It was a night of confusion, a night of enlightenment. The glass of whiskey that changed ________’s life was one that made the universe clearer to comprehend, yet more difficult to understand.

*replace ______ with main character’s name

I looked down and there that son of a bitch was.

I knew I’d had one too many drinks when I looked down and saw his face.

When the liquor store clerk swore by this whiskey, I had no idea I’d be seeing God by the end of the night.

Even with time on my side, I couldn’t avoid my most trusted friend introducing me to my unknown arch nemesis in one cosmic collision.

“Not the fuzziest trace of a secret has been gleaned from my work; things change forever, light waxes, light wanes, and it is difficult to generate that darkest dark, because of the moon and the stars, and sometimes I hate them for it when I’m unhappy, but tonight, I’m sipping Kentucky straight from a short glass on my lover’s farm, where the sounds stretch across the darkness like brittle arms, and I do not watch to touch them, I am silent and fearful in a godless trance, in a mood-less stance, sitting and waiting for my eyes to adjust, while she’s hushing her dog which barks each time I cough–I need to do something else with my self and my life… right away and with gentleness.”

Well, look who found a drinkin partner!

Even before I met Him, I knew He was a homophobe, but that rarely stopped me.

Wow, I hear your son can walk on water, and all you can muster is to show up in the bottom of my glass of Jack Daniels?

Most people are familiar with the opening line to the famous Charles Dickens’ book, A Tale of Two Cities, but not too many people know the first sentence to my story, A Tale of Too Many Drinks.

You know what’s crazy?

The night I saw God at the bottom of my whiskey glass, my first thought was that I had been staring at a reflection of myself.

Things get a little shady when the sun goes down.

You see it wasn’t the loss of blood that was killing him but the God Damned arrhythmic dripping onto the cold tile that would be the end of him

I’ve found lots of things at the bottom of my glass–cigarette butts, hair, a ring–but I sure as Hell didn’t expect to see him there.

When I recognized the face staring back at me with mocking familiarity, I decided by the end of this night one of us would be dead.

God was the last thing I expected to see when I ducked into the Astronomer’s Lounge where my ex-wife Laura Lee was hustling drinks.

If only I believed in a deity, I could acknowledge what I knew I saw in my glass; that swirling, shimmering glow of light and mist that would not coalesce to form a face, much as the experience must have been for Moses when he supposedly accepted those tablets.

My brother calls me Ichabod, the half human half idiot.

Had I gone to my AA meeting that night, I would not have been drinking, would not have seen God at the bottom the whiskey glass, and would not have realized that if I was wrong about God, I may well have been wrong in my calculations concerning the potential collision of Earth with the rogue planet Sparta, and this story would have never been written.

The only thing I am certain of is that drinking whiskey has never helped me in life.

“Inside the sauce, there is no BOSS!” I heard myself spew loudly and drunkenly to the woman on my right.

In the beginning I had a drink, and then I drank some more, and there was God.

A famous atheist-astronomer, after a lifetime of rejecting God and searching out the mysteries of the meaning of the cosmos, glimpses God in the most unlikely of places, at the bottom of his empty whiskey glass, proving that God does indeed work in mysterious ways.

Oh, fuck me Agnes, I am in SO much trouble now.

As with everything else in my profession, I assumed until I had proof otherwise that what I was seeing was a trick of the light.

I doublechecked the brand on the bottle, to ensure I wasn’t drinking Old Burning Bush 120 proof.

The Roman Catholic in me gasped; the scientist in me theorized; the responsible adult in me placed the car keys on the kitchen counter.

There, there, there I unsteadily stood, under the stars that I hadn’t looked at yet tonight, but that I knew were there, boggling at the bourbon at the bottom of the glass I was barely holding, gazing at the slow-moving sad-faced visage of a God I didn’t believe in.

I guess I should start this by saying this was my third glass of Bushmills, usually about the time I start to notice a pronounced increase in my own genius.

I usually spend my summer nights locked in the house with my dusty books on the stars researching and theorizing their very existence, but that night was different.

Now He was staring back from the bottom of the whiskey glass; perhaps eye strain was the answer?

Best first sentence for a novel about a famous atheist-astronomer who one star-sprent summer evening glimpses God in the bottom of his whiskey glass.

Closing my eyes and taking a sip, the whiskey cures the pain, but as I open them longingly, god is before me. All I can think as the world swirls around me is, how did I get to this place?

The basic beliefs of ______ were altered as the image of God appeared one ordinary summer evening in his Whiskey glass.

Emission nebula IC 434 has never looked clearer, Henry thought, peering at it from his perch at Pine Mountain.

“No,” she said and pulled a candlestick from her handbag which he thought she might light with the flint of her teeth.

I’ve been to places unimaginable, but earthward of this whiskey glass proved he’s arguable.

As someone who has spent the better part of their adult life aimlessly scouring the cosmos, while making quite a name for myself at it, you can believe me when I tell you that the heavens have been abandoned and half of those celestial ornaments that you’re whimsically beaming all of your deepest wishes to are nothing but the glimmering residue of dead Goliaths that collapsed into themselves millions of years ago.

Of all the objects in the universe that were worthy of study, Charles inexplicably found himself studying his empty whiskey glass, as if he could find the answers to his deepest questions there. Why are we here, he suddenly, silently asked, staring as the last amber drops met and slid out to tease his mouth. A cynical laugh escaped him as he realised how absurd he must look, seeking existential truths in a glass. Then he shrugged, consoling himself with the thought that all of the years he had spent observing the constellations had never revealed any deep truths, so maybe he should turn his attention to a closer thing–a glass container for liquids.

