tolerance for ignorance July 6, 2009
Posted by relsdork in christian, church, politics, religion, struggle.Tags: ignorance, religion, religious tolerance, tolerance
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My brain took some tangents as a recent speaker I saw asked the audience to try to love Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney…
I feel like so often, in conversations with conservative American Christians (not my denomination’s brand of Obama Christians), there reaches a point where Mr. Believer says, “Well, you just don’t understand.” Of course, that’s not what is meant. What is meant is that the Christian argument (subject to the circumstances, of course), generally based in scripture (ignorantly, but not quite the point) or dogma, doesn’t transcend their paradigm. Their reality is this: there exist a heaven and a hell, a fatherly god who loves you (yet is willing to disown you), and a guy named Jesus who magically defied death and floated up to the aforementioned heaven in an act that somehow saves you too from death if you simply believe that it does. This cosmology is accurate in the minds of a huge percentage of American Christians, however insane it may sound to the rest of us. They’ve arrived at this worldview by carefully following a tradition of ridiculousness perpetuated by some egomaniacal and undereducated men who think that the ability to read English at a fourth grade level somehow qualifies them to interpret collections of literature (not even originally written in English) so complex and diverse that multitudes of scholars cannot decrypt all of it. Nonetheless, believing themselves divinely inspired, they make noise in Hitler-esque fashions and convince people to believe ridiculous things.
If I can come back from the tangent from my tangent, I had a small point. These people, with their ridiculous worldviews, have the gall to tell us that we can’t understand because we haven’t accepted Jesus or we don’t have faith or we’re misled by the devil or some crap like that. So it seems to me that if these people have the right to dismiss us as incapable by virtue of being “heathens” and tell us that we’re going to Hell even though they love us (because “love the sinner, hate the sin”), we should have the right to call them ignorant (because love the stupid people, not the stupidity). There’s a point past which tolerance helps breed injustice. We can all agree on that. Liberals could stand to be a bit less tolerant of religious people.
So yes, I can love Dick Cheney, but I still think he’s a jerk.
solidarity: backstage pictures from SF Pride 2009 June 30, 2009
Posted by relsdork in church, gay rights, politics.Tags: gay pride, gay rights, pride parade, sf pride
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heaven June 24, 2009
Posted by relsdork in christian, religion.Tags: afterlife, heaven, hell
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The idea of an afterlife is something I have a hard time embracing. I’m pretty sure I just stop happening at some point and I’m pretty cool with that. I think I will continue to exist in whatever contributions I make to the world and if I’m not contributing now, I might as well not exist, because wtf is the point if I just sit around and watch American Idol until I die? I think the best way to approach religion is to relate it to the present, because that’s kind of what we have to work with. I think religion is about now and it’s completely possible to have religion that says nothing about what happens after death… or at least a sense of “it’s not what’s important.” I mean, if all I’m doing is trying to live up to expectations of a deity in order to gain admittance to a certain realm or stay out of a certain realm or get to a higher level of a certain realm, that strikes me as shallow.
what do i mean when i say “god”? June 22, 2009
Posted by relsdork in God, christian, religion.Tags: christianity, God, panentheism, process theology, religion
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This is the hardest thing to relate. When I say God, I mean the panentheistic God of Process Theology… the God that is present in all forms of life yet extends beyond all forms. God is not the all-powerful, all-knowing God that most would define God as. The past is done, the future is not yet… God acts in the now. God has no hands but our hands. I would describe God as the form of ideal Humanity and morality that is present in all forms of Life. God is communicated through acts of compassion and cries for justice and God exists in multiple forms. I believe that God is a both/and God that feels the needs of all peoples and lives in inspiration toward compassionate efforts to alleviate the pains all forms of Life experience and strive toward the creation of a world characterized by compassionate mutual understanding. I really don’t know how to describe my views in a coherent way. Think “collective unconscious” and add morality. I dunno.
