Have a Happy diety

Never pretend the Street God has smiled on you when you are stealing. If you follow this simple rule you will enter his kingdom, says Paul McDermott

As we have already seen, we live in a world surrounded by gods. There are the gods of all the major religions, the gods of the lesser religions and finally the dieties we create for our own pleasure. One such diety is the God of the street.
Where the other gods ask for a life lived in chastity, the Street God only requires that you have a keen eye. Where other gods ask for a life of servitude, the Street God asks for patience and perserverence. Where other gods look for the good inside, the Street God leaves the good outside.
He leaves the good in plain view where his followers discover it. Once the food is discovered, it can then be re-shaped, re-fashioned, re-born. A spoiled recliner from the North Shore home becomes a cosy reading chair in a Newtown squat, discarded bricks become a bookshelf, an old sign a novel highlight above a Mancare bar.
The Street God is seldom recognised by the rich. He belongs to the poor. His temples are garbage bins and anywhere rubbish collects. His palace is an earthly palace and it is situated in the dump. His kingdom extends to the inner suburbs and overflowing skips everywhere.
His angels are reversing trucks. He is a material and temporal god, and his gifts are seldom gold. He is the god of broken or three-legged chairs. He is the god of the discarded, the rejected and the useless.
Within the cult of the Street God there are tenets of the faith that must be obeyed.
You must never ask the Street God for specific favours, cardboard boxes are his forte.
Never rely on the God of the Street for a birthday, wedding or engagement presnt.
Never pretend the Street God has smiled on you when you are stealing.
If you follow these simple rules you will enter his kingdom.
Open your eyes to his kindness and you will never fully close them again.
There was a time when I would converse with the God of the Street constantly. HIs bounty was plain to see, exploding out of skips, at the back of the department sotre, forgotten at the end of a lane. If you failed to take an item he offered there would a lways be another to tempt you, a cracked Thermos, an old pair of loafers, a ripped vinyl jacket. His generosity knew no bounds.
I first met the Street God at the tip amid burst green garbage bags oozing pustulant gunk and lockjaw inducing razor-sharp sheet metal. He was there in mountains of waste rising from valleys of debris. Slag-heap cathedrals to consumer society, glittering in the afternoon sun, with all the promise of capitalism. Here an enamel pendant, a malfunctioning radio or a mayonnaise-stained magazine was a gift from god.
Then someone somewhere, in the safety of an office, decided it was too dangerous. They closed the tips. Yet for every unfortunate who tore his foot apart on a rusty tin there were thousands who would discover a useless phone or a crushed circuit.
I was thinking that I had not heard from the Street God for a long time. I had thought he and I had fallen out. That was when I had the dream. And the dream brought me to a realisation.
There were two sets of handprints foraging around a skip. I knew one set was mine and the other set belonged to the Street God. I looked again and there was only one set. I asked him what had happened. Why did he leave me? He smiled and replied, " That w as when I foraged for you. You went to take a leak. "
I woke realising the Street God was still with me. Over the years I had changed, not he. I was no longer a disciple, I was a priest. I realised as I descended the stairs with my garbage I was still doing his will. I peered longingly into my own waste - a stack of faded English magazines, a broken Rotring pen and a three-legged chair.
My weekly walk to the wheelie bin is an offertory procession and the damaged, worthless scraps I drag there a tribute to the Street God.

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