 My view of God is simple. He doesn't root for football teams - European or American - and most any house is his house, whether it has a steeple, cupola or minaret, or, in fact is not a house at all but a starlit sky.
I could be wrong. Perhaps God suits up for the big matches, like the World Cup, and maybe he does or doesn't spend equal time commuting between religions. Perhaps He's not even a he. I don't know. I am not a theologian.
A long time ago, back when I was in junior high, I played on the school basketball team. We played St. James Catholic School in Orlando, Fla., and they made the sign of the cross before each foul shot. It was the only game we won all season.
Maybe God was on the side of the Colonial Grenadiers, my very inept and inadequate team, but I doubt it.
I am not even sure God chooses sides in wars. The historical record is mixed. Most of the German Army in World War II wore belt buckles inscribed with the motto, "Gott Mit Uns" [Tr: God is with us], and American soldiers were paid in dollars that bore the legend, "In God We Trust". The allies won, Thank God.
However, the Kurdish ruler Saladin, a Muslim, fought the Christian crusaders to a standstill and held on to Jerusalem a millennium ago. In America's Civil War, both sides claimed the same god and 200,000 soldiers died in battle, another 400,000 of disease.
I don't know where God stands on revolutionaries, terrorists and anarchists - all generally with some higher calling - or even on the heathens, a rather large group when you consider most religions think those of other faiths are heathens.
For the record, I am not a heathen, though I sometimes claim the title. I belong in the category of simply not being brave enough to be a heathen. I believe that most of us will make peace with his or her maker just before the electrodes are applied to our chest or last rites are being mumbled over our ashen faces.
In fact, I have thought seriously about having a different religion each month. Born into a Christian family, sometimes I think I am a Jew, other times a Muslim; and I really fancy Hindu karma. I have a healthy respect for all religions, for where else can central ideas have so much capacity for both terrible harm and terrific good.
These days though, for every Mother Teresa, there seems a dozen Bin Ladens. Would that there were a few more Elmer Gantrys, the central character in the Sinclair Lewis book of the same name. Bill Clinton came close.
I grew up going to a Southern Baptist church. Southern Baptists have a franchise on distributing guilt, at least in the southern United States. They are against booze, and some even against dancing. Sex outside of marriage causes them to see red.
For a long time, the Baptists I knew were rather prejudiced, but I really don't know now. It has been 30 years or so since I set foot in a Baptist church, with the exception of a marriage or two and a trio of funerals. I like to dance and have a drink on occasion.
In 60 plus years, I have broken several of the Moses-branded Ten Commandments, but primarily only the nitpicking ones down toward the bottom of the list. I don't know anyone who hasn't, with the possible exception of my sister who is a saint and about to become an Episcopalian priest.
For a fellow with a fairly parochial mind, I think a lot about the future and religion.
I sometimes think that in 25,000 years someone will dig up a Coca-Cola bottle - the small, green, old-fashioned type - and it will become a relic to be worshiped. Writer Sam Harris,
a real atheist, says God will be seen as a Microsoft Windows logo in the far future. I am going to watch the news carefully to see if Sam gets run over by a big truck.
I had a former father-in-law who made totem poles of the American Indian variety and then buried them in his back yard for some strange reason. In 50,000 years they will be discovered by what then passes as human beings, and possibly worshiped as well. I think just such a person as my former father-in-law created Stonehenge.
But my God of the moment lives in the triangle of Kyiv where a short walk can take you to
St. Sophia's, St. Michael's and St. Andrew's in minutes. This has been my personal Camelot for the last eight years.
I feel a certain tranquility here. It has nothing to do with being inside a church. For that matter, I worry about the proliferation of churches in Kyiv. From a marketing standpoint, who is the target audience? Most are empty most of the time.
The most ambitious construction projects seemed to be churches. One has to wonder why there is another monument to God while people go hungry, medical care is inadequate and the lifespan of the average Ukrainian male is just to the sunny side of sixty.
Who is making money out of building churches? I guess that is the first question that should be asked.
I feel about churches about the same way I feel about most monuments. They are not really that beautiful. I have a hard time making the connection between stone, steel and glass soaring to great heights, when so much of somebody's work - the theologians say God's - remains undone.
For that matter, I am not sure it is such a great honor to have a pigeon-splattered statue to one's self. Wouldn't the establishment of a university endowment in one's name have greater impact? What about a library?
Ukraine has a lot of problems. One problem it doesn't have is finding money from somewhere to build churches and monuments. They proliferate like mushrooms following a summer rain. Big ones. Small ones. Middle sized ones.
I learned early on when writing for a newspaper not to write about religion unless you can be a cheerleader for God. People take their religion seriously, maybe too seriously.
However, this is not a religious column, merely another Random Notes as the title implies. And I randomly selected a topic that really (*&^%$& me off.
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