The Most High

  It was a warm rainy spring night. The bars on 15th Street were less busy than usual, many of them were beginning to close. The burlesques, cabarets, and clubs were busier than ever. Leela’s still buzzed with business, the smell of coffee harmonizing with the muffled music pouring into the street.  

  A lone busker wailing on a guitar echoed down the Mall Street, a welcome rarity since the Urban camping ban and license laws had outlawed music. The rhythm of passing cars and white noise of the rain created a soundscape as alive as the city, yet an eery emptiness echoed through the concrete corridors as well.  

  Strangers avoided each other like the plague, masks obscuring faces and eyes trained on the ground as they rushed through the streets. The usual hubbub of Denver was absent; there was less traffic, fewer tourists, no concerts or sports events. The bar-goers whispered secrets to each other from behind masks and through gritted teeth. Most the dirty kids had hopped trains and rode out to more fruitful valleys, and even the hum-bums that would normally wander the street asking for change had vanished, interned in a makeshift quarantine camp across the river. 

  I was on a mission. I had already eaten that day, so I could focus on pleasure rather than survival; and had set out for an energy drink and other mood-altering substances. Cigarettes were hard to come by with the rain trashing ashtrays and alleyways, so I was bumming around near the bars, trading jokes for smokes. As I passed Leela’s again, with a stoge in hand, found a joint that had just been dropped. It had been lit before, but almost the whole gram was there. As if by miracle, it hadn’t gotten wet either. Mission accomplished! Now I had weed and a couple smokes to pass the time.  

  Another fella was walking behind me, seemed to be in the same boat. 

“Ground-score!” I said, gesturing at him and showing off the joint. 

     He simply replied, “Be blessed.” 

“Wanna smoke?” 

     He nodded. 

  We briefly introduced ourselves, traded fake names and awkward silences. Then we agreed to stand by the hotel on the corner, since it was out of the rain and well lit. Some old cartoons were playing on the tv in the lobby, plainly visible through the glass wall, and the 16th Street Mall continued mutedly humming its song like an old blues record. We stood and smoked in silence for a while.  

  He was tall and gaunt, a tired sadness burdened his face, and the weight of the world bent his shoulders. There was a glint of madness in his right eye, and his left was a lazy eye that wandered about on its own. His short, dark, shabby hair did little to help his skeletal appearance, but he moved with excited intensity antithetical to the fatigue adorning his visage. After some time, he began chatting. 

     “It sounds crazy,” says he, “but I’m God. Do you believe me?” 

“As I see it, we are all god – if there is one – or at least parts of it. All life, in my opinion, is merely a piece of the cosmos that is capable of thinking about the cosmos. If the universe is alive, and can think, then we are its mind, the experiences and thoughts and feelings that it has about existence and itself,” I replied earnestly. 

     “So you believe in me?” 

“Yeah I believe you.” 

“Yeah, Denver is home but it's not all it used to be. Covid and these new laws are ruining it.” 

     “We're sick, corrupted by greed. These sacred mountains are too precious to destroy.” He talked in such a matter-of-fact way, like he was discussing the weather. I guess he was. 

“Yeah, gentrification and land development are destroying the forest and prairies. Such amazing environments wasted for oil, ski slopes, and golf courses. It makes me sick sometimes.” 

     “There's too many people and they take it all for granted. I am going to test them; there will be floods and an off-season tornado.” A hint of real anger colored his voice.  

“Yeah, it's possible, there's always a lot of rain this time of year,” I dismissed his prophecy. 

  As he passed the last bit of the doob, he pointed up at the TV screen through the hotel window. The channel changed, flipping past a couple sports channels to local news. A weather report showed heavy rains throughout Colorado, with flash-flood and mudslide warnings. An advisory was issued because several funnels and one twister were seen in an anomalous storm over the prairie. Then the weekly forecast resumed.  

  I was stunned. Whether through premonition or an intimate knowledge of Colorado weather patterns, I had just witnessed prophecy. The tv changing with such perfect timing was also unsettling, changed by an unseen host; whether a hotel host or the holy ghost I couldn't say. Mundane or not, it was undeniably strange and mysterious in the moment. I felt briefly as if the scene were staged, an absurd twist on the The Truman Show that I had stumbled into the set of. 

  Reality became a little blurred, waves washing away lines in the sand.  

“If you are THE GOD, capital G, why'd you create a world with so much suffering?” 

     “I am just that way. Everything is part of a cycle. I didn't create the world this way. Life and Death are just natural.” 

“Most theistic religions disagree,” I pointed out. 

     “They lie for power. No religion represents me.” 

“That’s true regardless.” 

  We stood a while in silence. The doob had since burnt to the end, so I lit up a cig, thinking quietly to myself about the situation.  

  Of course, of all the punks in the gutters god chose me, I bemused. 

  The cigarette passed another ten minutes. We made hurried farewells, as awkward as our salutations, before shambling off in opposite directions. I turned on some music… The first song to play was called I Met God, He Has a Lazy Eye. 

  You can find all the answers in the streets.  

  You quickly realize you don’t need to search for meaning or purpose, you don’t need to find yourself. You spend all your time searching for tangible things – searching for food, clothes, dry warm shelter, work, money, entertainment, and any distraction from the world around you.  

  The deeper truths come looking for you. 

  You don’t need church either.  

  We howl the hymn of the wolves every night, declaring that the night is ours. We go to service on Sunday at the park, trading whiskey for wisdom from old war vets. We sing praise with every meal, never knowing when the next will come. We prepare the herb and burn the incense, sending prayers to the sky on clouds of smoke. We cry alone and celebrate together.  

  Out there, the streets are our homes, the alleys our cathedrals, and the people our religion. Out there, we walk through the valley of darkness and death, and god walks amongst us. 

  I know because one time, I ground-scored a joint and smoked it with God.