The night Steward was murdered his front door was unlocked, just as it had been ever since his last mission to space.

Daniel sighed as he lowered his empty glass to the table. A good whiskey always comforted him, although why he needed consoling was puzzling. He was an astronomer of some repute, but the universe did not hold the answers he sought, nor did any religion. He picked up the glass again, staring intently into it, noting the many variations in the quality of his glass, mesmerized by the light refractions that revealed so much–a tiny, self-contained universe. Maybe he was tired of viewing the world from the large scale perspective of space and needed to focus on everyday objects for a change.

The Eyes told him that the Loving Image he saw below the liquid merrriment was more real than his greatest hateful objection.

What’s a man to do when everyone else’s Crutch, Pile of Crap, Sorry Explanation and ‘Loving-Father-My-Ass!’ shows up, for reals, at the bottom of a pitifully cheap glass of well whiskey?

And when he turned the glass over, God was no less there than when he first glimpsed Him winking up from the last dregs.

This latest ‘glimpse’ was now three flasks later and His returned gaze even more piercing than the first rejected moment they had exchanged eye contact.

Even if it weren’t true, any country song crooned about this moment would come off as sugary and full of hot air as cotton candy.

God was in no mood to be mocked.

So there he was back on the booze train where the stars gleamed just as before he quit the hooch where God was laughable and fame was a hoot and he believed he knew everything;that is until he bought some George Dickel from crazy Larry’s liquor mart to ease the pain of his fourth of July mishap and saw the alpha and omega in his Dick Dawkins
shot glass.

“Huh, I thought you’d be bigger.”

I believed that Earth is one trivial rock in billions of galaxies, that it takes 4.2 light years for the nearest star to reach its light to my surveying eyes, that most in the universe are invisible matter; but I never believed the God peering from the bottom of my whiskey glass.

It should have tipped me off when the whiskey began to taste like water, but it didn’t really sink in until Jesus H. Christ showed up IN the glass and proceeded to change it into wine.

As the warm August night had worn on and my eyes began to grow heavy from star gazing (and a little too much to drink), I began daydreaming that the man himself
was staring up at me from the bottom of my now empty whiskey glass; I knew this could not be.

As I raised the tumbler to my lips, I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. Taking in the faint smokey scent of the whiskey that reminded me of so many summers nights my father and I spent together gazing at the glimmering starlight of the night sky, I became aware of the crickets singing their sweet lullabies that carried through the gentle, but humid July breeze. The oak trees, that I had seen grow tall over the years, swayed softly as the Milky Way’s bright light cast a shadow across the open field. The world around me was alive.

Of all the things I thought I’d see in the bottom of my whiskey glass– ice, soap spots, tiny drops of whiskey clinging on for dear life– the eyes of God were dead last.

The sheen of the moon made a single star nary a sight at the cabin I had rented to rid myself of the fame hounds,but I had my whiskey to pour,sour mash I drank in a mug because I hid it from the wife who always accused me of pontificating when I’ve had a few and she’s the only washed up star I’ll be seeing tonight.

Looking back, [insert name] knew that it was a bad idea to throw that parking meter through the officer’s windshield.

The sheen of the moon made a single star nary a sight at the cabin I was renting to escape
the press and their papernazis who were eager for blood after a lackadaisical article
I wrote for a big time mag that had me being ridiculed even by NPR, but I had my real friend
whiskey, and my washed up star of a wife who was being as cold and distant as the real balls of gas, which to the media that’s what I had become.

“Watch you talking about Willis” kept repeating in my head that night which got me thinking I
am different strokes, and the tokes I was taking weren’t cutting it but the whiskey was calling Will, but the last time that bastard did me in,and I saw the inside of a drunk tank,but tonight I was going to see something astonishing that no substance I shat into my body
could provide in the haze of a high it was a face that peeled the scales from my eyes and I’ll
never be the same.

“What the fuck” I said out loud when I sharted to my atheist dog whom I had recently converted and was in no mood to be startled from his sleep high in the cascades on my first stargazing trip that summer where I packed light and had only an extra pair of skivies, but I was in the mood to say fuck it which I did and got a groan out of Dogstar and fuck Keanu Reeves band but I liked the name so I used it and if I’m shitting myself the first night I might as well break out the expensive whiskey and give a toast to Christopher Hitchens.

(Character’s name) closed his eyes for just long enough to regain some semblance of the clarity his mind would not grant him, preparing himself for another glance down into the glass the smokey amber liquid had occupied just moments before.

WARNING: Excessive consumption of alcohol impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause you to see a God you know doesn’t exist.

I saw many things while looking through glass, but there at the bottom of my. wiskey glass was the outline of someone i was a little less enthused to see.

I closed my drunken eyes, and looked back down into my cup, i couldn’t believe it, there HE was staring right up at me.

I never believed, not even when he showed up at the bottom if my wiskey glass, eyes taunting my godless soul.

Quite a poetically cruel crevice for a Maker to make His mark.

Holy water never quenched my thirst, whiskey did.

The infinite warm rays of Immortality and dissipating cold smoke of death are linked by a thin silk thread which is easily dissolved when you take your first sip of spirits.

I had given up looking for him across the universe, through stars, galaxies, and pulsars, when the whole time he was waiting for me here with ol’ Jack.

“Better pink elephants”, he slurred and smashed his glass to the patio in a spray of vampiric stars that stole their sparkle from an ironic evening sky.

The tall, thin, older gentleman spoke twice, “Whiskey, neat” when he sat down and then “I have become Death, destroyer of worlds” as he walked back out into the hot New Mexico sun.

