Tuesday, March 13, 2007

'God's No Puritan'

In a comment to my previous post, Dafath wrote,

"God, you know, was no Puritan."

Presumably, Dafath would be willing to recast that sentence into the present tense or future tense. By Puritan I assume he's referring to the legalistic, "pure," and precise "godliness" of those in the 1560s and beyond who claimed a pure and unadulterated holiness. (I don't want to engage in theological debate, but I will say that despite its flaws, Wikipedia is enlightening, entertaining, and exhaustive [note serial comma] in its entry for this word.)

Today I witnessed natural evidence of the "God is no Puritan" view.

Snowmelt.

With temperatures reaching into the sixties (Fahrenheit), Old Man Winter shed a ragged coat of snow, leaving torn and tattered shreds of dirt-speckled icemelt. Sidewalks arose like volcanic islands out between snowbanks. Yesterday we had maybe 18 inches of snow in most places; it's down to 8 to 10 inches in most spots today. It's an untidy mess, it is. Snow pockmarked with decaying dogshit, candy wrappers, lost newspapers never delivered, branches, last fall's dead leaves. Gone is the pristine blanket that quiets the night and day equally (of merely days ago!). Where does this dirt like pepper mixed into a bowl of salt come from? It looks as if it's been raining detritus, dust, and black dandruff against the formerly alabaster melting surface. Mud percolates under it all awaiting our shoes (and dog's paws) to track into the house.

But wait.

The forecast is for rain in the next few days.

The tainted snow needs a good washing . . .

. . . in advance of the snow predicted for this weekend.


As Soren Kierkegaard might say,


Either/Or.

Either snow or rain, either winter or spring, but both and all?!


5 comments:

Dafath said...

the door to the future is open
so who knows what god will be
(the future is in fact not a tense, but a voice or a mood...a wish, a hope, a prayer, a curse, but not a tense)
but yes, the sentence is miswritten--
god is no puritan
and that is meant in any denotation or connotation of the word puritan

...

Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain and fall of dew
...
Glorify the Lord, O chill and cold,
drops of dew and flakes of snow

Jay said...

I read god's biography last year, and I think he would agree about the puritan comment.

Glamourpuss said...

Being a woman, God somethimes ahs trouble making up her mind. Bear with her - when she's ready to make a decision about season's, she will.

Puss

azgoddess said...

ahh mother nature...she's a fickle kind-a filly...son't you just love her though?

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