transcendence-2
Explanation
This comic plays on the idea that God is picky about what qualifies as a "transcendent moment" — and that there's a competitive hierarchy even in spiritual experiences.
In the first panel, a man prays: "Dear God, I want transcendence." God responds dismissively: "Not just any transcendence. I want a moment so transcendent it makes everyone else's transcendent moments look like dirt."
God then identifies what he considers the most transcendent moment in the universe: it belongs to "a pious widow named Mary Gorham, in a church in Maine, at about three-quarters of the way through services." The implication is that God has ranked every transcendent experience ever had and keeps track of the winner.
In the afterlife panel, the joke is completed. Nobody in heaven knows about Mary's record-setting transcendence — she "just sort of muddled through and nobody even noticed." Meanwhile, someone tells the original man: "I hear you had a total of 97 moving moments, loved your loves, and did cute things." God responds: "God, I hate it up here."
The comic satirizes the human tendency to turn even spiritual enlightenment into a competition. The idea that transcendence could have a "high score" is inherently absurd — the whole point of transcendence is that it's beyond measurement. The final punchline, with God being bored in his own heaven while the truly transcendent person goes unrecognized, suggests that the universe's scoring system for spiritual experiences is as arbitrary and unsatisfying as any other ranking system.