I am going to send mine via email this time……

Jeff burst onto the porch in a Kramer-esque fashion, hoping to find logic in the stars as his whiskey splashed onto his favorite shoes.

Damnit!

God, why?

Astrology would seem more likely, but here it was: the one thing I thought I’d never find in all of my stargazing, gazing, ironically, right into my eyes.

I knew it had to be a joke, but I didn’t laugh anyways.

When we locked eyes, my heart stopped.

They say you go blind but mostly I just almost had a heart attack when it happened.

His punchlines are like getting punched in the gut.

Rimming the bottom of the glass, the whiskey replied back with a different reflection that only a spiritual man would recognize.

A runny nose explained the excessive saltiness of my twelve-egg omelet, but I could not reason my way into understanding what was staring up at me from the bottom of my whiskey glass.

“You look familiar but you’re full of shit,” Dr. Bernard Smelke mumbled to the whiskey soaked apparition at the bottom of his glass.”

When the worm that had slipped into his glass from the bottle of tequila started reciting William Blake, Joe Scientist re-evaluated his position as a rational atheist.

What the hell… here goes!

Holy chemical chance, Batman!… Who the hell is this freaky looking white-haired bearded man at the bottom of my whiskey glass?

After several whiskeys, a godlike apparition appeared at the bottom of my glass… of course, I was hallucinating since god is just a mythic conjecture created by small-minded, insecure people who refuse to be responsible for their life decisions.

“Goddammit! Is it possible the Devil is in charge here and he’s fucking with my mind?” asked the drunken scientist to his empty den of shadows, before heaving his whiskey glass violently against the wall.

One drink and I saw him with another drink I might have seen heaven .

He had ordained the black-knit heavens with the power of the Maker, an off-hand snub to a deity he never expected to see drowned in the last sip of Maker’s Mark.

Did you know God is black if you’re drinking rum?

It is the burden of the human mind to make something out of nothing, to find Orion in the stars and the future in a cup of tea leaves, and so on an empirical level I was not surprised, not at all surprised, that the remaining slosh of whiskey at the bottom of my glass should assemble itself into a form more recognizable — what did surprise me, however, was the particular form those final droplets decided to take.

The tunnel of night shone strangely through the glass darkly, strange and rare because after such a week I was empty enough to no longer want anything.

I still don’t believe in God, but if the little genie wants to grant me three wishes for pouring him out of bottle, he can call himself anything he wants.

His heart felt the truth as he gazed upon the caramel colored liquid splashing against the walls of his glass, blurring the reflection of space and time, but his mind stubbornly refused the complete honesty that starred back at him telling him to give in at last.

Sirius Emerson knew he was seeing stars glinting off the lukewarm ice cubes hovering in his glass, or maybe a constellation of oak barrel particulates, he wasn’t sure, but twenty-three years of research wouldn’t allow this to be anything more than that.

It was a drink to end all drinks.

I could not find the hint to write directly on your blog, the contest line.

My first sentence would be :

By Jove ain’t that stunning ! said he, considaring his glass of Whiskey with incredibled eyes… This up-to-now undiscovered star floating brightly in my glass. I must be blessed by the scientists community.

It was just like any other night, in any other town, in any other shitty bar. And this was just like any other glass of Beam.

They say God helps those who help themselves, and Lord knows I’d continue to help myself if only Joe could stop hitting on the chesty blond at the other end of the bar long enough to see my empty highball glass.

Having never experienced the famous stupor of genuine inebriation in my entire adult life, I swallowed my sixth shot of whiskey that evening, and, staring into my tiny vessel of vanished liquor, saw His visage within the few remaining droplets, instantly discovering why all serious men of faith that I have thus far encountered have always seemed to me to be so goddamned, fucking drunk.

With no luck again finding my now famously theorized star, I looked down for what I thought would be my last drop of inspiration, but what I found myself gazing at instead was that very entity I knew to be false and impossible in my now empty whiskey glass!

There in front of my own starry, whiskey filled eyes appeared what I knew to be a supreme being in the last and very best place I never would have imagined, at the bottom of that empty little glass.

“Oh, my God” was just an expletive for me until I was shattered by the life changing experience of meeting God face-to-face in the depths of the glass of whiskey I held in my hand.

I refused him as a child and refuted him as a practicing astronomer, but now when He makes himself known to me at the bottom of my whiskey glass, I have to question everything I hold as fact.

I didn’t know if I wanted to spank what I saw in the bottom of my glass, or to praise it.

Harold stared into into his whiskey glass, mesmerized by the pintpoint reflection of a single distance star offering a spry and sacred dance but only for one person; only for him.

He’d been having a bad day.

His initial impulse was to ignore the doorbell and remain in bed, but just as he rolled over to bury his face far below his pillow and plunge once again into the freedom of sleep, the sharp stab of a bladder over-burdened with the excesses of the previous night tore through his gut, forcing him to accept, reluctantly, the inevitability of the day ahead.

There was a loud snap, and then he lost conciousness.

The bloated auditorium quivered as he considered the profound simplicity of the boy’s question–“What was your impression of last night’s Lyrid meteor shower?”–and his own answer, spoken before he’d caught himself or realized, as terrifying as it was true: “Graceful, I found it to be full of grace.”

“AHHHHH,” John exhaled as he slowly and deliberately placed his now empty glass on the table top in front of him, basking in and enjoying the warm burning taste as it went down his throat.

“AHHHHH,” John exhaled as he slowly and deliberately placed his now empty glass on the table in front of him, basking in and enjoying the warm burning taste as it went down his throat: but as his eyes lazily and inadvertently moved from the starry black sky above him to theglass he had just set down, he noticed something.(…)

Not quite depressed, but drinking heavily for some reason known only to those who experience similar feelings, perhaps of being lost, Johnny slammed his now empty glass on the table in front of him: and that’s when he saw what would change his life forever.

