Monday Rewrite A woman went walking in her dreams one night, and suddenly growing wings she was able to fly over the gulf between earth and heaven. She found herself landing on a desert road, and walking on, it wasn’t long before she spotted a crooked figure, an old man with a big stick. Every so often he would jab his gnarled stick into the dirty earth and lightning bolts would flash from it.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
He smiled a gap-toothed grin, but there was little warmth in it. ‘I’m God,’ he said.
‘So… is this heaven?’ she asked.
‘Who said you had the right to come into heaven?’ he replied.
‘Well, I… I don’t know…’ she replied. ‘I just assumed…’
‘Oh did you now?’ snapped the man. ‘Well move a little to your left will you?’
She did and the old man waved his stick at the gap over her left shoulder. Thunder cracked and a lightning bolt flew past her. She turned to see a town on fire in the distance.
‘You did that?’ she asked, terror creeping through her soul.
He shrugged and grunted. Then he turned and waved his stick in the other direction. A dark cloud moved into view over a nearby city. And the rains came. In no time at all the floods had risen and the city was clearly entering a time of great distress.
‘You know – you’re just the way I thought you’d be,’ she said.
‘Really?’ he said, and he held her gaze with his as he began to melt before her eyes. Before long he was little more than a pile of clothes on the floor. Imagining some kind of magic trick she crept forward and kicked at the pile.
‘What are you doing that for?’ said a voice.
She spun round, there was a gardener, in a patch of garden nearby. She’d not noticed him before. He smiled and there was warmth in his eyes.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Who d’you think I might be?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Can you help me? I seem to be lost.’
‘I’ll show you the way home,’ the man said. ‘I’ll show you other good things too.’
The gardener laid down his hoe and they began walking together.
‘Who was he?’ the woman asked, as they passed the pile of old clothes.
‘Oh him? That was God,’ said the gardener. ‘Well, to be accurate, the God you made up. The one who turned out to be just the way you expected.’
‘And you?’ she asked.
He gave an enigmatic smile. ‘I’m the one who won’t turn out to be the God you expect.’
And they walked on…
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