WHAT COLOUR IS GOD?

It didn't take too long before a ruckus ensued and on my day off, it being a Sunday, sure enough that most difficult of questions came up at breakfast time. This called for a stiff cup of black coffee from Tim Horton's. You know it's going to be serious when I drink any kind of coffee, let alone black.

"O.K. I'm ready. What was it you were woofing about, Studmuffin?" Coffee mug on the table next to me is looking better all the time.

Laddie, "God." came the simple reply. "Have you ever seen him?"

"God? Seen God? Why on earth might you think I might have seen God?"

Laddie,"Well, I was thinking that since you know a lot of things about a lot of things, you would have met God by now." Odd supposition on all counts.

"Hmmm," scratching my forehead, "now let me see; first of all is there a God to begin with? I know that I often say things like, "God help me," "Oh my God," "Dear God" but that's more like a sneezing reaction and not an expression of belief. Some people use bad words. I don't know too many that I can use around the house. So either God is using me or I'm using God. It all pretty well works out pretty well in the end."

I stop, hesitate, take a long sip of tepid coffee. I'm stalling and I know it. I'll put it to you this way: "I'm not all that certain that I actually ever did buy into the God concept, not even as a small child. I hated going to church with all that incense stuff floating around my head in a swirl and listening to the priest from the pulpit telling us stories about how we were all going to be damned to hell if we played with the Protestant kids. My mother is going to hell? What kind of God is that? She's my Jewish mother. I had a lot of friends and I didn't know if they were Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. They were friends. We all played together after school in peace and harmony. Whoever this God was, I didn't much care for him."

Laddie,"Did that priest really say stuff like that in church?"

"As sure as I'm sitting here telling you, he did. And a lot worse. He said that we could only talk to the Catholic kids and the Protestant kids could only talk to the Protestant kids. Which left the Jewish kids, by whom we were surrounded on all sides of our house and who needed us on Fridays and Saturdays, right out in the cold. Where did they belong? Where were they going when they died?"

On Easter Sundays we all dressed up in our finest Sunday clothes, with white full length stockings, white patent leather shoes, white ruffled dresses with a different coloured ruffled pastel apron for each of us, white gloves, and straw sun hats to top up this vanilla ice cream sundae configuration, we walked arm in arm down the middle of the street singing at the top of our voices, "It's A Long, Long, Road A-Winding." We were all excited because Easter was a very special kind Sunday. The church was all pretty and full of whites and golds with baskets filled with flowers everywhere, and I didn't understand any of it at all. In fact, mostly I fell into a deep sleep until the priest mounted the pulpit and began to drone on about how that if we didn't all speak French we would lose our religion, and if we lost our religion we would lose our souls, and if we lost our souls then we would all be damned to hell for all of Eternity. By the time he got to the souls and hell for eternity part he was shouting it. And that scared me to death. So, no. I didn't like church, the priests, who always smelled like perfume and musty clothes anyway, or God. I had some serious reservations that any such God could exist, even if there was one. If I was going to see him it seemed to me that he would have shown himself right about the time those sermons were being drilled into our evil heads and saved us from going to hell, wouldn't you think?"

Big brown Wide Eyes accompanied by empty silence. A month of them before he spoke up again. Laddie, "Okay, let's skip that one if you don't mind. It sounds dreadful and scary and I can see you are upset about remembering that chapter."

Phew! Saved by the pulpit and a bunch of palm fonds and musty smelling clothes and fire and brimstone. I lean over and take my now cold coffee, my quarter eaten sesame seed bagel from St. Urbain's Bagel Factory, and move everything to my office. I'll go work on my book that my publisher is waiting for. I boot up the computer, find my manuscript, wolf down a bit more of the bagel and swallow a gulp of cold coffee. Pull out my lined yellow legal size pad, and a ballpoint pen. Perfect. No more nagging questions. Nothing but silence. Almost.

Not ten minutes later I hear the door behind me open and the click, click, click, the sounds of toe nails along the bare floor. The sound is coming closer. I pay no attention. If I don't look and keep my head down, I won't notice anything. Good. There's a little tug on my slacks. I ignore it. A few seconds later, two tugs. Never mind, I decide, 'It' will go away. A good yank on the sleeve of my shirt and suddenly my air compressed chair swings around and Big Eyes is standing there in front of me with a puzzled look on his face. Definitely that question mark look.

"Yesssss...," I exhale dragging on the "esses". "What is it this time?"

Laddie, "Well, I was thinking that you would be able to tell me, if God exists, what colour is he?" Big Eyes staring into squinty eyes. Mine.

I laugh. "You serious?" I'm hoping not. I laugh again.

Laddie, "I really want to know. What colour is God?" It's serious.

Without taking another breath, I spurted out, "Mercy me, God is very, very pale."

Laddie, "Pale? Why do you say he's pale? Pale isn't a colour, is it?"

"It is if you are God," I respond optimistically. Time for an explanation and this one had better be convincing.

"Just think of God for a minute. We are told that he is way up there beyond the clouds, beyond the planets, beyond the milky way, beyond anything we can even begin to imagine. There is no sun beyond imagination. So, yes. He's has to be very very pale after all this time. He never gets any sun."

Laddie, "Ohhhh," click, click, click toe nails across the bare floor, I hear the sound of the door behind my back gently closing as quickly as this topic has been brought to a conclusion. At least for now.