Though by now he was drunk, not quite depressed but drinking heavily for some reason known only to those who experience similar feelings, Johnny slammed the now empty glass down on the table in front of him; it made a noise louder than he had expected, and his eyes were drawn involuntarily to it because of it – and that’s when he saw something that sobered him up immediately.

“God dammit,” Jay said, slightly drunk, as he tore his eyes away from the starry black sky that had captured his attention and held it prisoner for an indeterminable amount of time, as it had so many times before in his life: but as his eyes drifted, almost mechanically, towards the recently empty glass that now lay in front of him, he saw the very being whose name he had just uttered.

He gave me scabies, among other things, but what I remember most vividly about him is the tickling in my ear when he whispered in it.

If looks could kill, I’d be a serial murderer.

He sat down the whisky consumed by it’s emptiness, consumed by his emptiness. No amount of research could fill this undeniable void, which was now drowning him.

As I stared completely and utterly stunned at the nearly-empty bottom of my glass, I suddenly realized I was going to miss the days when I would only see double.

“Just a speck, just a speck, will make a day.” he grumbled to himself, life was quieter now that all he had to contemplate was the bottom of a glass of the devil’s drink.

Curiously, at least in hindsight, my first thought upon seeing Him was not one of great spiritual revelation, imbued with divine enlightenment; nor was it of the expected scientific approach, a query of ‘how are you so small? And how do you breathe down there?’- but instead, rather simply, an idle musing that the freckles on God’s nose are in exactly the same formation as the stars of Coma Berenices.

A galaxy was my temple, its stars my scripture, nebulae my sacrament; and booze was my salvation.

“Almighty Zarquon!” Martin thought as he finished the last drops of his whiskey and squinted at the bottom of the glass, “I’ve devoted my life to proving there is no god and here he appears in the bottom of my high-ball, that old bastard!”

I do not have time for the irrational endeavors of my peers and colleagues, and nor do I exhibit any sort of patience for their constant theological babble.

Perhaps it was a mark of exactly how famous I had become if even God himself was stooping to such desperate measures to get in contact with me; after all, he could have phoned.

Despite the thousands of awe inspiring swirls of gas and energy he took to gazing during the course of the evening, never once had he supposed an omniscient hand in their creation.

When an astronomer confuses the butt end of his telescope with the mean end of a bottle he can do one of two things: turn off Brooks and Dunn and sleep it off, or keep going till he faces God.

The simple act of drawing a bubble bath twice a week for his daughter jettisoned George’s mind into the dark matters of his work.

Their eyes met just as his glass made the heavy clink on the hard counter that only an empty whiskey tumbler can make and she knew something had changed.

He looked up from his shimmering reflection, swaying in the bottom of the glass like a drunken sailor in a amber fog, just fast enough to catch the bartender switch his Holier than Thou scowl to his usual At Your Service sycophantic leer which rankled him just enough to ask, “Am I supposed to spend my one day of rest listening to all of them believers bleat at me?”

“It’s hard enough making a living as an astronomer with all those long, fancy galaxy names WITHOUT being dyslexic!”, he griped to the non-attentive back of the afternoon bartender before dropping his gaze back down to his glass where he was surprised to see a dog!

Because a whiskey and water is just that, he studied the glass in his hand to see what banged against his teeth after tipping it to his mouth, and saw a bullet.

The Mysteries of the world, the endless improbabilities of creation these are the things viewed by those of us who challenge ideas, ideas such as creation and existence, ideas that one timeless moment, one sudden reflection, one wonder filled and terrible realization can permanently shatter and set in motion events great and powerful, that will change the world.

The fine crystal glass trembled in his clenched fist as he glared up at the night sky, but he could still see those infinite black pupils beneath a swirl of amber liquid and he knew there was no escape.

And there, under the brim of glass and spirits, beneath the reflection of stars and moons, regardless of whether he cared or not, there he was: face to face with the God of gods.

“Bottoms up” had never held such signifigance, I thought, as my nervous hands, having dropped the raised whisky glassand were now frantically adjusting the controlson the giant lens to the spot just to the right of Betelguese where I had seen something incredible through the bottom of the empty glass.

The universe is a cruel, unsolvable problem.

The chemical components of ethanol are carbon, hydrogen and oxygen — the building blocks of life and the closest thing I’d found in life to the Holy Trinity.

I never had a crisis of faith; similarly, I never questioned my gender. There was no doubt – I am a man. No doubt at all. There is no god.

Distance is relative. An hour by plane, a day by car, a month on foot, and an eternity in space. She was just across town, but still, the uncrossable gap.

Someone once said that nothing was impossible, only improbable. I wish I could remember who. Then I could find him and kick the shit out of him and maybe get my life back into some semblance of sanity.

Never having waited for Godot, or God, for that matter,________ was dumbfounded when the latter put in a convincing appearance that July evening, winking boldly up through the caramel depths of his Jameson, Gold Reserve.

Do you really love all your sheep equally, or just those born into your herd?

The glass shattered to the ground, as I stared at it with the thoughts running through my mind, “What the heck? It has to be a trick. Just my tired mind”.

She was dead, and as she peeled her sticky eyes open and popped her shoulder back into place, she realized that she was only one who could know.

