My Old Man

Sunday, June 01, 2008

I wrote the Bible once. Looked down at that damn book and copied every word I read. I said I wrote the Bible and I mean it. And if you think God wrote the Bible, you wrong. Man wrote it down like that and it never had to be done by God cause a man had some paper and indigo or something and set man to do it.

I'm not the author, nothing. I said for God to Damn something and the teacher she says go on copy that Bible til my finger fall off. Hey, I had a plan and I left school that day and told myself the only way I'm gonna fix what I done is to do what teacher say and copy the whole damn Bible and that'd make no school for me anymore, right? So I did it.

It took me half my life with pasting pages and fixing spelling and getting a dictionary and I found out one thing. A man can write the Bible with his own hands in maybe a half a life if you figure a life at eighty years, and given time for meals and sleep and paying the bills which somehow always got paid, and I ain't so sure it was all on the level but I come out of writing that damn Bible owing nobody nothing except a few thank yous for a glass of water here and there and food and such.

This whole world kept on going while I did my work and I heard of wars and killings and gangs. Some group of kids get drugs and a few guns and a city stands still for a bit, just as I finished. I worked hard to write this Bible the right way on good paper with my best script, and when my hand hurt sometimes I'd just stop and run some cold water over it. Then I'd get going again.

Hell, it was work and I'm a good Christian man, but I made some mistakes and learned writing the Good Word the hard way. Oh, I'll tell you. I learned them names and numbers and the peoples and the songs and the praises and the Prophets and a Temple where Lord lived and died and lived again and then left, saying he coming back someday soon. Sometimes the stories make me so mad at God and He the One created me and I'm so confused as to why He has to hurt us so bad to see if we love Him, but that's a mean old thought you shouldn't think about your Lord.

I wrote down every sin God seen his people do and sometimes I start crying cause I don't know any better way to live than this. I ask Him take away all the sin and I give up all my wants and lets all be friends, but the Bible it keeps saying we're bad and, oh, how we can't see what we do to one another. There's wars and killings and false promises. There's so much hurt in that Book I nearly died of sadness at how hard we all are to ourselves.

But there's this one part I really liked which made the whole damn thing work and it's at the worst part when the poor Son is dying and his mama's watching him and he tells her to look at her new son and this boy he tells him that now he's got a mama because the Son is dying and I stopped writing at that moment.

I think.

Jesus dying, gives his mama a new son and his young friend a new mama.

I tell you, I finished writing that Bible with my own hand but I was sure I understood something that I might have missed if I didn't take my teacher so literal. That Man's last concern was for his mama and his friend, maybe his brother. That's when it got to me that man HAD to be God.

Yeah. I finished writing that Bible by hand, and I ain't seen much of what others got to see while living, but maybe I got something for my trouble that they might have missed.