A Shrine to an Unknown God

WHAT MAKES A GOD A GOD?

"WHY?" Marisol's eyes flick with disappointment. "You know your gods are real."

"That doesn't mean they're right. And it's a part of our belief that we... don't discount other religions, we see those gods as being just as real as our own. What if we're worshipping the wrong ones? What makes a god a god? What if they're just normal people, like me and you? What if we made them into gods when we started worshipping them?"

Marisol just sits there for a moment, scratching at her bright red bug bites. "In America we have three main religions," she explains. "Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. And each religion, they think they have it right, that their interpretation of the universe and existence and morality are correct. And their followers have fought wars over it. People have lost their lives over it, innocent people. We're fighting a war over it right now, the War on Terror. And, you see, the problem isn't that people think their religion is good. It's not that they have a cause they believe so strongly in that they're willing to go to war over it. It's the fact that they've started thinking of religion in terms of right and wrong."

"Oh?"

"It's even worse when they find their answer, when they think the religion they stand behind is the right religion, 'cause they start thinking that everybody else is doing it wrong. And when you get a nation so divided on an issue as fundamental as faith, when you get people on all sides of the issue ready to take arms to defend their viewpoint, when you've got people with more faith in a book written by the Big Man in the Sky than they've got love for their neighbors... boom goes the dynamite." She mimes an explosion, making a boom between her lips. "It doesn't matter if you're worshipping the right religion, Tiggy. There's no such thing as the right religion or the right gods. What matters is the faith that you've got inside of you. What matters is the blind trust you have that your gods are what's right for you to stand behind."

I stare out at the water, the crashing waves, the glint of the sun.

"I don't know if I want to stand behind my gods anymore. What good have they ever done for me?" A pause. "Was that an English word you used, Tiggy?"

"It's you." She pokes me in the side, grinning. "Tiggy Tiggy Tiggy."

"I'm not a Tiggy. Whatever it is."

"It's a nickname, stupidhead! Antigone. Tiggy."

"Oh. Ohhhh."

"Yeah."

"I want to give you a nickname." I think for a moment. "Marisol, Marisol. Sol!"

"It means sun," she replies. "Sol. In Spanish. That's where my name comes from. Mar y sol. Sea and sun. And my last name's Moon. My name is sea, sun, and moon. And one of the meanings of Maria, my middle name, is sea of bitterness. So. There's that."

"Sol is fitting. You're like the sun: you illuminate the world. I never want to go back to that place. I felt like I was surrounded in darkness. Blindly reaching around, trying to find something... bright. And all along I think it was you and America I was looking for."

"I kind of felt the opposite way, you know? Here in America. Like I was drowning in bright lights, going sun-blind. There's all this chaos everywhere, a constant, oppressive white-noise. Everyone's always trying to outshine each other. Everything becomes a competition, it's gotta be bigger, better, bolder, louder. It's exhausting. But Apollonisi wasn't like that. You aren't like that. Being there was like... when the sun finally goes down after a boiling summer day. And that's what it's like talking to you."

"I want to have more summer in my life," I decide. "More hours of sunlight, more happiness. Less time in the dark."

Marisol just nods. "More time in the water," she adds, standing up and grabbing hold of my wrists. She drags me to my feet and out to the water, both of us laughing, her spinning me drunkenly around.

We play at the edge of the water for a while, shoving and splashing each other, jumping in the waves. When we get bored, we race each other through the shallows, and when we get bored of that, we look for shells, and when we get bored of that, we build sand castles and talk about the universe, decorating the castles with the shells we found.

We should spend more time like this, out in the sand and the surf. Not worrying about anything, not the gods that very much do exist nor the fact that you might have to kill the pretty girl that teaches you about feminism and lesbianism and the meaning of her name in order to save your mother's life nor the pretty girl's brother that's definitely dead but she hasn't realized it yet. Away from it all, away from all the pain and hurt and suffering. Letting the sand exfoliate your soul and the surf cleanse it.