Our God is kind, and our God is generous; not like the Gods of our neighbours who are capricious, cruel or simply distant and uncaring. Ours loves us deeply and makes us prosper. It finds the sunlight to help our crops grow strong and the rain to keep them green. It keeps us away from danger and seeks warmth in the depths of winter so we don’t freeze. Truly we are a lucky people. When I look out over the fields and orchards of our God, I try to remember this.
That isn’t to say we never suffer hardship. Far from it! We still starve and we still freeze and - yes - from time to time we kill and are killed. When our God took us into the locust-ridden badlands in the days when my grandmother was a child, we suffered until God made it to the other side. When our God took us into the desert and our tongues dried in our mouths because there was no water to drink, we suffered until God found rain.
God knows this. God weeps with us. But without hardship, we wouldn’t be strong, like a limb left to atrophy. We are all agents of God, and by exercising us we make it stronger. And so does hardship show us the depths of God’s love for us.
And our God, like us, endures. When in the crystal mountains the nameless shrieking Gods made war on us we fought alongside our God and drove them off. As they flew away we saw their people looking through their God’s feathers at us, wide-eyed and in fear at the power of our God. Some felt pity for them or saw their humanity, but it’s important not to empathise overmuch with the people of savage Gods, who are unpredictable and cannot be reasoned with.
Our God is also mightier than anyone else’s God. Heathen philosophers write extensively on this topic, trying to find ways to bend their cosmologies to imply that size doesn’t matter, or something similarly contrived. The blind ascetics of the Scaled God Kkarloffk (who put out their own eyes with needles that they might better feel the blood pounding through their God’s veins beneath their feet) say that a God’s might is measured not in cubits but in “vigour” - so is their theological word translated into our tongue. So, they say, their God - who slithers across the savannah at breakneck speed - is mightier than our slow, patient, kind God, despite ours being at the most conservative estimate five times their in extent and a hundred times in weight.
I’m not telling you these things to test your faith. I know you know those blind monks are off their rocker, clinging to a vestige of a promise that their God is the greatest in the world. I just want to show you some of the ways that foreigners’ worlds differ from ours, to make you wary and to help you shield your ears against their natterings.
Take for instance the people of the twin Green Island Gods, Lua and Luo. For five years they sit in the shallow waters and bask in the sunlight. They eat mangoes with the juice dripping right down their chins. I hear their Gods are places of wonder, art and culture, and they make such sweet music. During this time the people in the streets proclaim aloud how much they love their two Gods (though that doesn’t preclude the people of Lua occasionally making war on the people of Luo, or vice versa, for who is more prone to insult than one’s sibling?).
But then the Gods start to rumble and the people know their pleasant days are at an end. Any weapons are hastily cast aside. They hurry to store food in great warehouses. Wives and husbands who married across the divide say their tearful farewells and withdraw to their home Gods, for while marriage is blessed, home is sacred. The people bring forth from safekeeping the great Domes which for five years they have hidden under God’s belly. Long ago these were made from hemp woven upon itself many times over and over and sealed with whale fat, but now they use a composite of palm heart, molten sand and the spit of a type of crab that they farm in large numbers and hold in high regard. These Domes they fix into place on their Gods’ backs, hammering the fixers into the keratin earth with infinite gentleness. Then they seal the seams with the sacred fat cut with terrible care from the back of God itself, traditionally also mixed with the blood of the priest holding the knife, so God knows people are doing this not out of hatred but out of love.
Once the final seal has been made the only light that is to be had is that which filters through the composite, which is dim and green like sunbeams through a mangrove swamp. In the hemp era, no light was to be had at all, because of course fire is forbidden at all costs (to save air). During this time the people would forget what sunlight looked like and emerge afterwards totally blind, and only the bravest would be able to teach themselves again how to see.
So do the people of Luo and Lua seal themselves off from the sunlight a week or more before; but they’re usually bang on schedule, because after the last Dome is affixed God dives. Luo usually dives first, but this can’t be relied upon. The initial movements are sudden, violent, as the Gods wrest themselves from the sandbanks and prise themselves free of any foliage that has grown up around them in the preceding five years. During this time many people may die, especially the young who may not remember the last dive and underestimate the power of a God. Poorly built houses will collapse and the foundations of the well-built ones will be tested. Then, having lifted themselves from the sand, the God will slip under the surface and dive, propelling itself and its people deep beneath the ocean with immense divine fins. The light will fade and only the shadowed silhouettes of great fish will be seen through the Domes, occluding the sun, impossible to guess at their size. (Some say these fish are young, rival Gods, but this is generally regarded a heresy.)
The Green Island Gods will ascend and descend many times, but will not surface for another three years. During this time their people wait with baited breath. Suspicion plagues the minds of many, and often neighbours turn on each other. After all, there’s only so much food to eat.
The Domes cleanly compartmentalise island society. On the back of Luo and Lua are many domes, not just one. Those who live in the middle are surrounded on all sides by other Domes, so the consequences of a breach are much diminished - indeed, they are designed to open on demand to allow egress or ingress. Here live the most affluent and powerful of island society. On the outskirts, however, a Dome might be almost entirely exposed to the ocean. Here a breach of any sort would be catastrophic and would result in the deaths of all who lived within. Such events happen relatively commonly; there has never yet been a dive in which no Dome has broken. Consequently, only the poorest live in shanty towns, and the doors between Domes open only rarely.
Yet the people of Lua and Luo hold their heads high. Their Gods bring them five years of sweetness, they say. Three years of hardship is a price worth paying. There is a saying from the islands which says, for ten years of dive, even ten minutes of sweet sunshine that my God gave me would be enough.
Sweetness aside, I cannot imagine that any God who loved its people as ours does would put them through such misery. Either the Gods Luo and Lua are cruel, or they are uncaring. Opinions differ as to which is worse.
Our God, on the other hand, loves us and tends to us as we tend to the gardens in which we grow food upon its back. In ancient times, after the End, when life on the ground became impossible, our God extended its claw to us that we might live upon its body and thrive. In exchange it asked only for our devotion, which we give willingly, for we are still indebted. So on this day, as you prepare to venture out from God to alien places, to see other Gods and bring back things which will enrich us, remember the love of the God who gave you life, and return safely home.