Bubble bath reference explanation from previous entry. FYI “Our universe would be viewed as one bubble, if you will, in a big cosmic bubble bath with each bubble being universe upon universe upon universe” ~ Brain Green http://www.npr.org/2011/10/28/141800410/brian-greene-explains-the-fabric-of-the-cosmos

All of my brilliance, my persistence, everything I was known for and all that I had worked for – pooled around the face of God at the bottom of my whiskey glass. The face I had denied time and again, staring back at me through droplets of whiskey.

Well… shit.

I need to lay off the sauce!

I’d relied on the stars for too long, but like the sparkling floaties that sometimes dance in my eyes, they eluded me… when it came to wisdom; then there He was, possibly all along, in the very substance that helped me to forget Him… so long ago.

Slighting his ceaseless hours spent surveying the shifting, yet notably unchanging celestial bodies, appeared a face of ironic acquiescence that remained curiously constant amidst the ebb of his whiskey.

He looked up from the shot glass with both shock and purpose, the shock was seeing god and the purpose was if he ever wrote about it he wan’t going to use the word “amber”.

The greatest tragedy of mankind, he thinks, is that we have learned nothing since the time of Icarus.

Jesus Christ!

The astronomer decided to call it a night after gazing at thousands of brilliant stars in the summer nights’ sky and after sipping a few too many whiskeys — the last one of which had lumps of ice curiously morphing into some other-worldly, almost God-like form — which sent the famous atheistic man staggering into bed, falling into restless, disturbing sleep with fitful dreams that questioned his beliefs.

Even in whiskey there is proof…should my maker have any less?

Dripping in blood soaked stars that no man could number, the face in his whiskey glass was the star, the one he’d pursued his whole life then the God he’d run from forever and he hadn’t yet had a taste of the liquid now blurring his vision.

“I rather don’t trust this God fellow or his minions; appearing in my whiskey glass does not proffer a kingly presence Sir but then again neither does pissing one’s pants.”

“On more than one occasion the drink has led me to see that if there is a God, I am he, however that night the whiskey was God and his face was in the bottom of my glass – it was he I knew it; hummm last drop, oh well…down the hatch it went – everything went to hell from there.”

The whiskey burned my throat, the presence – the face starring back at me from the bottom of my glass burned my brain and everything I’d believed until that moment; “hello” I lied.

The star-sprent summer sky slid down his sultry, tight throat, through the glass that gnawed at his now gaping grief.

“Alright buddy that’s enough – time to go home or back outside to stare at my stars but you can’t stay here or where you’ve been all these years – I’ve had about all the fun with you that one God can stand; you’re starting to piss me off; and I can use that big burly bartender over there any way I want to; got it?”

Though his educated, trained mind screamed at him that it was impossible, that he had been to space, that he had seen above the clouds, there was nobody else he could fathom it to be; for His hand was grasping the pale, slight hand of his departed daughter, and his daughter had surely gone to heaven.

Though his educated, trained mind screamed at him that it was impossible, that he had been to space, that he had seen above the clouds, there was nobody else he could fathom it to be; for His hand was grasping the pale, slight hand of his departed daughter, and his daughter had surely gone to heaven.

His whiskey-soaked mind hears the whisper again- how can you deny me still? and gazing into the glass he sees the starry firmament reflected from above and at last, at last, sees his God-barren life of fame built on the knowledge of the stars as only the life of sinful pride and arrogance estranged from the Truth of the heavens.

“All these years I’ve been searching the cosmos. Searching for things. Truth. Knowledge. The cold, hard, logical facts that define our universe. So what better monkey wrench in the works would it be to have God himself pay me a visit in my whiskey glass?”

I’ve spent my whole god-damned life looking at the sky… and does He show up there, where you’d expect him?

It most definitely wasn’t an ice cube.

I usually can tell when I have had too much to drink and perhaps this time was one of those; for as I looked down into the depths of my glass, the amber liquid filling the bottom of the tumbler by less than a quarter-inch and reflecting the stars above me in the navy-colored sky, I saw the face of the being who I felt did not exist, could not exist, and it changed my perception of the world forever.

On a Friday night, sitting by himself on the redwood deck attached to his kitchen, halfway through a handle of Jack Daniels, his wife having eloped yesterday with his once trustworthy research partner Amory, Frederick swirled the film of amber liquid against the ice chunks in the bottom of his tumbler in a vain attempt to obliterate the image that seemed permanently ensconced there.

In the black hole of my existence, I found God in the bottom of a whiskey glass.

In the black hole of my existence, I found God at the the bottom of my whiskey glass.

I found faith, hope and God at the bottom of two fingers of Jack.

How ironic that in this vast universe I should find faith, hope and God at the bottom of two fingers of Jack.

Love, hate, fear, depression, and life. I knew those were real, I knew they were related but some higher being? I must be seeing myself at the bottom of my glass. Perhaps it is a deeper part of me.

I always saw myself at the bottom of the glass but this time it was different. It felt like it was a deeper part of me, whole and knowing and complete.

Everybody I know puts god in a box, a church, a denomination or an organized religion but I have seen the stars and planets far beyond the reach of man where there are no boxes or churches to be found. I have looked far and wide for evidence of a higher being but finally I found it looking back at me from within the corners of my soul.

Deep within the eyes, the secrets of the soul are revealed.

“If there is a God, then watch me slide this full shot glass of JD out from the bottom of this here pyramid without letting the empties crash,” said Luke as the crowd gathered around and started placing bets.

After seeing Elena again, it took Luke five shots of Jack Daniels to steady his shaking hands, but only one bullet to put the fear of God in him forever.

I am A BIG DOG for You I said.

How does the hope up take its own the dark night already.

“Shit”, he swore to himself, “The bottle’s out.”

He looked down at the empty glass and his eyes widened, “Shit, how many have I had?”

