Top Ten Ways for Atheists to Find and Capture God

1.

Use an invisible camera. Point it at the sun. Pretend you can feel the controls for focus and exposure in your empty hands. The sun will hold its smile and patiently wait for the click. After a few hours, don’t forget to close the shutters when your hands begin to bubble and burn.

2.

Buy enough mantis shrimps to force the species onto the endangered list. In the bathroom, cut out each color receptor from their greedy eyes. Eat all twelve raw. Meditate while you absorb their powers of discernment. Let them pass fully through your system before you throw up in the tub.

3.

Unscrew the lids of thirty-two cans of toxic paint and counting, until you find one closest to the color of a winter breeze moving through moonlight. Make sure your vents are closed and your curtains drawn. A few mouthfuls of melted snow collected yesterday will help you focus.

4.

Steal a brain wave monitor from a psychiatric hospital. Record your mind’s electrical activity while in the presence of happy couples. Test different brands of prank shock pens to recreate that sense of absence. If you’re feeling bold, ask them if they want to play with your gadgets too. Judge their responses carefully.

5.

Soak in the aesthetic residue of every single fashion phase, relationship craze, and mental haze you thought would last forever. Roll in the old holy clothes, tarnished jewelry, and expired pills until their love seeps from your pores. Refuse to bathe when your skin begins to itch.

6.

Close your eyes, your ears, your nose and mouth while standing over a steam vent. As the moisture beads on your skin, feel everything in existence become vaporous and wraithlike around you. Before you pass out, begin to breathe as quickly as you can so the surge of wet oxygen allows your brain to connect with your fish ancestors.

7.

Research how to acquire synesthesia for hours on end. Instead of a brain injury, decide to try hallucinogenic drugs. After your trip, crack your back occasionally to see if the meager amount of LSD remaining in your spinal cord will let you catch a glimpse outside this plane of reality.

8.

Record thousands of audios of everyday life from footsteps and keys jingling to babies crying in grocery stores. Overlay them one on top of the other until all you hear is white noise. Lay in bed listening to it all night searching for even a second that triggers some peace of mind.

9.

Write with your own saliva as ink to create your very own language, one unlimited by the rules of your parents’ mother tongue. Make up some words in your new alphabet that follow a grammatical structure unlike any human dialect. Mourn when you forget how to pronounce them after the ink has dried.

10.

Wonder if all of these things you’ve done in vain will ever gain the attention of something more than a few incredulous passersby on the street. Resent that without finding Him, every act of creation you undertake to capture the image of God will always be man-made.