I think it’s cool to think that humanity’s sense of morality might be some kind of larger connection, since we all seem to share basic moral concepts, but I think while the exploration of divinity and its play in life is awesome, attempts to define and box it are ultimately damaging. Once you claim true knowledge of divinity, you derive authority from it… and that only ever seems to be abused. I like to think of God as existing in everything as goodness, but also that sense of goodness that seems to extend past living things in a kind of intangible presence that connects us in compassion and love and things like that… kind of like Brahman in a way. That probably doesn’t make sense because I think a lot of the time it’s hard to make real sense out of, but if I could, it would become a list.
revisiting the significance of jesus June 20, 2009
Posted by relsdork in bible, christian, religion.Tags: chistianity, jesus
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Jesus spent his life talking about God and helping people, forgiving his disciples for the stupid things they did, telling stories, healing people, and being an amazing, selfless person. He gave up everything to go out and give. He challenged the religious institution, materialism, and people’s lack of faith. There’s a lot of stuff in the gospels, but the short of it is: Jesus was amazing and he was killed; his disciples would not defend him at his crucifixion; he knew his situation, he did not defend himself, and he died on the cross. Hanging there, beaten, suffering, he prayed for humanity as he was being betrayed, in the ultimate example of Humanity and divinity.
I was so affected by the story of Jesus, by this perfect human being that lived a beautiful, selfless life, and yet was crucified and died praying for those who crucified him.
I want, when I say “Christian,” for people to think of the teachings of Jesus… how he healed the sick and welcomed those who society spit at… how he forgave the unforgivable and ate with those that most people of his day would not even look at. I’m tired of “Christian,” meaning pamphlets with hellfire and gay-bashing. I’m tired of it meaning Bush-supporter and anti-evolutionist. I want it to mean “follower of Jesus” again.
I think that the idea of Jesus as a salvational figure is not useful. It becomes a shallow selling tool and, if it is even true, it is horrible motivation for being a Christian. As far as I’m concerned, one’s motivation for being Christian should be selfless… it should be about a profound connection with Jesus’ message and a will to live a certain way of Life—one in which the primary goal is to better Humanity, to help those in need, and to reach out to other beings in order to maximize the meaning that each derives from existence.
Jesus’ message is lost to mainstream Christianity —his significance is no longer as teacher, but as tool. He is the yellow brick road to heaven, his ministry trivialized by the exclusivist claims of Christianity. He is no more than the baptismal water that initiates us. The MESSAGE of Christianity has become to love Christians, to make Christians (whether by breeding or conversion efforts), to protect ourselves from heretics and Satan, and to fall in line behind the leaders that ask for 10% of our income so that they can convince teenagers to keep their fetuses and biology teachers to abandon science for Truth (with a capital T). His importance has become that he DIED for our sins… not that he LIVED a selfless Life preaching nonconformity and radical inclusivity.
The problem is, scholarly approach to scripture is absent from mainstream Christianity. The lay community is given no plausible alternative to the popular image of Jesus. This unfortunate truth is, as I see it, the core of the problem. If scholarly research could make it into Sunday school, perhaps Creationism wouldn’t be seeping into public schools. If Jesus could be given his context back, his ministry might start to have more importance than his death.
To be a follower of Jesus should mean that we were profoundly moved by his Life and ministry, not simply that we’re glad that he died so that we could go to heaven. How shallow.
shadow self June 15, 2009
Posted by relsdork in religion, struggle.Tags: carl jung, psychology, religious studies
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Mary Midgley (a Religious Studies Scholar) says that when most people commit an “evil,” it is against their better self. The evil exists in this “shadow self” that we like to deny exists and pretend doesn’t. It might not tell us (hopefully) to go murdering people, but it might tell us to speed on the freeway when we don’t think there are CHP around, or something of that nature. We like to deny that this shadow is a portion of our personality.
Jung: “Painful though it is, this [unwelcome self-knowledge] is in itself a gain– for what is inferior or even worthless belongs to me as my shadow and gives me substance and mass. How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a shadow? I must have a dark side if I am to be whole; and inasmuch as I become conscious of my shadow I also remember that I am a human being like any other.”
would you want me preaching in your church? June 13, 2009
Posted by relsdork in religion.1 comment so far
I am a feminist, a liberal, a tree-hugger, a panentheist, a comparative religionist, a Congregationalist, a vegetarian, an evolutionist, a singer, a lover, a dreamer, a student, a rebel, a f*ck-up, a reader, a writer, a blogger, and a nutcase—but I’m not the only one. I believe in progress, forgiveness, respect, love, pluralism, community, Humanity, ahimsa, agape, and liberty and justice for all. I’m honest, but not mean. I’m religious, but not dogmatic. I’m easily annoyed, but not easily angered. I’m pessimistic, but people generally like me. I’m kind as a rule, but give earfuls to people who exhibit sexism, homophobia, racism, or any other form of undue disrespect. I’m also kind of rude to cocky men.
sometimes i fall apart (the censored version) June 4, 2009
Posted by relsdork in nature, struggle.add a comment
I guess I cannot help but to be strange and emotional.