‘So,’ he mumbled to himself, peering into the Dalmore dregs and scraping ragged fingernails over a gray-speckled beard, ‘the little fucker’s been down there the whole time.’

The bar was messy, but the whiskey was neat, and after the night he’d had that was enough.

Through what i had previously come to call “rationality” or “logic” and perhaps even blatant defiance i have spent my ____ decades of life in denial of your existence, but it’s funny how a long and seemingly routine day of work and boundless drinking can end with a man asking himself “what if?” as he gazes upon his own reflection at the end of a tall glass of whiskey isn’t it GOD? (staring at his own reflection and finding the possibility of “GOD” within HIMself)

I had studied infinate points of light overhead for years, but the one I had denied for so long was suddenly staring at me from the bottom of my bottle.

Time had passed since I was thinking about you, how to explain the brilliance of the star who so generously gives me the light, beauty, magic dancing in my old Scotch whiskey,alluring movement from side to side and fleetingly touches the rim of my glass down to the bottom, lying on one time looking at me and waiting, is that you? Take me back to my innocence childhood I just realised ,I was trying to explain, to proove you’re not exist I got lost,I m all alone,but I know… I know everything it’s just one more little star !came to dance for me.!

He wore his religion like a cheap suit

“Holy merde those bloody women were right on both counts, there is a divinity it is a Goddess and now she is here soaked in whiskey and none too happy with me.”

Admittedly, Brett’s B.A.C. level was hovering somewhere near 0.08 when he decided that everything in his 60-year career was a load of shit.

Peering up from the bottom of my whiskey
glass with benevolent and loving eyes, he
said,” _______, I kept waiting for you to come
to me, but I see you needed more proof”.

Well would you look at that.

The first thought in my mind was that I’d had one too many.

There wasn’t a time before meeting her when I considered drinking a veritable hobby.

‘Never hand over free advice,’ I kept reminding myself; neglecting to take my own advice, like usual.

And then He disappeared, leaving my beliefs and my whiskey forever tainted.

I was never a believer in apocalyptic theories, but my whiskey doesn’t lie.

The taunts of Bible-thumpers were never so lound as they are when drowned in Whiskey

I’ve found God at the bottom of my whiskey glass, Deus Ex Maker’s Mark if you will.

He spent his days looking to the heavens to disprove God; it was only when he looked down at his empty glass that he found him.

Peering into the bottom of his glass, Frederick realized he had consumed a bit more liquid sedative than his usual, nightly dose; for suddenly, the Big Dipper had taken its position in the heavenly skies, appearing to him as a big question mark.

As I rest on a summers eve end with a dark glass of liquid in my hand searching the stars ,as I have many of nights, i discover at the bottom of said glass a truth that a God Ive denied for so long may actually exist.

With my glass turned up delivering the last drop of whiskey to my lips, I see….God?!?

Questions of infinity, the quantum singularity answered in the form of a cat hair stuck to an ice cube.

During the most profound moments of faith in my life, I have looked up.

At Midnight Mass when I was five, I threw a fit and ran out of the church into a clear, cold, and starry night.

By the time he was forty, he had many followers who considered him the father of modern astronomy.

I’ve never been an expert on God or all things holy, but I’m pretty sure my whiskey habit would be frowned upon.

My mother died when she was eight years old.

His weary gaze drifted from lone star to constellation to the dregs of his bourbon as he tipped his glass back, only to sharpen in shock as the flickering candlelight momentarily caught the awesome visage of God.

I must admit that I was feeling somewhat smug as I tossed back the rest of my glass and spat, “What!? Is that it?” but my victory shattered and tinkled to the floor, forgotten, as I felt the blood drain from my face and into my empty cup, now staring back at me.

Oh, there you are.

Man does not live by bread alone, particularly when the Lord is lurking at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

When Walter caught himself in an absent state fixated on the bottom of the whiskey glass,
he understood that after a lifetime of heavenly searches for the origins of matter all the open interpretations of the sky meant nothing.

The frothy brain bubbles caused by the cheap whiskey seemed to be seeping out of my head and sticking to his beard at the bottom of the empty glass.

She was fed up with the hours he spent faithfully staring at the sky.

Playing hide-and-seek among the sprinkled stars, I found him at l last, winking through the lens of a whiskey glass.

(Blasted typos!)

Playing hide and seek among the sprinkled stars, I found him at last, winking through the lens of a whiskey glass.

World renowned astronomer and atheist ______ sat and pondered mind in relation to the cosmos and material existence while contemplating the stars and sipping a top shelf whiskey/scotch as he/she spent most of his/her summer evenings for most of his/her adult life and a life-altering event occurred when, with an introspective and contemplative gaze through the blurred-bottom of his/her glass and with a crystal clarity he/she experienced God not externally but internally and has come to the realization that God is pure mind; the first mind, the enlightened mind.

(Annoying revisions and variations):

Playing hide-and-seek among the sprinkled stars, he found God at last, winking through the lens of a whiskey glass.

The science of the stars was no match for the wisdom waiting at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

Of all the whiskey glasses, of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, in all the cosmos, you walk into mine

It was a calm, humid evening and the whiskey was making it hard to decipher what mattered.

His blood-shot eyes spilled into the face of the blood-shot spirit, splashing it all back at him from the bottom of his glass.

His glass empty, he pondered what it might be like to drink from the moon; which appearing sliced open, splashed its blood across the sky.

The day I died, I wished I’d never been born.

I watched the explosion with a mixture of fear, fascination and foreboding.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust as she stepped out into the fresh morning air.

The air around me was thick and had a strong scent of whiskey when I glimpsed something I never thought existed, let alone seen.

