Baptism by dumpster juice

Last night I found in a dumpster behind the supermarket the exact organic spelt bread that I mentioned yesterday morning I would like, but is too expensive. I cannot eat gluten, so it was very nice to find sitting peacefully on top of this dumpster three loaves of organic spelt and organic kamut bread. Is this merely a coincidence?

When I was in Australia last time, travelling with four Swedish men and dumpster diving everywhere we went, we noticed a lot of these coincidences and started joking about "Dumpster God", who would regularly answer our prayers and provide us with exactly what we needed or wanted; especially when we didn't realise we were praying.

This god is obviously a metaphor for something real that we experience. Does this mean our god exists? Does this mean our god does not exist? We continue to be amazed at the abundance and joy that Dumpster God brings us through her divine dumpsters, or even an average dumpster transformed by her divine presence.

Of course Dumpster God does not exist because we made her up. Every time we reference her it is a joke, though in terms of our own communication as a group, she has entered our language and has become a useful metaphor for communicating something palpably real to us all. It makes me question whether metaphor and myth are as real as anything else we experience. We must create a word to describe it because there is no physical measurable scientifically-proven word to explain this thing that is clearly a daily part of our lives.

If Dumpster God is the only god that we experience, what about all these other gods people talk about? Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, Baal, Zeus, etcetera; can these gods really exist in comparison to the true god, Dumpster God, who I know exists because I have experienced her presence and her benevolent effect in my life? Surely Dumpster God is the one true god because she is my name for the infinite inexplicable benevolence of the universe.

I know that in Australia, where so much food is thrown away every day for no reason and usually with no benefactor, I will never be hungry, because Dumpster God is on my side, protecting me and providing for me and my friends. Only, however, the ones who show their belief with a joy and exuberance and shameless confidence that brings us together and brings us into the sticky glory of baptism by dumpster juice.