"God Went to Beauty School"

I read a book written by Cynthia Rylant, called "God went to beauty school"... It's a book consists of short poems, telling the reader how if God were living on earth.. The titles were so fascinating, like "God saw a movie" and "God went rollerblading". I liked the last one called "God died". This is it:

Sort of.
It's a long story.
But if you have time...
Okay-
God has been God for so long
even He doesn't have a clue where He came from.
FOr a while He wasn't even sure He was God,
until everything He said or thought or wanted to happen
happened.
That was a big tip-off.
So He didn't remember
where He came from
or why.
He just knew what He could do.
Oh, He wanted to be VERY careful with this.
This could be good.
This could be the biggest thing in the universe.
He just to be a really tip-top God.
Somebody who made no mistakes.
Who didn't show up late for work.
Who competed only against Himself.
He could do this.
He was God.
So He thought about everything
for a really really
really really really
long time.
Then He opened His mouth and said,
"Let There Be Light."
And it was so.
Good, said God.
And after that
no one could stop Him.
He said, "Let There Be"
a billion trillion zillion
times and when He was finished,
there were so many new things,
even He didn't know
what some of them were.
(Like grapefruit spoons.)
But it was all Good.
Really good, said God.

Then who knows what went wrong,
but one morning God woke up
and His right-hand angel
at the time (Sheila)
said, "You know those two brothers?
One just killed the other."
God could not believe this.
He could not believe this.
(It should be mentioned that this was way before Lucy
relocated to more southern regions.)
God, in fact,
did not even know exactly
what "killed" meant,
until Sheila explained it
very carefully to Him.
Even then, He had
to see for Himself.
And there He saw that boy-Abel was his name-
covered with blood
and not a hint of life in him.
Not a whiff.
God wanted to start all over again,
from scratch.
Make it so nothing in this world
could be "killed."
But Sheila said,
"You can't start over.
You'd have to kill everything to start over."
God hadn't considered this.
God lived purely in the moment
so He wasn't the greatest long-range planner.
But He stopped and thought about
what Sheila said,
and though there were some things
He could probably kill
and feel pretty okay about it
(He wasn't all that attached to the chicken pox virus for example),
there were other things
He could not ever let go.
Sea turtles, for one.
Spiders, for another.
Too beautiful, too beautiful,
He said.

What to do?
Od was like anybody else.
Everything was the first time for Him, too.
He didn't mean to make
what happened between Abel and his brother
happen.
He thought they'd be good buddies.
Like ducks.
Hadn't they learned
anything from ducks?
Apparently not.
God was stricken.
He did not know what to do.
If He left things as they were,
there was bound to be
more killing.
Could He bear this?
God's blood was love.
His bones were love.
His eyes, His heart,
His kidneys were love.
He didn't know
what He's done wrong
that caused a thing-the other brother-
to be born
without love.
A thing
that came from Him.
He asked Sheila
what she thought
He should do,
now that killing
was a part of things.
And Sheila said, "Die."
Just like that.
Sheila had always been
a very smart girl.

So the story goes
that God took on
the blood, the bones,
the eyes, the heart,
the kidneys of a man.
And He made real friends.
And He loved a real family.
And He prayed real prayers.
He didn't go unnoticed.
Ever after, religions were made
that insisted that God
had been this guy or that guy
or the other.
But one thing happened
for sure.
God died.
No one knows precisely how.
But sure enough,
He did it.
Because it was the
only way He could
find out what it is
to love
a drink of water,
sleep,
a warm coat,
a mother,
a father,
morning,
evening,
a really good joke.
And pain.
God saw so much pain
and He was sorry for it.
He didn't know it would
happen quite that way,
but He finally saw
how pain caused
one of two things;
A reverence for life.
Or killing.
Both grew from the same seed.
The one that He had planted.
So God went back to being God,
finally comfortable
with being called
All-Knowing
because now
He actually was.
And after that,
He made sure
He ate popcorn and
watched a movie
every Friday night.
Petted the cats.
Fed the birds.
And played the jukebox.
God needed to remember
what a cool thing
it was to be a guy.
Or a girl.
An eagle.
To be life.
God went to beauty school.
He went there to learn how
to give a good perm.
But what He was really there for
was the hands.


The book gives a very unique side of viewing God, but it's so beautiful. I hope the poem could give you as much blessings as it did to me.

God bless!! :)