A bottom of clear glass was never as cold the night I dropped it out of my heating hands.

I, Niels J Herman, among so many other ordinaries, don’t expect, and certainly don’t want, any somebody turning up in any sort of empty glass.

The thing about windshield wipers is that they are, for the most part, dependable; shot glasses, however, and the glimmering gods that appear in that last drop of liquid as you press it against your lips–as your car swerves into the ditch–are not.

There’s a moment that comes sometime toward the end of a tumbler, when the amber hue has wrestled the cold masses of ice to its exhaustion, and so dies, fled to the ether; though still liquid, the tumbler’s contents become translucent. So much so, one might be surprised by what becomes visible.

Snickering at the irony, I poured another drink.

An astronomer, an atheist and a priest walked into a bar…

(just kidding) 😉

He masturbates at the place where cold sea meets the frozen land his people call Kalaallit Nunaat.

It is with aspirations for revelation that we have squinted outward at the night sky; peering ever deeper through the whirling of constellations, hoping to part that twinkling cosmic Rueda de Casino to glimpse the face of its líder.

Get out of there now!

“The stars redeem the blackness of space while the face of God redeems the blackness of spirit, but neither the stars nor God redeem the man who will not see beyond himself;” said his whiskey glass.

Oh good god, would this nightmare never end!

Through a whiskey glass darkly, at last he saw the light.

For twenty-five years, after supper, the atheist’s wife had brought him what she had always playfully called a finger of grog; but alas the joke was on him, every time he looked into the glass all he saw was a finger of God.

Never once did he question his beliefs until this drunken moment.

As he sat with the whiskey glass held tightly in his left hand his eyes rolled back in his head and the events of his past began to play like a movie in his head.

“You have some fucking nerve showing your face now!” (name here) screams loudly as he stares into the bottom of his empty whiskey glasss.

Life never did really make any sinse, why would would it now.

It was over, nothing really mattered anymore, where would he go from here?

Admired and respected by so many but at this moment drunk and weak he doubts every thought he ever had.

“People choose their beliefs based on their expeinces” this experience was one he wouldnt forget.

Who knew his name was Jack?

I don’t trust reflections.

Space, the final frontier…

(just kidding)

It was like waking up to a dream, or maybe to a nightmare.

There are some things that are so profound they rock you to your core, like watching a star wink out or finding something you never thought existed at the bottom of your whiskey glass.

Hot, half blind anyway from the eyepiece which needed more adjustment than he’d had time to throw at it, even before the hootch arrived, it just had to be the headache talking; couldn’t be the glass: “Yeah, we’ll, I don’t believe in you either.”

His whole face hurt; the glass would leave a mark he would never forget, and the stars and tweety birds that circled his head didn’t clear when he started hearing voices: heavenly voices.

Rolling her eyes, yeah, yeah, and I’m a rocket scientist, we should soooo hang—“You do know that when you start talkin’ to people who ain’t there, I gotta cutcha off, dontcha?”

The Word of the Lord came unto me, and yea, though I fled through the valley of the shadows of science, of the night sky, of cheap women and booze, He found me anyway, and delivered His Message unto me, that I may give it to those I despise, the foolish believers who think He exists, which I do not.

Death comes quickly but not so, redemption – neither comes when they are most desired and tonight the face of God threatened eternity without death or redemption.

The ambrosia colored whiskey swirled slowly as he pushed through the doors out of the observatory and onto the outer balcony, his hands shook slightly with exhaustion, drops of whiskey spilling onto his fingers, and his brow furrowed, deep in thought.

“Isn’t drinking a sin or something?”

He wasn’t anything I pictured him as. Well — as I’d seen him depicted in movies and pictures and such. God’s such a stereotype. But here I was, staring at him. I held the whisky glass closer to my face.
“Err, sorry,” I said, referring to the drops left, “How long have you been in there?”

I felt as though I should be surprised that there was a small mouse in my glass. I wasn’t though. I was more surprised when I lifted the glass up, blinked, and discovered that it wasn’t a mouse at all.

I slumped down next to my telescope, and drained my glass. I rested my head against the bannister and tried to swallow the lump in my throat. I looked down at my glass, hoping that by some miracle it had refilled itself. To my surprise, I experienced an entirely different miracle instead.

“I don’t believe in God,” I said to the man sitting on the edge of my whisky glass.
“Oh,” he said, nodding his head, “Must be an illusion then. That would make sense.”

“God Almighty,” I sighed, cradling my head in my hands. Of course, the one time I actually took the “Lord’s” name in vain, I summoned him into my empty glass.

“I had too much to drink last night,” he said, closing his eyes tight. But when he reopened them, sitting before him was a figure known by all, even the nonbelievers. The room spun, and he threw up onto the floor.

Lots of folks look for answers in the bottom of a glass, God help those who find ’em.

I hate whiskey and I don’t even believe in God — but here is she is — looking up at me with pursed lips and a crooking left eyebrow, as if to say: “Sucks you spent the whole summer on that NSF grant, huh Dave?”

In all my years as an astronomer, I had never seen God in the heavens; turns out, I was looking in the wrong place.

I had always agreed with Laplace that God is an unnecessary hypothesis; now, that hypothesis was staring up at me from the bottom of my whiskey glass.

When he starts seeing the face of God in the bottom of his whiskey glass, it’s time for any good atheist to call it a night.

A lifetime of running had left me wanting, crying, begging and now drinking – they say that you can never outrun yourself, but now I am beginning to wonder if I will ever outrun Him either…

Some say that heaven lies among the stars, that it shines as bright as the sun and as white as the moon, but I caught a glimpse of heaven and I learned the truth; I learned that heaven sinks and floats, that it’s cold and lonely, I know… I know, because I glimpsed The Almighty, he was there, sinking towards the bottom of my whiskey glass.

