What If God Had a Meetup Group?

In our northern California town, there isn't much happening and so often, it feels that all one can do is get outdoors and occasionally, find a good movie.  There is not much for me here that I want to keep and that is what so many people feel about the town they grew up in.  This isn't Ohio, but it might as well be just that.  It was time to move on three years ago and life kept getting in the way and then it all came down like a flimsy house of cards. 

However, I am of the mind to not give up on life.  We have tried a Sierra club group in Marin and felt very underappreciated, though they appeared to want new members.  We tried three different events that took about an hour and a half to get to and though we saw some great views, the company was pretentious and chilly.  Hmmm, not our people we guessed.

We have tried other contrived social events here in our own county and those felt very flat as well, disjointed, no connection with our peeps.  You have this little glimmer of hope and then you realize, it is just another party that is a flop.  It is where we are and it could easily be somewhere in the Mohave or Ventura or Riverside or Modoc county with worse weather. 

I tried yet another attempt, on my own, at a local Meetup group-the new trend for people forced together by a common interest or desire at a specific place and time. When I showed up for the movie and ready to meet "my people," I could not figure out who they were since they didn't have a little cardboard sign like at the airport! The film was some kind of art piece that was troubling and compelling but not exactly a social lubricant. I left after the film with some other strangers, who were not apparently my Meetup group, and we chatted about our take on the hideous film. Nice people.

The following day, I received email remarks spun off by the Meetup website that said, in bold letters-GREAT TO SEE YOU!  I thought to myself, huh?, did I see you? Ah, a slight of hand or rather, a computerized message generated by a website that recognizes that you registered for an event and gosh darn it, they want to thank you for showing up.  Huh, did they show up and I just missed them?  Weird.

I began to think about the ramifications of all of this, in regards to our disassociation from one another and Meetup groups and fake "GREAT TO SEE YOUs" and the universe.  The mystery, the universe, the space in between, existential thoughts on connection and loneliness. We are so "device" oriented and so separate that we need to create events to pretend that we are connected.

 I wondered if God had a Meetup group, would God announce "god's self" with a small cardboard sign and would God generate a big "thank you" even though God stayed home to wash God's hair and never showed up at the event?  I wondered.  I wondered some more.