“VERY FUNNY, GOD”

I think God has a strong sense of humor.

It’s been said that the key to humor is incongruity, the mashing together of two things we don’t expect to find together. The color pink and an elephant. Bumblebees and flying (come on, you know they shouldn’t be able to fly). Dignified figures slipping on banana peels.

We are amused by these sudden unexpected juxtapositions. I think God is also amused by such things. But on a bigger scale. On a scale that is also at the same time very personal.

I was born in Michigan and spent my early years there. I distinctly recall one day when I was in either fifth or sixth grade. Some school friends were over at my house and we were outside talking and playing a ball game. It was the end of the school year and we were talking about the future, and places we might want to live. The conversation wound down, and I concluded with the adamant statement “I’ll never live in California! And especially not in Los Angeles!”

Fast-forward to the present. Guess what? Not only do I live in California, in Los Angeles, I live in that area known as Hollywood. (Hollywood-the-locale does not always mean Hollywood-the-state-of-mind-and/or-profession. I happen to belong to both.)

God must have been laughing at me back on that late spring day as I bounced a volleyball on the sidewalk.

Since that time, I’ve learned to at least try and avoid saying anything that begins with “I will never.” Because God is listening and seems to delight in pricking the bubbles of our self-important, self-determining proclamations.

When I look back on my life, now, and consider the shape of it, I can see that my path may have eventually led to this place, no matter what I did. By the time I made that declaration of never living in California, I had already acquired a love of theater. I had already begun writing and storytelling (although at that time it was not my primary interest). I had already begun a fascination with the behind-the-scenes mechanics of film-making. God had already surveyed and laid out the route for me in my interests and abilities. I just didn’t know it. My eyes were on a different route altogether.

My first serious ambition in life was to be a fashion designer. But I discovered in ninth grade that I didn’t have the temperament to do that day in and day out. It took me some time to realize that I did have the temperament to be a writer. I love writing, of almost all sorts. And I wanted to be good at it. As good as I possibly could be.

So I went off to college to train myself as a writer. Everything I studied applied to that, one way or another. I studied literature in order to know and understand “the good stuff.” Because I didn’t want my own work to be “the bad stuff.”

Eventually the writing pursuits led me to Los Angeles. Most of my writing interests could be done everywhere. But the reality of pursuing screenwriting is that you need to be in the entertainment community. It’s hard enough to break in when you’re on the spot. It’s very difficult to do it from Points Elsewhere.

But back to God’s sense of humor.

Even during that time when all my thoughts and plans were focused on fashion design, I was writing. God could see what was developing in me. While my conscious mind was set on New York as my future, the rest of me was being tuned for a different destination.

The first time I stepped off a plane in Southern California (and I’d completed my Masters degree in English by that point), I had a surprising reaction. It was in Ontario, the day was very humid for Southern California, the smog was such that it obscured the nearby mountain, the traffic was amazing – even to this urban child. And yet, that first moment was the shock of recognition: “This is my place.”

I’d encountered God’s sense of humor before, so I had already acquired a sense that he bends our expectations and plans. But the sudden realization – that I’d found my home territory and it was the very place I had long before said I would never live in – that realization had the feel of cosmic amusement. God laughed.

How many things are there in my life that I consider to be unlikely in the extreme? Oh, so many. Of course, these days I cloak them in the “reasonable evaluation” that I would not do such-and-such. Because I avoid the words “I will never.”

And I’m sure God has more surprise revelations waiting for me. Incongruities that turn out to be amazingly appropriate. Even if I hadn’t experienced these unexpected turns of life, I think I’d understand how much God delights in playing with our conscious intentions. He does know us better than we know ourselves. And, in a way, it’s part of storytelling: pulling the audience along a path that they think leads toward one particular destination, you draw them around a corner to something unexpected but very fitting. The delight of the incongruity. I think God likes to lay out our lives like that, and that he hopes we’ll stick to the path he’s designed.

So take it from me: be careful what you say after “I will never.” God may be laughing at you and your plans.