As someone regularly accused of underreacting to various goings-on, I am feeling ambivalent about the following passage from Louis Patrick's "The 'Ah' of Wonder." And yet, it is not alien to my personal theology, which includes feeling utterly grateful every day for, say, tall glasses of iced green tea and slices of pound cake and a broom long enough to sweep away spiders...

So, here's what Rev. Patrick had to say (1984):

What turns God on? With all the mystery and wonder removed from life, we are tempted to say it is goodness that turns God on. And God deals with this very quickly, saying, "Goodness? You think that I get off on goodness? You who went through the long slap of history, the long suffering of the innocent? All this history's excrement of evil being rewarded with good, and good with evil, you think goodness is my thing? No. I called it off, because my one thing is astonishment. And I never found my audience. I got a few 'hillels' from the Jews, a few 'lacheims.' A few 'Hallelujahs' from the Protestants, a few 'te deum laudamuses' from the Catholics, but I never really found my audience. For astonishment is that in which I delight. Those who can stand before and everyday event and say, 'this is the Lord's doing,' that is marvelous in my eyes!"

Alice Walker says, in her Color Purple, "God loves the very things we love, that used to turn us on, only they keep turning Him on. It isn't that He's vain. It's just that He wants to share these things with us, and nothing turns Him off so much as a person who can walk a field of pruple, and not stand and stare. So full of care they can walk by a field of purple and not just stand and stare."

- Sermons from Duke Chapel, p.237

Upon further reflection, I think my main difficulty is the drift of the Walker quote. Because I'm fiercely resistant to the suggestion that God is turned off by someone focused (or in thrall to) things of care instead of, say, purple fields or lilies or riddle-speaking preachers, and the underneath-implication that there are universal objects of adoration. I'm probably overthinking this, but it makes my skin crawl.

Nor have I ever made my peace with the story of Mary and Martha. But that's a subject for some other time.