Entry 48: in which we make progress, not

The adjournment gave me time to do a little cogitation. I decided that the words themselves must surely provide clues about their definitions therefore:

vision - to see what is needed or what we should be
mission - to make it happen

Well pleased with this outcome, I reconvened the meeting and ask them how they got on with their own definitions.

The same eager cherub immediately leaped to his feet and offered the following:

"We think that a vision is conceptual whereas a mission is practical ..." He tailed off, uncertainly.

"Perhaps you could give us an example" I suggested.

"Well" he ventured "our vision might be to offer outstanding customer care and our mission would then define the steps needed to achieve that. Who are our customers by the way OGO?"

The reverie into which I was comfortably settling was rudely shattered by this totally unexpected question.

"Our customers ... well yes, good question and not before time if I may say so. Now then, who has an idea of whom our customers might be?"

"Perhaps, OMO, all sentient beings?"

"Very good" I began but a hubbub soon erupted as others objected to the specificity of this and we finally settled on "bounded, self-replicating, anti-entropic entities capable of maintaining energy and chemical gradients counter to their immediate environments". Er, quite.

You will understand that by now my enthusiasm was waning exactly as theirs was apparently waxing.

I suggested that we might have time for a short brainstorm on vision before another break. A silence descended, broken alas by another cherub.

"How about, OHO, something like the preferred provider of universes everywhere?"

"Yeeessss" I began, sorry to choke him off so soon "but we're not really in the multiverse business are we? And we're only dealing with this space-time continuum. So I think there is a wee problem with the plural there."

He, however, was unwilling to relinquish multiplicity without a struggle.

"Surely OGO we could add another universe to this space-time continuum then?"

"Yeeesss, sort of, but I think you'll find that if we did that we would simply have one universe all the same, just a bigger one. After all, that's what the word means. The whole. You can't have two everythings, now can you?"

"Well how about preferred provider of the universe then?". Persistent little bugger.

"Are there any others? Providers I mean? In which case, how can we be 'preferred'? And from the philosophical point of view, given the universe just recycles itself, do we actually provide it or just sit here, watching it?"

Despite logic being on my side, I could tell that my words were as welcome as a cold and persistent nitric acid drizzle.

"May I propose, OGO, that we simply note suggestions at this stage rather than analysing them too closely?". Ah, the measured intonation and rather plummy vowels of Lucifer himself.

"But of course, Lucy, you're quite right, let's do that".

"And if I may build on the previous speaker's excellent suggestion, then how about something like 'the premier redeemer of souls supported by the finest correctional facility offering Holistic Education for Life after Life (H.E.L.L.)".

"My goodness, is that the time? Milk and cookies next door everyone".

It may be unkind of me, but I rather hope that, in the rush, poor Lucy's idea has been trampled. Perhaps terminally. If so, the only nugget in the dross.

(Memo to self "Do not convene any meeetings. Ever.")

Entry 47: in which One is stumped

The Stakeholders' Meeting. The usual shiny and eager faces, up for it. Mrs God's not among them, naturally. I tender her apologies, and the lad's.

I explain that this meeting is different and special and its purpose is to determine our Vision and Mission. They are suitably impressed, or at least that is what I take the somewhat stunned silence for.

Finally one cherub, bolder than the rest, ventures this: "OHO, pray what is the difference between a Vision and a Mission?"

I must digress at this point to explain OHO. In these parts folk generally don't call me anything unless they are feeling particularly extravagant. However, in formal meetings it is common for them to prefix remarks and questions with something like OGO, OHO, or OMO. Originally these were shortened forms of Oh Great One, Oh Holy One, Oh Mighty One and so on. Now they have become words in their own right, so I find myself addressed as OHO (as in a short laugh) for example. I'm never quite sure if the speaker is taking the piss, but it seems wiser to assume not.

Anyway, back to "OHO, pray what is the difference between a Vision and a Mission?"

I own up to a moment of awkwardness here, and realise how unprepared I am, since I haven't the foggiest.

Not a problem, I shall simply divine the answer as I usually do.

However, when I attempt to do so, astonished to find ... nothing. Now I need to explain that if one attempts to divine an answer and the divination returns "null" it means only one thing - there is no answer to that question, anywhere in the universe.

Which explains a something that has always puzzled me, namely the preponderance of consulting firms throughout the sentient universe. Most of which are called McKinsey. Another mystery.

Back to the meeting. I fix a beady eye on the cherub (whose name escapes me; well they all look the same, honestly) and announce "Our young friend here has asked an important question. I think it will be instructive for you to mull it over for a while. We will adjourn while you do so. When we resume, I look forward to some creative suggestions ..."

And head for the exit before another of the little sods bushwhacks me.

Entry 46: in which The Ghost is roasted

Well well well and three wells make a river.

The Ghost is back in the Realm, responding to the opportunity to participate in the next Stakeholders' Meeting. It takes all sorts I suppose.

Anyway, tracked him down to give him an earful about the dog's breakfast he made of the lad's "low key" introduction to Earth.

Astonished to find him breezily unperturbed by the whole thing.

"It was" he intoned "preordaned".

"Ah", say I, "and by whom may one enquire?"

"Well", he says, "not by anyone as such, just preordaned in the sense that whatever was going to happen, happened".

"As in, given you're an arse, a total balls up was inevitable you mean".