Sometimes I want more than anything to swing like a 5-year-old at the park. I want to get myself higher and higher, closer and closer to the memories of my childhood. I entertain my nostalgia on a daily basis.
Sometimes I want more than anything to walk through the cemetery and cry. I feel like my adulthood was born inside the gates of St. John’s. I learned what life and death meant and could go there to ponder both (to ponder anything). I can be by myself there, vulnerable. Not caged in the walls of my bedroom, my mind wanders freer. I am alone with the sky and the grass and the memory of who I used to be and can never be again. I am alone with who I am and generally manage to leave happy about that.
Sometimes I want more than anything to turn up my headset and lose myself in music outside. I want to hear nothing but a song, to become completely saturated by it. My breath becomes shallow and I cannot help singing, even though I can’t hear it. In that joy I only feel my voice, shaking my vocal chords and reminding me of a future I abandoned. Then I pass a bird! a flower! a leaf! a bug! and I remember how beautiful life is, whether it is mine or not. I smile and fight the hop in my step and the urge to spin in circles endlessly.
Sometimes I want more than anything to grab a pen and try desperately to capture a feeling, knowing that it will be fruitless but nonetheless that it will be comforting to feel my pen slide along the paper and form the curves of my lettering.
Sometimes I want more than anything to live life to its fullest, to accomplish great things and do good work. Sometimes I feel that it’s fruitless, but nonetheless comforting to feel the air enter my lungs and the smile creep onto my face.
“The Language of Sin” May 27, 2009
Posted by relsdork in religion.add a comment
“The Language of Sin”
I burn my inheritance, I say:
“My land is virgin, and no graves in my youth.”
I transcend both God and Satan
(my path goes beyond the paths of God and Satan)
I go across in my book,
in the procession of the luminous thunderbolt,
the procession of the green thunderbolt,
shouting:
“After me there’s no Paradise, no Fall,”
and abolishing the language of sin.
–Mihyar Adonis, trans. Kamala Bu-Deeb
everything is happening May 23, 2009
Posted by relsdork in God, nature, religion.add a comment
Right now, in this moment, EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING. It is beautiful, it is joyful, it is painful and it is certainly overwhelming. That is the truth. God is all of those things. God is that God Is.
(Folks, this is why we say God is ineffable. I am confusing myself as I try and understand things that are in my head.)
This universe is happening. It is real. It has meaning because of us, in us, through us, with us, and that is profoundly beautiful to me in its complexity and yet unflinching truth.
For me, the simple conclusion to draw from that is love. I cannot see myself doing anything with my life other than loving the best I can. I have to nurture this world, I have to nurture its people. I have to reach out and help a person that I see sad, I have to look into people’s eyes and be as in love with them as God is, knowing that every mistake they’ve made was only what they could do in that moment, knowing that they are beautiful in their complexity, knowing that they can be more beautiful when they understand that and can see it in others, knowing that if everyone can know God, in whatever way works best for them, the Kingdom will be alive on Earth.
Do I know this? What am I talking about? Do I sound ridiculous? I want to just cry and run outside and BREATHE and spin around in circles to feel the wind on my arms and the grass on my feet and know this world is beautiful.
I swear I am not on drugs.
I am frustrated. Frustrated because I cannot communicate whatever it is that is burning inside of me. If there are words, I don’t know them.
In the Beginning May 19, 2009
Posted by relsdork in bible, christian, religion, scripture.Tags: creation, genesis
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In one of my classes, we discussed the first line of Genesis and the words and letters in Hebrew that form it. Based on my understanding of Hebrew and the intentionalities of words and letters, if I were to translate the first line of Genesis, it would read as follows:
In a beginning of this thought, the Divine created mother earth and the beyonds and word to tell of this creation.
evangelicals are as overrated as their god May 4, 2009
Posted by relsdork in God, bible, christian, church, environment, gay rights, politics, religion, scripture.Tags: evangelism, insitutionalism, religion
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Every once in a while (okay, probably more like “often”), I feel the need to rant about religion. People are often surprised by this, as one of the things which people often learn about me at the beginning of our relationship is that I am religious. I go to church every Sunday, lead a youth group, and engage in a plethora of inter- and intrareligious activities.
