Where to look when you want to find God
Where do you look when you want to find God? Does God exist outside of religion?
When I was a child I was taught that the church was God’s House and so I had to watch how I behaved there.
There is nothing wrong with learning proper etiquette anywhere, but when the reason given is that it is God’s house then I am here to tell you it can confound your personal theology in ways never intended.
Because I grew up thinking that God had a street address I didn’t look for God in my own house.
I would look around my bedroom with its stuffed animals, stacks of books, and dustballs under the bed and compare it to “God’s house” with its red carpet and stained glass windows.
Clearly, that is why people needed to go to church every week and sometimes in between. That is if they wanted to see God.
What to look for
And then I wondered what exactly I was to look for if I wanted to see God.
In the stained glass window to my right was a shepherd with many sheep, including one whose attention was toward the room instead of toward the shepherd.
I wonder if that sheep had the same questions I did about where to look for answers.
As I got a little older I read that God is everywhere, in everything and everyone.
As I sat with my feet swinging back and forth from a pew that clearly wasn’t built for little people I began to study people.
God really couldn’t be in every person at the same time. Especially in Old man Jarvis.
He was so grumpy and often smelled of liquor. In church, no less! I was told to be nice to Jarvis but to stay away from him.
And what about Ethyll, with the tightly braided grey hair wound in a knot on the top of her head.
It never surprised me she was an ‘old maid’ school teacher. The kind who would rap your knuckles if you didn’t pay attention.
I found myself sitting beside her one day and when I glanced up she was peering at me through her wire-framed glasses as if she knew my pockets were full of candy I had snatched from my grandmother’s house before church.
I figured I was about to find out what hell looks like but then the organ started playing and people began to file out of the church. Phew!
That was close. I came closer to God than I intended to. I would need to be more careful from now on. But where could I go with stolen candy if God is everywhere?!
Finding God through study
When I got older I went to seminary, thinking I would get to know God a bit better.
I learned what many people have thought about God for hundreds of years but I was still reaching to find God in a way I could define, perhaps even draw.
People talked about meeting God, but when pressed for what they mean they describe something that sounds an awful lot like love to me.
Experiences of forgiveness, healing, insight, and even rapture.
And yes, Love. Not romantic love, but unconditional love and acceptance.
It always surprises me that we have so many names for God – Father, Provider, Healer,….. all these names have a characteristic of humanity, We even call God ‘Him’ or Her or Supreme Being.
Using labels for God
I would like to propose a God without labels and without substance…which also means without gender or occupation.
This God I speak of is nameless and doesn’t belong to any one person, community, or nation.
The power of this God cannot be quantified or contained. A God that cannot be measured or defined except by love.
All labels put constraints and limits on something that is ineffable. Undefinable. Beyond understanding.
It is for these reasons I use Mystery as the only word that makes sense to me. Unknown, unseen, but definitely present.
So the question remains, outside of churches, temples, and mosques where do we find this Mystery?
Places where you might find God
I have met God in the forest under a full moon, and on a lobster boat in the middle of a storm at sea.
I felt the presence of the Holy at the bedside of a dying man who spent his life homeless and reviled.
I watched an elderly woman cradle a newborn kitten at an animal shelter and I know a man who has nursed a sick chicken for months, hand feeding her when she was too weak to eat.
In all of these places, I can’t explain what I saw or felt except to say Mystery. And to witness the peace and love present there.
Once I opened my heart and mind to the idea that God cannot be defined, nor contained, but only embraced as the Mystery of Love I no longer look for him in ‘his house’ of worship.
And I stand in awe when I find the Presence of the Ineffable, especially in temples of human construction.
It’s all Mystery!
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