Well he did have the grace to look somewhat embarrassed at this, but what's the use? I can't stay cross with anyone for any length of time at all, let alone give them a thick ear. Which he richly deserved.

Not that he was disconcerted for long. "Water" and "duck's back" come unbidden to mind.

[Editor's note: Once again I am struck by the "Earth Centric" nature of some of the remarks, such as water and duck's back. I have a sneaky but growing suspicion that The Diaries may be syndicated throughout the inhabited universe. Perhaps in some other quarter this entry ends with "Liquid nitrogen" and "pentaquel's vlen".]

Entry 45: in which I call a Stakeholders' Meeting

In my wisdom I have decided to call a Stakeholders' Meeting. The theme, I have decided, is "Our Vision and Mission". See if I can furrow the brows of at least a few cherubim and divert the ever-so-vain archangels from self-admiration for a while.

I thought, originally, to distract Mrs God from her rather morose cogitation, but of course I had forgotten that she never attends Stakeholder Meetings. Sneaking admiration for such brazen behaviour, but alas, I have too strong a sense of obligation to do anything so sensible.

And another absentee, of course, the lad, whose apologies I suppose I can tender, "in absentia".

Only remains, now, for me to get my head around just what this visiony missiony thingy is.

Good thing I'm not stupid otherwise I'd be kicking myself for being stupid enough to have thought up this mad event in the first place.

Entry 44: she wouldn't, would she?

Those who have followed these entries will know the following facts about the boy

- he has gone space touring (again)
- this time the lucky planet is Earth
- the planet is insignificant
- no one would have heard of it but for the breezing in of Metatron
- who apparently hails from Earth
- but who is mysterious and not what he seems (I say this in an unofficial capacity)
- but I'm getting of the point
- the lad was cloned off some sorry lass called Mary
- now he's stuck there for the duration of his sorry biological life
- Mrs God is not happy
- she wants the lad back (why?)
- but see "now he's stuck there" point
- hmmm

Word is that some loony king around the Bethlehem region has taken it into his head that male babies up to the age of 2 year should be killed.

I wonder why ...

No, she wouldn't, she couldn't. Could she? Ridiculous! A silly coincidence.

Tra la la.

Entry 43: in which we reflect on the passage of time

Time's a funny old thing, in the Realm, as elsewhere. I mean millions of years can pass in the course of a rather lazy afternoon; yet seconds can drag.

This is the position in which a rather unhappy Mrs G finds herself. She frets over the few tens of years that must pass before the lad returns. You might think that she could simply get some shut-eye and lo, here he would be, but I fear it's not like that when you are shadowing an entity embedded in a biological form. The timelines are locked for the duration, and one all too soon appreciates the concept of "real time".

But, I hear you ask, could she not simply go into the future and be done with delays? Well yes, of course, but this is not something that one does lightly. There is the whole relativism issue, which personally gives me a headache and which (strictly between ourselves) I have some difficultly grasping. It's the old river and bank analogy. Are you on the bank watching the river of time go forward, or are you in the river watching time bank of time go backward, and in which of those modes are you actually standing still in time? Or going forward or going backward? I fear that's what gets me.

Of course Mrs G is good with this kind of trivia, so I'm sure she would get it right, but there are other issues. For a start she would almost certainly meet herself and I fear two rather terse Mrs Gods are much, much worse that one. No sooner would one be giving the lad verbal than the other would leap to his defense. And vice versa. It is rather more than even the gormless one deserves.

Second, synchronous returns are philosophically pretty well impossible. Return a moment too soon, and you have the meeting yourself problem all over again. Return a moment too late, and you have an gap in your personal time line which is quite enough to induce existential crises.

No, the safest thing is to spread out your picnic blanket and sit on the bank waiting for the river of time to pass the requisite number of decades (or the other way round, but we've done this already. Haven't we? Just a moment ago in the past? Ha, ha, just a little cosmic joke there).

Anyway, on the assumption that annoyance must sooner or later give way to sentimentality, I think it is time for me to chuck my hat through the door as it were, to gauge how I might be received by herself.

Yes, I know what you are thinking, but there are times when it pays to softpedal a bit on the Supreme Being thing. This is one of them.

Entry 42: in which the lad emerges, blinking

Reports have it that the lad has finally been expelled from the womb of his surrogate mother. Astonishingly just the one head, despite the Ghost's recent propensity to balls up everything that he touches.

Honchos got there with the loot it appears, dumped it and fled, hoping that by same they have placated whatever it was that caused the recent flare.

Anyway, absolutely no prospect of getting the genie back into the bottle. The world and his brother now know about the event . Well, I say that, but that's just me exaggerating. So a few dozen nomadic herdsmen, the odd inn keeper, three somewhat senile and by now considerably poorer sages and a couple of ragg-bag extras know about it.

I mean, how bad can it get? By tomorrow the Bethlehem Times will be wrapping pita breads and it will all be very old news.

Much closer to home is Mrs God and her manifest displeasure at the way things have turned out. I think that she rather hoped that, pre-birth, it might be possible to pull one out of the hat and get the lad back to the Realm, the better to give him some rather unpleasant verbal and ground him for a couple of billion years.

As it is, she's going to have to wait patiently for the duration of the life span of the biological thingy in which he is embedded.

Or wait, anyway. Patience is optional.