AND YET
I pretty much hate a lot (most?) of what religion does in our world today. Yes, religion helps those at the bottom rungs of society and sends aid (and missionaries!) to those poor wretches who were so unlucky to be born outside of the promised land (America, not Palestine), but it also furthers ignorance and a variety of ridiculous paradigms that can a) lead people to act against their better judgment, b)lead people to justify their otherwise unjustifiable bigotry, and/or c) suspend critical inquiry and follow the “leadership” of those who hold power and influence in their respective tradition. Religion has been, is, and will be for whatever unforeseeable span of time in the future, dangerous.
Much of the religious world manages to defend sexism, homophobia, classism, racism, nationalism, arbitrary hierarchies, blatant and thoughtless consumption of natural resources and our natural world (“development” at best, “Who cares? Judgment Day is just around the corner” at worst), and conspicuous consumption as “the will of God.” If this were not horrible and ridiculous enough on its own, they then proceed to tell the rest of us heathens that we should be doing the same.
If religious mindsets are often not dangerous enough in their ignorance, they are made exponentially more dangerous by the perceived call of adherents to proselytize. Jesus loves you, but not enough to drag your sinful butt out of a pit of hellfire if you don’t tithe 10% and stop having gay sex.
Yes, I know that non-Abrahamic traditions (and one of those Abrahamic) tend not to care so much about the ultimate destinies of those not currently adhering to their own traditions (and often hate it when we start delving into them as flowery-happy alternatives to our own). Just because they don’t wish to push their cosmologies on us (thank the Lord?) doesn’t mean they’re not spewing their own forms of ignorance and convincing their children to adopt such paradigms before they’re able to find a decent grasp on the world.
It must be because I’m an American that I believe in things like progress, but I truly believe that any form of religion that is convincing people to forego common sense or justify injustice is one that needs to reexamine its relevance and Truth.
One should be asking themselves if the MONEY their organization is taking in is going to the things it talks about on pulpits. One should be asking if the topics their organizations claim to care about are being put into action on all fronts, not just the ones it deems appropriate. (Are you just protesting abortion or are you looking out for all issues that are about life?)
If the paramount form of religious observation is simply to believe x,y, and z, what is your religion accomplishing? Is your God so fickle that the only thing s/he cares about is your professed love? So what? A husband that beats the crap out of his wife can swear he loves her a million times over, but if that love isn’t demonstrated and acted upon, what is it accomplishing besides a beaten-up wife? Is religion’s only purpose to make people believe things? If that’s the case, one’s religious faith is about as useful as a hand stamp to get into a club. Its only merit is the purpose for which it was created. That’s not a merit! Because I have a blade for my blender, it will blend things, but without that blender, it’s not really doing much.
So I guess what this is boiling down to is if religion’s main function is to convince people to believe certain unsubstantiated things in order that they can be “saved,” then it’s probably a load of crap. Faith can be a beautiful thing, but if its only function is to get you into heaven, I’d have to ask why else it’s useful. Why would an institution possibly want me to believe what it’s asking me to believe?
SO.
What is religion doing for me? What am I doing for religion?
If all religion is doing for me is keeping me out of Hell (which, btw, is not in the Bible, so be extra careful about Christians that are telling you that because WHERE THE HECK are they getting their information?), and not doing much for me in the here and now (other than performing the functions of a circle of friends/family (occasionally bailing you out of a mess, acting as a dating service, throwing parties, etc.)), then what is its purpose, if (God forbid) they happen to be lying or ill-informed or interpreting a weird dream as revelation (when it wasn’t) or interpreting their schizophrenia as voices of the divine? If, for whatever reason, your religion is wrong, what is it getting you to do that you might not otherwise do?
If it’s simply feeding poor people, whatever, who cares? But if your religion is asking you to give it a bunch of money for stained glass windows and other gaudy displays of wealth, it’s effectively asking you to buy it the Mercedes that its day job wouldn’t afford it. If your religion is asking you to hate people or prevent them from obtaining rights, maybe you should wipe the fog off of your glasses and examine things a little more deeply. If your religion is saying that certain people shouldn’t have educations or that certain well-established forms of scholarship and research are lies, maybe you should ask them why they would want to do that. If your religion is promoting what the educated of the world would call ignorance, maybe you should ask why they want you to be that stupid.
