After Our Likeness
Caleb Coy
Here we reached a place where we were let down by God—we were let down by the essence of God, not just how he ran things. In our sincerity we busied ourselves with fabricating a new worshipful deity, sculpting its charismatic charm. We started with fresh, yet cumbersome names like Esherith, Fiurtoss, Defescon, or Scralgem. With jubilation we offered hasty pledges from pliant tongues, our prayers directed first at the ceiling, the floor, the walls, fixtures, shrubs, the sun, our own veined eyelids.
We held a bake sale to garner funds. We were the custodians of a new pulse fitted to the universe. We dealt mostly in peach pies, raisin cookies, and chocolate scones. Our prices were not fair to our cause. We were not a charity case, after all. Eventually someone would approach us asking about our faith. We printed pamphlets tailored against the common derision, obvious and loud. If casual passers-by merely opened their eyes, they would latch on to a truth more palatable even than coconut macaroons.
We disdained traditional and reformed practices: spoon-fed vocabulary, icons, meditation videos, emblematic gestures. No parroted prayer ever resonated well with us. But having a good sign-off like “A-men” or “Namaste” was holy to us. Preceding them, any and every utterance was a monumental sacred text, stained on papyrus permanently. Religion—we didn’t mind calling it that—was forming itself. We were listening. God was a fleshly thing, too, and had the same base desires as these gelatinous bastards poking around. We whipped ourselves up to hunger for oracles, the lot of us monitored one another's pronouncements for points of ecstatic revelation, as a new lover might enlist foreplay to guarantee the rising of hairs on the arm of their partner. Pronouncements such as “None can kiss the toes of God and keep silent” brought us to full applause. We’d get high on these maxims in the hot tub. Likewise, it was unanimous that faith in this God was paramount in solving the plague of world hunger, for instance, if only people could be made to believe. It was impossible. The world governments hosted too many beliefs.
Now we didn’t suppose for one minute that we weren’t total clods. Being the inventors of God meant precisely that we were children, immature, undeveloped, riding on the tailcoats of our forefathers. Only we knew our God the way we did, and so we grew fat or lean at our, and therefore his, singular whim. To prevent all-out trepidation, we illustrated our affairs with the holy in erasable media and scribbled them out when the thrill subsided. Littered among library scraps for catalogued cults and directories for the tax exempt is where our composed verses were destined. As for our sacred text? Our Bible? Our Bhagavad Gita? Society wasn’t ready to see it, and neither were we, so we didn’t churn one out. That may have been our one regret, and we were embarrassed to have not done it. We jotted down a few outlines here and there, but we didn’t want to admit how scared we were of committing to something so monolithic yet open to interpretation. I will say that we had the title fairly narrowed down: In lieu of the typical “Book of Ways” or “Sacred Writings,” we were either going to call it Like Grey-Bearded Monks We Think We Know Devotion or From Above the Pottery Wheel the Sustainer Dribbles Forth.
Some ancients fashioned gods after bulls or eagles—We worshipped a God deliberately fashioned after our likeness. Pardon our monotheism. He or she appeared in forms varied and surprising we concluded, and miraculously got a lot done. We were humbled to hear of his tacky wardrobe and popularity at Seven-Elevens and Chinese buffets. Our new God gracing the rearview mirror of taxis! In some locations we knew his worship would be banned, so for posterity’s sake we refrained from sticking to just one recognizable symbol. The growth of our movement was to us like a propaganda film animation of an advancing invasion, a red burst stretching itself over the continent with the strategic reach of arching arrows.
God after our likeness had no commandments, no teachings, made no appointments to meet him on this mountain or under that bridge. He wasn’t picky about foods offered to him, he dealt with no favorites, and he was not the God of just one trade. His official website had as much to say about him as an accidental fossil find twenty minutes in: It wasn’t made by anyone who was an expert on him. His Wikipedia page underwent continual editing as he was confused with other gods associated only by name and some totem discovered under some vines somewhere. Our God after our likeness was himself the vine and the branches also, oblivious to how we may have tried to sequester him to a mosque or shrine to be visited or neglected. We designed a kind of garb to wear for ceremonies once, hung up in a closet until it was cleaned out and probably wound up being used for a community theater, a men’s bathrobe with a top hat, a sort of collar, and a pouch on the side.
At the very park where we shared our first celebratory feast, we disciples went nuts over roleplaying the worship of our God, first with incense and dancing in the deep well of night. We’d grab the cute rodents from one another’s grasp to sacrifice them by suffocation with our own hands, so it meant more. We’d graduate to large birds, furry quadrupeds, catfish and cross foxes, devouring every scrap in a common meal. God was wiping his mouth and burping, this we knew. Or imagined. In all honesty, the lot of us were approaching an oath to cast lots for who would embody our God in our likeness, channel him tangibly, render him in our midst more manifest, prop him up to his rightful majesty and proclaim our basic loyalty. Every follower was a worthy candidate for the incarnation. Would the selected create something? Would he paint a masterpiece or make love? He would have coffee with us, we hoped. If he dwelled in the flesh he could use a coffee. He wouldn’t say no to a robust coffee. Our supreme being, according to the drawing of straws (or rather the rolling of dice), had taken the form of none other than Harrison, who grew up just down the street from us, and who we’d had a few beers with from time to time. (We saw one another’s shoulders sink when we found it was him, but it may have just been disappointment that it wasn’t us.) The brief ceremony revealed our imminent one to be a ferry operator whose vessel happened to be slapped with the moniker Green Lass. How ethnocentric of God to be so Anglo Saxon, and how poetic—mythic, even—for him to have a boat and a river all his own! Thus it happened and we all pervertedly whispered that we all wanted to ride the Green Lass and share in the splendor of the divine.
