I know it’s been a while since we talked, but I just don’t have the time these days. Can you give me a few more hours each day? I'm a good person. I pay bills, do laundry, buy groceries, cook meals, go to church. I even visit Aunt Gertrude every year on her birthday and she can’t stand the sight of me. If I had an extra hour or so I'd have time to write. And pray.

GOD: Hold on, Cap! For years you’ve talked about allowing your creative juices to flow on paper like milk and honey. I recall your vow to knock out a novel every year. So what happened?

CAPPY: Life happened, God! Husband; children. Stuff.

GOD: But your grown son has a hairline like the coast of Florida and your daughter's middle-age spread is the size of Oklahoma. Why didn’t you set the publishing world on fire once your responsibilities had dwindled?

CAPPY: I don’t know. Every day when I wake up I promise myself to type my fingers to the bone.

GOD: And?

CAPPY: Duh! Stuff happens. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding the cat and paying bills. I'm too tired to think after that. I can't write if I can't think.

GOD: People generally do what they want to do.

CAPPY: No, they don't.

GOD: Don’t contradict Me. I’m God.

CAPPY: Writers are natural procrastinators. 

GOD: Nonsense. NOT writing is so NOT an option if you want to be a successful writer. Make it happen. Time equals energy and energy is a commodity. Burn it up with excuses or redirect it. Your choice.  Create space and your dream will become a reality.

CAPPY: I just asked for a few more hours, God, not a lesson in quantum physics. Creating space where there is none might work for You, but it won't work for me.

GOD: And just why not?

CAPPY: Because nobody takes me seriously. 

GOD: Then take yourself seriously, Cap.

CAPPY: Huh! If my husband comes home from playing duplicate bridge and finds me writing, I know what’ll happen.

GOD: What?

CAPPY: He'll say, What's for dinner? I'll say, There is no dinner because I didn't cook. He’ll say, Why not, and I’ll say, Because I was too busy taking myself seriously and you need to take me seriously, too.

GOD: Sounds about right to me.

CAPPY: Not gonna happen.

GOD: Okay, here’s the plan. One day a week, do everything that you think will prevent you from writing.

CAPPY: Like what?

GOD: Hello?! Like cooking?

CAPPY: YOU designed us with a built-in eating schedule. i.e., three meals a day, 24-7. Once a week ain't gonna cut it at my house, Boss.

GOD: (Sigh) So use the creative juices I gave you when you sucked air for the first time. Spaghetti. Soup. Casseroles.

CAPPY: My family won’t eat casseroles.

GOD: Then buy some TV Dinners. I gave the world the microwave, didn't I?

CAPPY: I told you ... it won’t work.

GOD: And I told YOU not to contradict me. I’m God. I know these things.

CAPPY: Even doing it Your way, I still don't have enough time in the day. 

GOD: Then get organized, Cappy. I hatched up a little something with the Pope called the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 A.D. Get yourself one.

CAPPY: Something that old won’t help me. It's the Twenty-first Century, for heaven's sake.

GOD: (sigh) I KNOW what year it is. Just get a calendar, Cappy. If you let busy work overwhelm you, the only thing you'll ever write is a grocery list.

CAPPY: But, God, I'm only one person, and ...

GOD: Waaaa! Waaaa! Waaaa! It looks to me like my work is done here.

CAPPY: But wait! You said you'd give me more hours.

GOD: (sigh) Listen up, Miss Priss. If I made more hours in the day, the Gregorians would be protest chanting till Doomsday. I told you how to create more time for yourself. I’m not going to do for you what you are perfectly capable of doing for yourself. 

CAPPY: But you don’t understand. My life is not my own. All this stuff keeps getting in the way of doing what I really want to do.

GOD: Goodness gracious! Would you look at the time? Gotta run. I need to help a promising mystery writer who is trying to cope with the Freytag pyramid–Denouement and that sort of thing. Time to say Amen, Cap.

CAPPY: Amen? But … but…