Dear All of Us,
How tall is is God?
Does he have a moustache?
For that matter, is God a he?
If not, what about the moustache?
Pretty silly for sure.
Way more silly,
even sacrilegious,
is any attempt
to define God.
It's like trying
to nail down the wind.
The ancient Israelites knew that.
They referred to God as
Utterly Other
Augustine, genius that he was,
knew that:
"Si comprehendis, non est Deus" -
"If you understand, it isn't God."
The Western Church, though,
has the naughty habit
of claiming to define God.
It's actually idolatry,
a control thing,
setting up its own version of God,
fashioning attributes to its design,
then absolutizing them,
playing God itself in the process.
It's a role doomed to failure.
Even worse, it misleads and deprives
those trying to be faithful.
It scrambles and distracts
their awareness, their
Soul Focus.
It turns religion into
an idea factory -
buy in and you're safe and saved -
doctrines and dogmas blocking
mystery, awe, union.
God is not contained in concept.
God is not contained period.
"Behold, heaven
and the highest heaven
cannot contain You,
how much less
this house I have built."
Solomon
Temple Dedication Prayer
I Kings 8:27
Faith isn't adherence to statement.
Faith is freefall into ineffable mystery.
"Our awareness of God is a syntax
of the silence in which our souls
mingle with the divine,
in which the ineffable in us
communes with the ineffable
beyond us."
Abraham Heschel
I Asked For Wonder
( p. 9 )
That "mingle" is like a three year old
snuggled up in a comfy chair
with her grandfather
as together they read a picture book.
That happy, secure little girl
has no awareness
of her grandfather's
favorite wine, portfolio,
political party, blood pressure, or DNA.
Such is not a concern.
Ever so better, that little girl
and her grandfather are together,
merged in a mutuality of loving oneness,
mingled in the mystery of shared love.
It's like that with God and us -
union not definition.
We do not connect with the head.
We do wondrously connect with the heart.
We just can't define God.
God wouldn't be God if we could.
We simple don't have
the wattage to throw that light.
Fussing over articulations
that attempt, and fail, to nail
God's make up and behavior
draw us off center:
- is God a person (or three),
a motion, an energy,
an "it," or what?
- does God predestine us?
- does God grant us free will?
- why does God permit (cause?)
tragedy and pain?
- why does God allow those bad things
to happen to "good" (??? ) people
(like us??)?
- how can an Almighty God be limited
by being "humanized" in Jesus?
- where is the resurrected body of Jesus,
and for the Romans, that of
the assumed Mary?
Such and too many more dislocate
Soul Focus
That hurts our spiritual life
way more than
a dislocated shoulder
hurts our body.
Like that little girl
with her grandfather,
we do well to snuggle up with God,
experience God -
center to center,
commune ineffable to ineffable.
That's the union of free form prayer,
a life of shared presence,
a union.
Like that lovely little girl,
we can describe
a bit of what we experience.
Grandpa is big and he is funny.
After supper his tummy makes
a bunch of noises.
That's what sacred scripture,
the mystics and saints,
the traditions of our community
the study of theologians
do for us.
They tell us "about" God.
"About" references awareness
from around, not in.
It is like a poet sharing
the beauty of a tree
rather than trying
to peg its essence.
They share
the light and warmth
of a sun ray.
They do not capture
the essence of the sun.
Like poetry, our awareness
and experience of God
is best expressed
by analogy and metaphor
because we are dealing
with mystery,
the dearly ineffable.
Were I a name theologian
or churchman
(and they were all men)
back in the middle ages,
I would have put it like this
( using Latin of course!):
"Deus est Deus"
"God is God"
That's it!
Paragraph, indeed tome, period.
God is who, how, what God is.
God is not a nut for me to crack.
God is not an ocean I can scoop into
the bucket of my mind,
even if I'm impressed that
said bucket has a ten gallon capacity.
It just can't come within an infinity
of containing God.
Thank God!!
So, I set the bucket aside
as I get contained,
as I jump in and enjoy
one wonderful immersion,
mingled in the divine ocean.
In the Marvelous Mystery,
and so indebted to that
lovely, little three year old girl,
John Frank
******
Abraham Joshua Heschel:
A Prophetic Voice for Our Moment
Online via YouTube
May 13,2021
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May we all get lost
Mingled in Mystery
See you next week.
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