We put together a media package for his tour on our plane of existence. Nothing elaborate, just nebulous enough to not be judged or attract unnecessary attention. Bursts of messages like “he’s coming soon,” “be prepared,” “touch the hem of his garment, so to speak.” The moment of his incarnation we dreaded like a tropical storm, and while most of us had known Harrison for years we were sweating at the thought of what he would be like as an embodiment of the divine. Our forks trembled at breakfast. On this day of direct appearance, beneath a sun kissed canopy of white and blue, our caravan reached the designated public square outside a YMCA. “This is where God after our likeness will come into the world,” we told ourselves in long exhales. We felt he was already there. Harrison was in a van parked somewhere with a pair of binoculars, we reasoned, waiting for the appointed hour. We staked out the plaza an hour early with hot dogs and falafel dripping from the corners of our mouths. His distant surveillance already made us self-conscious of the way we stood, ate, and talked. Our pulses quickened.
Getting fidgety, one of us piped up. “When he arrives, who is supposed to speak first?”
“He is,” one of us answered.
“So, should we all remain silent, or should we ask him a bunch of questions, or what?”
“I’d say when he finishes orating he’ll probably take questions.”
Into the plaza pulled a police squad car and a news van, obligatory for a happening such as this. A petite newswoman and her stout cameraman exited the van. Next came the thick-armed cop in his early forties, carrying authority. Sensing the necessity of impromptu apologetics, one of us said, “Would you like to see our permit of assembly, sir?”
Hands on hips, he seemed to tilt so the sun would glint off his badge. “Here to keep the peace. Are you all going to do something nuts here today?”
“No,” we said. “We are merely waiting for an arrival. I’m sure you’ve heard the news.”
“I saw the flyers. Inquiring minds want to know what you all have planned.”
“Only to see the face of God after our likeness.”
“So you’re going to be one of those groups.”
“We take offense to your nondescript connotation.”
The newswoman pelted us with her microphone, her questions bordering on equally as besieging as the cop’s.
He was on time, God after our likeness, strutting stiffly to cover the shriveled and calculating soul we knew. He wore a white tank top and black cargo pants frayed at the bottom like tassels. Blue Tivas. Wavy hair, combed back. Eyes wide and fixated on the news camera. They darted to the tense policeman, then back to the camera.
We groveled, having not even planned it thoroughly, prostrate on the pavement, our postures cuneiform of nothing to the one true God after our image. We wanted to show indisputably that we were humbled to breathe the same air he exhaled. Our God nodded his head and licked his lips. The newswoman’s jaw dropped. The lawman’s mouth burped a gasp of disbelief.
“Who are my servants?” said our God, as if rehearsed.
Some of us said “I am,” some of us said “we are.” Semantics, really.
In the silence the newswoman said, “His followers seem drawn to him as if to present themselves as an offering.” We admired her tenacious prose.
“You are God in our likeness,” I praised. “The one and only. You have many names, and many forms, and this is one.” I wanted to be specific and not assault the world with esoteric gossip indicating Harrison as the finite shape.
“I didn’t make any of you,” he responded.
“Not this version of you,” one of us retorted. Now was not the time for him to play humble.
“I don’t have any laws or anything,” he said.
“Just make us yours,” we said.
He checked his pockets. “What time is it?”
“One fifteen.”
“I’m getting kind of hungry.”
His demands were tentative, languorous, uttered like a working patient after surgery. We grasped at the hidden wisdom of the conversation. He was urging the sublime under the mundane. He was also new to this. There was a lot of pressure on him.
“We will bring you anything, at any cost.”
“So the last thing I want is to be a burden, but I always wanted to try this one place.”
“We’ll pay,” we said.
He winced. “It’s expensive. I don’t eat out much. Plus, the way my body responds to that which has gluten, my intake has to be selective.”
We cringed in displeasure, fearing privately how our diets may respectfully require mirroring his. He was not a god of wheat offerings.
We did lunch. We ordered one of everything, quite eagerly, and passed our plates around, each going to him first. He tried most everything, except that which had gluten. There wasn’t much to ask him, for he chowed friskily and we anxiously leaned in wait for his approval, as if we had made the meal ourselves. The badge and anchor had abandoned us at this point.
“Thank you all,” said Harrison. “I have to return to my shift in a bit here.” Some of us thought he said “ship,” which would have also been true.
“We’d love to go with you,” we said.