It took just a tumbler of Tennessee single barrel, no rocks, to wash away the simpler days of my life that night.

He worshiped at the altar of atheism, only to be baptized at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced that drunken afternoon; not the repetitive drinks, not the dreams id been having, not even the rings of Jupiter outside my port window the last time I was in space.

Whiskey became “His” key.

My glass clicked against the telescope’s eye piece as I drew it back, hands shaking, and stared at Cepheus in the Western sky in a half-hearted attempt to ignore my convictions.

It was one of those “what-the-hell” kinda nights, the kind I like to fill with Willie Nelson and bottle of whisky.

Night sky full of stars, belly full of whiskey, and a glass full of something I never believed in.

After a night of hopeless wonder staring at the stars, I reached for my glass of whiskey and saw the Truth staring up at me from the bottom; it was the eyes of the Living God, gazing up at me with love and renewed hope like I had never seen before.

“Clink!” The familiar sound of a shot glass hitting the table struck a divine chord in the lonely star-gazer’s heart.

Finding God is analogous to your last sip of whiskey: grimacing and swilling it around does not make it any easier to swallow.

Atlas shrugged and God came tumbling from the heavens, landing serendipitously at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

Given the image before me as I peered at the face shimmering in the last drops of whiskey in my glass, I wondered if my glass would be considered half empty or half full.

I looked down into my glass of whiskey, full of defeat and what I saw completely shocked me; staring back up at me was the Face and Aura of the Living God.

On what should have been a hazed filled night of drunken stars and blackened rage into an almost empty glass, the image slowly formed in the brown liquid forcing a lump in his throat and a sobering consciousness all to aware of what this all meant.

After enduring another long night hiding at the observatory while knowing he was haunted, hunted, and probably drunk, John spotted the tsunami rushing in and with that miracle realized that God must exist.

Once you’ve quivered behind a telescope and seen the sun fling tongues of fire, you expect the God of the original Pentecost to be bigger — and, perhaps, to not smell so much like Wild Turkey.

They say God works in mysterious ways; to that I say, God works through Jim Beam.

Turning his gaze downward from the heavens, he met his maker at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

The whiskey stones had melted.

He was man of science and sound logic, whose whiskey stones were melting before his eyes.

Tonight I found God in the bottom of my whiskey glass.

He pointed to the sky, “Oh you like that?” I was about to answer but he held his hands up, Dickel dripping from his toga, “Let me uh…wring out my beard and I’ll tell you about it – crazy story.”

I always thought I had life figured out, I knew who I was and what I believed, but one night that all changed; that was the night God talked to me through the bottom of my whiskey glass.

They said God moves in mysterious ways, I found myself agreeing with them the night He moved in my whiskey glass.

People drink to fill a void, and people said to me I try to drink God into my life; well if it wasn’t for my whiskey glass I wouldn’t have found Him so maybe they were on to something.

I study stars, and I believe that there is a strictly scientific reason they are where they are, no divine interference involved if you ask me; this theory was tested by the most non-scientific way though, a conversation with God in a glass of whiskey.

There he was.

Thine eyes thought they have seen everything in the galaxy but, it took the bottom of a whiskey glass to show that, all this time these eyes have been ….nowhere

Had he drank that much?

My life is over.

And they say the best hiding place is right under your nose…

Like a 14-year-old finding Santa under the tree on Christmas Eve.

Why now?

This is infact the definition of irony.

Am I to believe what I’ve just seen?

Thine eyes thought they have seen everything in the galaxy, all this time these eyes have seen….nowhere

Thine eyes have seen everything in the galaxy,all this time thine eyes have seen nowhere

Coughing, choking, gagging, puking, laughing, shitting myself… all things i did that night when, I, a diehard “you know there is no god you weak minded pussy” type of attheist, realized through a blanket of whiskey-stinking-fog that I had been arguing religion with an entity that had appeared in the bottom of my glass who i had just realized with disturbingly great surety was the Lord God Almighty Him/Her-Self, and had just told me it was time to go to work.

As if in answer to the somber celestial silence, the heavens opened mischievously through a twinkling portal at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

There is a fine line between drunkenness and insanity; tonight I think I might have crossed it.

And they say astronomers are connected to the stars.

It was the night that the moon and the stars stopped working.

His face was hard to see through three fingers of whiskey and a lifetime of disbelief, but eventually his attention would be drawn away from the stars to where he’d be waiting.

Was the tear gathering momentum down his cheek one of joy, anger, or fear from his unmistakable and unthinkable view of God giving him the finger from the bottom of his glass?

I felt all of the blood in my body rush to my head as if a natural defense system had just been engaged, flooding my mind with the nutrients it would need to wrap around what had possibly just ambushed every non-belief I have ever trusted as the cold hard truth.

I was saved by salvation that night, a cold dead night with a glass half empty of the devil’s drink in one hand, inhabiting the farthest place from heaven that I had ever tread.

He was told that after 7 days the body would fully adjust

I used to challenge the congregation

The battle he had experienced that day, the voices he heard, and the forces that valiantly fought on each side were gone

Only after the inebriated atheist sold his soul to the devil (it was a short sale), he learned that God had the power to waive his bar tab (tips not included).

I heard that distant voice in my head asking myself: “Where did I put my pants?”

“He said he was here to save me.”

He didn’t look half-bad, for a man of his age.

There was more of heaven to be found in the depths of a whiskey glass than in the sobering science of the stars.