Or maybe you should just feel comfortable in your faith that you’re going to heaven and I’m not.
A Thesis of Sorts April 23, 2009
Posted by relsdork in God, bible, christian, environment, nature, religion, scripture.1 comment so far
Religion is never about facts. Our ancestors knew this, despite their lack of knowledge about so much else. This is apparent in the ways they kept histories. True beauty is seldom derived from fact.
As much as Humanity has learned throughout history, one broad failure is the way we have treated religion. We, as a species, love to learn. (It’s a good thing.) Problems, however, come when we try to defend old “knowledge” in the face of new.
Take any creation myth. While centuries ago, believing a culture’s creation myth to be literally true my not have been so absurd and illogical, it certainly is today. Really, now– even the Pope believes in evolution. The problem arises when we try to make an old system fit into our new paradigm. Creationists trying to use science to defend their theories (which science clearly does not) or positing that God is trying to fool us in a test of faith (really?) are silly attempts at defending an illogical belief.
Perhaps what we should be asking ourselves is not how to defend our myths, but how to better understand them. After all, there is little reason to believe the point of any scripture is to establish facts. There is little reason to believe our ancestors took such care in preserving our tradition so that we can know how long it took to form our world. In all reality, me knowing the specifics of creation is about as useful as me knowing the name of whoever built my desk– not very.
Why should we get our panties in a bunch about something that wasn’t the point of the story and in the grand scheme of things is rather peripheral? The point of scripture is its meaningful aspects; those aspects cannot be affected by science of history and needn’t be at odds with them. Perhaps we can derive from Genesis a story about how beautiful our natural world is. Perhaps we can see how the increasing diversity in our world is a great pleasure to God. Perhaps we can see that it is impossible to deceive God. Perhaps we can learn that the pursuit of knowledge can be horribly damaging if it’s in defiance of morality. Perhaps we can find that our actions are only ever our own and that placing blame on God or others cannot justify acts of betrayal. Not one of these lessons is derived from the “facts.” They’re from the story. The details of the story are not why it’s been repeated for thousands of years; it’s the lessons that we are supposed to remember. My belief in evolution doesn’t contradict any of these lessons.
What the evolving human mind needs to do is not to suspend logic for fear of displeasing a puppet master god, but to embrace logic and use it to unpack scripture which has provided spiritual sustenance to our race for generations upon generations.
We should approach scripture with the hearts of children and the minds of scholars. We deserve no less.
Christianity Needs Salvation April 22, 2009
Posted by relsdork in God, bible, christian, church, religion, struggle.Tags: biblical scholarship, christianity, evangelism, religious studies, ritual, sin
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This is going somewhere. Stick with it.
Hebrew is normally written without vowels. They’re not necessary, for the most part. Someone who reads Hebrew knows where the vowels belong. Vowels are included for those learning Hebrew.
In the Jewish scripture, vowels are included for “YHWH.” This is all fine and dandy for the English reader, but if you’re a Jew, you understand that the vowels are placed in positions that don’t make sense… positions that show the word is unspeakable. Naming something gives one power over it. Read Genesis. Or this old blog entry.
We cannot have power over God. This doesn’t mean that we can’t contradict God’s will, but it means we cannot ultimately overcome it.
We each have our own contexts. We each have our own needs. God transcends all of them.
God is mystical. God is subject to certain laws, but God is eternal. God might not be able to grab a microphone and speak to us, but God operates through those who can understand God’s will.
If God is beyond our naming, how can we define ourselves as followers? We call ourselves Christians. It was a name imposed on early Christ followers by Romans. It was name-calling that stuck and was reclaimed by those who wore it.
I feel like “Christian” is name-calling again for me. I don’t want to be what people think of when they think of “Christian,” but I want to be what I am. I want to reclaim the title. I think that requires giving the title back its context. It requires educating people who claim the title so they know what it means.
We throw around our Christian vocabulary and think we’re communicating. We have changed the meanings of our own words. We sometimes understand them differently and mis-communicate because of it.
As much as I hate to identify with the Evangelical movement, I cannot help it in this moment. The idea: “Hate the sin, not the sinner.” I’m going to show you what I mean about words.
Sin is an alien word for me, not because of its meaning, but because of the meaning we gave it.
