God in a Gorilla Suit

One day when my husband and I were taking a country walk,  he happened to say—I don’t remember what we were talking about—that one reason that native Americans were so easily beset by the colonists is because they had not seen their ships arrive and therefore did not  know of their  presence.

He said that, since they did not expect to see boats on the ocean, they had not seen them.

My scientific rationalist nature ridiculed this idea: if ships suddenly appeared on the horizon, surely the denizens of America would perceive them.

How could they not?

I  felt smug in what seemed to me my irrefutable logic.

A few weeks later, the college that I taught at had a guest speaker for the Teacher Improvement Committee.

I don’t even remember what his over-all thesis was, but he began by assuring us that when we were in front of a classroom and felt we knew the dynamics of the class—which students were listening and taking the course seriously and which were slacking off—we really did not know the students we were teaching.

He asked us to watch a short film of a basketball game.

He also asked us to count how many times the ball was dribbled, passed, and shot into the basket.

When the film was over and we compared figures, everyone had a different answer.

He then said, “What did you think of the gorilla?”

We looked at him blankly. 

A gorilla? 

Because  we had not been looking for a gorilla the first time we saw the film, we did not see one. 

He said, “What? You missed the gorilla?”

He said he would play the film again and this time we were just to watch, not trying to keep any scores.

And, what do you know,  half-way through the game, a man dressed in a gorilla costume walked out on the playing floor, looked directly into the eyes of one of the girls who was dribbling the ball, stood right by her shoulder for a few seconds, shrugged his shoulders, and then walked off the gym floor.

I think God is a lot like this gorilla.

We don’t seek him, so we don’t see him.

But whenever a bird cheeps or flies past you, whenever you admire and cuddle a young child, whenever you pat a dog, or perform a selfless action that benefits someone else, we see divinity in action.