Return to sender: address unknown

When you are up at 2 a.m. mulling things over, unwilling to call it a day, what better activity is there to fill the empty minutes than leafing through the newspaper from your “home country?”

One lead story today from the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza *addresses* the issue of undeliverable mail. Not just any mail, but specifically – letters written to God. It appears that such letters all make their way to a postal station that processes undeliverable mail. Here, mail to God is sorted into two piles: “return to sender,” or “place in trash can.” Even where there is an address (typically: “heaven”), the postal service ignores it.

Is this fair? Mr. Nawrocki, the postmaster of this particular station, *believes* that it's not. He notes that letters to Saint Nicholas are forwarded to a place in Finland (have we really established that this is where Santa vegges in the off season?). He is suggesting that perhaps some organization should take on the task of dealing with God’s mail and provide answers to some of the questions posed by the writers.

Now wait a minute. I’m not sure if the NYT Ethicist would pat Mr. Nawrocki on the back for that idea. I mean, if I were to write something to a God, I’d want it to go to a God, and if no such Holy Body claimed my letter, a substitute NGO would not do. Of course, being technologically on top of things, I’d first get the correct address. Googling hasn’t gotten me one thus far, but I haven’t bothered going beyond the first screen. [A preliminary search also revealed that God does not have email, but then, the posting on this is ten years old. Things may have changed.]

I wonder, btw, what the postal rates should be – international overseas? Domestic? Free of charge? These are difficult questions. I am not surprised that the newspaper ran it as one of the lead stories for the day.