God is Like a Slug

Originally Written May 28, 2009

Pentecost is this Sunday. So, naturally, I was thinking tonight about the Holy Spirit, about the Trinity, about God. And—also naturally—it occurred to me that God is like is a slug.

Pentecost is this Sunday. So, naturally, I was thinking tonight about the Holy Spirit, about the Trinity, about God. And—also naturally—it occurred to me that God is like is a slug.

Seriously. Bear with me, now.

Meet Sluggo the Slug. One night, Sluggo packs his slug suitcase and decides to go on a slug journey across the back patio. Being a slug, he thinks it’s quite the expedition, but really it’s just a quick jaunt across the pavement.

Sluggo has a point of origin, from which he begins his journey. And he has a point of arrival, where his journey ends. Everywhere in between, he leaves a trail of thick slime—sticky, gooey stuff—the evidence of Sluggo’s very existence, the telltale sign that "Sluggo Wuz Here," which he secretes as he goes from his origin to his destination.

And that’s where Sluggo is like God.

Just as Sluggo had his point of origin, in God there is the Origin, the Alpha, the Creator, God the Father, who made all that has been, all that is, and all that will be. And at the end of the journey lies our destination—the Firstborn of Creation—the Omega, the Christ, the Redeemer, God the Son, who in the fullness of time will retrace Sluggo’s slug trail and bring all of Creation back to its Origin. And the thick, gooey slime, the trail left behind when Sluggo moved from Point A to Point B is the very stuff of Creation; it's the trail—better said the sacrament—the sign left behind as God moves through our universe and penetrates our experience.

We dwell in the slime. But the slime isn't a bad place. It's not icky slime. The slime itself is a gift.

Still, in the dark, the slime is just slime, just gross goop on the patio. But when light hits the slime, it changes. It glimmers; it shimmers. And that sparkle in the slime, that glitter in the goop is the Holy Spirit, the light of the resurrection, the indwelling of God in Creation, the abiding presence of the Creator and the Redeemer in our very experience. The light is God’s transcendent, universal Love, and when Love is present, Creation shines.

As the light moves and the slime glitters, so God moves in the eternal perichoresis—the dance of love—and when God moves in us, the slime that is our experience twinkles with God’s presence, shines radiantly as we engender unity, as we cultivate peace, as we bound beyond boundaries and let Love—that is the essence of God—transform us.