alanajoli | Guest Blog: Fynn (excerpt from Mister God, This Is Anna)

I tried to find a good excerpt about thankfulness, but I didn't quite manage to come up with one. (I looked through a book by Deitrich Bonhoeffer, and funnily enough, the excerpt I ended up with is remarkably similar in theme to one I considered by him.) But I will say a few things I am thankful for in general: family, friends, a good work year, and especially that my little one on the way is healthy and just as she should be.

I'm also thankful to all the folks who have donated or made bids over at the

kickstart_tu auction, and hoping that it continues to get more folks visiting over the next week and change that we're running it!

One of the books that I've always appreciated for distilling thoughts about the nature of divinity and the human relationship to the divine is a very small memoir called Mister God, This Is Anna. It's mostly a view of "Mister God" through the perspective of a six-year-old girl, who shares her wisdom with the author, Fynn. It has the kind of feel-good nature that reminds me of Thanksgiving, so that's where today's excerpt is coming from. I hope all of my American readers had a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday, and all my international friends have many things to be thankful for, holiday or not.

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So far as Anna was concerned, being good, being generous, being kind, praying, and all that kind of stuff had very little to do with Mister God. They were, in the jargon of today, merely "spinoffs." This sort of thing was just "playing it safe," and Anna was going to have none of it. No! Religion was all about being like Mister God and it was here that things could get a little tough. The instructions weren't to be good and kind and loving, etc., and it therefore followed that you would be like Mister God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn't help but be good and kind and loving, could you?

"If you get like Mister God, you don't know what you are, do you?"

"Are what?" I questioned.

"Good and kind and loving."

This last comment was delivered in her throw-away tone of voice as if it were insignificant and irrelevant. I knew this one of old. Either you had to pretend it hadn't happened, or start asking questions. A moment or two of hesitation on my part as I watched the grin spread from her toes and explode in one short sharp hoot of mirth, and I realized that she had sprung the trap. She had something to say and had forced me into asking the question. If I hadn't done it then I would have had to sooner or later, so...

"OK, Tich. What's all this goodness and kindness and loving lark then?"

"Well," and the tone of her voice slid down the roller coaster of excitement, shot up the other side, and took off. "Well, if you think you are, you ain't."