Monday, September 13, 2010

God Is

Anything past the title of this posting will severely reduce God to a word, an idea, an image. Even the title God Is claims that God Is, eliminating the possibility that maybe God isn't. Even talking about God as if It were a separate being constricts God to being nearly infinite. God is everywhere EXCEPT in the space in which I inhabit, right? But if that were true then would that mean God is cut off from the physical universe? If God is not the whirlwind and not IN the whirlwind, then where and what is God?

So if God is not here nor there, where is God? God is also commonly spoken as a Spirit dwelling among the individuals of a community (wherever two or three are gathered...) or as the message itself delivered by the community, the Word Incarnate. In Islam and Christianity, God is portrayed as Creator, something entirely different and separate from its creation which has a drive or calling to reach out to the divine. As a highly curious species, we're always reaching out to discover, examine, and honor that which is bigger than ourselves. What I constantly find myself returning to is God as a verb, primarily, Love. In Hebrew, YHVW isn't a noun but a form of the Hebrew verb "to be". To me, when I see Love and Compassion in action I see God Is-ing into infinite forms of creative expressions and manifestations. The most creative and loving thing two people can do together is bring in a new creation, a new being into existence. And then that being brings forth another and another while simultaneously interacting and interconnecting with beings already present. Our existence is not solely for the purpose of procreating but to enjoy our brief blip, our cosmic hiccup, while we are here. I'm not talking about hedonism but enjoying the borrowed breath the Tao has granted us and then passing it on to someone else to enjoy.

So when I speak of God (which I commonly refer to as the Divine) I don't speak of the vengeful Judge of the Sky ready to damn or save based on minor infractions; I speak of the transcendent and all-encompassing Source of all, God as Love. But of course mankind has been struggling to define love as long as they have tried to define God. Sometimes words are unnecessary and muddles that which simply Is. I find it best to simply Be.

5 comments:

Don said...

Seems like we are always attempting to define Source (myself included). I guess it is a natural thing for man to do, even though I really feel that it is impossible to name the unnameable or to describe the infinite.

captron52 said...

God in all, as all, is all. Or so I believe

Sabio Lantz said...

I get the following:
a) feeling of participating in the universal (the divine)
b) the feeling of love in the heart that reaches out all over

But to call something a "God" seems weird and very culturally constrained and choking. To universalizing love so that "Love" makes desolate planets and galaxies seems weird and very anthropocentric.

I just can't resonate with any of that. But that is me.

Eruesso said...

@Sabio

But to call something a "God" seems weird and very culturally constrained and choking.

Isn't it though. That's the point I was trying to get across.

To universalizing love so that "Love" makes desolate planets and galaxies seems weird and very anthropocentric.

This posting describes the "closet Pantheism/Panentheism" in me. God as Reality itself. Of course whenever we spoke on this topic in the classroom Christians would always ask why God, err...Reality, would feel the need to manifest itself as murderers and rapists, or in this case desolate planets. If God as the source of infinite possibilities (and universes, dimensions, etc.) were to manifest itself as Reality it must manifest itself using all possibilities. Of course I'm new to all of this and don't firmly believe any of it, I just find all very interesting.

Sabio Lantz said...

@ Erusso

"Closet Panentheists" --> are those legal? (smile)
I suggest you keep "don't firmly believe any of it" and just leave it in the science fiction world of Pandora with all the blue people communing with nature. Cute, but it ain't true in any real, testable or logical sense.

But feeling connect and loving, now THAT is real, valuable and testable.

Smiling but sincerely smiling.
-- Sabio

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