“I can’t give you a free ride. You still have to pay. All of you. You’ve already done so much today. It was very charitable.”
“Anything for you,” we said.
The eyes of the God after our likeness glazed with awe, and his voice surrendered to a higher pitch. “That would be appeasing.”
“What will we do when we arrive on the other side?” one of us asked.
“I will show you the way across.”
God after our likeness left us to pay for the check, which we in concord split between us evenly, and he proceeded to depart for a time, his gait charged to a nervous wakefulness by communion with his disciples.
At the table we bristled with elation, exchanging glances with each other and at the residue on our plates that was proof of our first divine meal.
Harrison was an odd pick, this we knew. He would carry around this very expensive hemorrhoid ointment and excuse himself at random moments, as he did once during this meal. We just figured there would be a richer mythos than that. We wondered if he would busy himself much differently now.
“He’s the living God in the flesh made after our likeness,” we reminded ourselves.
“Are you concerned about trivializing religion for the millions of Americans who devoutly belong to one?” the reporter had asked.
“This isn’t a parody religion,” we’d responded.
We marched over to the ferry’s listless dock, ignoring the alarm of the ticket booth woman. Our God after our likeness was patrolling the Green Lass with a checklist, but soon disappeared into the bridge, professionally unfazed by our arrival. Mute with the anxiety of departure like sheep in a corral we bottlenecked ourselves on board and leaned over the rails. The bobbing water looked so normal, its rhythm deceitfully zen-like.
“All passengers please step away from the gate as we prepare to depart,” the God said over the intercom, and we scribbled down his every word as a gospel with interpretive implications.
Our God steered the Green Lass from his shielded deck. We crowded out in front so that he could see us from his small box. The engine growled, the horn sounded. The air was slightly moist and smelled of discarded filth. Our God turned on the intercom and let it play silence for a minute. “We—” he began, then said “I—”
After unfolding his tongue, he said, “We will arrive on the other side in ten minutes.” With gritty finality he spoke, apocalyptic potential erupting from the worn speakers. Our trip had now assumed the mood of a historical era coming to an end, a flag being pulled down, a tower about to collapse.
“Where are you taking us?” one of us bravely asked, tapping on the glass of the bridge.
“The destination is the same as ever,” he said through the intercom.
“We want to know if you ask anything of us!” our messenger shouted through the glass of the bridge door.
“For me personally or for the world?” We couldn’t see his face well through the glass above us.
“We want to appease you.”
“Is that what you really want?”
My shirt felt tight against my chest like it was concealing some inner secret I wanted to let out on this ferry, in this crowd, before the eyes of this ferry master. We were being transported to another plane.
“What are we supposed to do?” one of us blurted out, and either the message was relayed or our God had read it on their lips.
He said, almost bitterly, “I don’t know. Whatever the hell you want.”
A stark chain of eye contact stretched between all of us. We knew what our God had done. He was abdicating his place to us, yielding his chair. It seemed we were at an inevitable impasse, seemed we had arrested his capacity for romping in our adoration. I asked myself what I would have wanted were I in his place, and I asked myself how I could arrive at the truth of it the same way I began on the road that led here. This might have been why I was the first to act.
I removed my shirt, shoes, every layer and accessory until I was fully bare. Everyone was bound to follow me anyway, for no matter what else they thought to do, I had won a contest in symbolism with my exposure. I could not decipher whether I was a leader or a follower, and my act of self-discovery was an act of definition. Our God scanned his people. His hand was to the window now and our imperfect nakedness was interposed over his face so that I would never again picture his face without our naked bodies standing over our clothes. Our God blushed.
Our God handed us the wheel. He exited the bridge, weary of a heavy toll, grabbing for himself a lifejacket. He leaped off the side of his ship. I wanted to steel myself and join him, but felt instead that it would be an insult to myself, and him, if I were to turn down the call of the wheel. The God who had forged us now adrift in the river and I, who had raised him up, now his imprint. The two hands that hours ago were venerating my God now gripped the wheel of his hulking ferry populated by his, and now my, followers.
Not much unfolded in the next few minutes beyond the engine tugging us along. I watched everyone confused and braving the breeze in the nude, awaiting some rapture, or enduring one already come upon them. Fully aware, immediately, the burden of being God in your own likeness. How taxing it becomes. I closed my eyes. My clothes were possibly blowing away somewhere. He hadn’t asked much of us, and yet demanded everything.
I would not hold it against him. I admitted his weakness. Knowing that the police and a news chopper would soon be on their way, I admitted that I too felt scared, self-conscious, and hungry. Harrison had feared the same mutiny he, we all, had committed. I understood like a simple lesson how easy it is to make God after our likeness. The burden becomes an excuse to steer anything anywhere, simply because. Here I was, naked as all of us, and I’d thought I would be unashamed this time. This is what gods do, is it not? At the wheel I understood the expectation I knew he must have had, the same fundamental decency that told me the passengers of the Green Lass would just maybe incur a terrible wrath, and why, as will probably be explained to the police and the media later, I now feel so hungry to steer the boat into the rocks and visit upon us everything we deserve.