Literally, “sin” means to miss the mark. There’s nothing wrong with that idea. Of course all of us try to be our best, but we fail. Because we are in the image of God and because we have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, we understand that failure. We know it when we make mistakes and when we act against our better nature.
The connotations of the word sin have made it alienating. If we understood sin as wandering off the path, whether by daydream or curiosity or a simple childish rebellion, it would not hold its power of guilt. If sin could be understood as it was meant, as an honest mistake or a failure to live up to our potential, it couldn’t haunt us the way it does.
If sin could truly be understood as missing the mark, we would all understand that all of us fail. We all miss the mark because perfection is an absurd idea brought on by thinking Law is there as more than an example to strive for, but as a set of exclusivist rules by which we can create an esoteric cult. If Law was all that mattered, God would have given us Leviticus and been done with it. We have good news and it is not that God is an exclusivist. It is not that God wants you to believe x, y, and z.
Jesus didn’t just sit and believe things. Beliefs can’t do anything on their own. Really, when we look at the history of religious belief, what can we say for ourselves? Beliefs don’t seem to help advance science or save countries from war. More often than not, religious beliefs have bred hostility.
And yet…
God’s very nature says, “You cannot define it.” We cannot name God. Any power derived from naming is ultimately arbitrary.
The title Christian, in the grand scheme of things, is arbitrary. It’s the reason I can claim it. I can claim it because I know that calling myself Christian doesn’t make me more like other Christians or less like Muslims. A name is not a source of identity any more than it’s a source of power.
What is a source of power?
I was born into an American family with parents raised Roman Catholic and Mormon, yet who decided that their children had the strength to find God on their own.
I have found God. I have found God in my place of worship.
I imagine that I can also find God a mosque and a field. God seems to find people wherever they are.
Before I could claim an academic understanding of religion, my understanding of God was very different. It is because of my education that I understand God to be inclusive, to be pervasive, to be limited, despite whatever desire we may have for God to preside over the trivialities of our lives. I also know, however, that God is unlimited in the way that God is active in every Human mind.
If we can nourish God’s mustard seed in our minds with education and context, I know that our contexts can meet and bow to each other and worship together knowing that the ritual, the naming, the scripture (the search) cannot alter God and cannot matter more than the now, because now is all that God is ever working with.
As much as I despise the Evangelical phrase “hate the sinner, not the sin,” I have to embrace it and extend it into my context. “Hate Evangelism, not the Evangelical.”
I have to know that education trumps ignorance. Religious Studies has made me love God and love reality in ways I couldn’t have without it. Religious Studies creates unity and heals ignorance.
And it needs to be in our churches.
My God (or my blasphemy for the day, whatever) April 17, 2009
Posted by relsdork in religion.1 comment so far
What good is a sunset if it’s not so painfully awesome that it brings you to tears?
I think sometimes we want God to be our idea of perfect. Sunshine, rainbows, cupcakes, and world where no one ever dies, no one ever suffers. Yet every truly beautiful moment comes from some source of pain, some kind of identification. Every great work is derived from a brokenness… and every work of complete beauty, such as is only found in the “perfection” of Nature, or of Love, is so beautiful that it brings pain.
I think what I am trying to say is that there is no such thing as perfect—not really. There is no such thing. It is a figment of the human mind, which ever strives to better itself and can only do so when it has something to strive for… such striving is easier when we have a rigid definition of perfection—blonde hair, blue eyes, size C, 95 pounds, never letting a cuss word slip out, eating a balanced diet, raising 2.5 children with Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome. It’s easy to strive for perfection when you can define it (so why is everyone’s definition different?).
If there is no perfect, if perfect is as absurd an idea as I think it is, then what am I really trying to get at? What should I be striving for?
God.
God is not perfect. If you can excuse how blasphemous that sounds, I think it is real. Perfect is an absurd idea (in the true meaning of complete absurdity) which is truly meaningless in its purest form. If we could truly define beauty, it would be a completely un-unique concept. It is the diversity of creation that gives it beauty. Beauty cannot exist within lines of a standard—it exists in its ability to stop our minds for a moment and stupefy us. Beauty, at its best, makes us strange and uncomfortable in its presence… in our surprise and inability to react appropriately… and then submerses us in comfort as we understand the ways which beauty completes us and we it. If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound? Does it matter? If a tree falls in a forest, the sound only matters if there is someone there to hear it. Nothing can every be beautiful on its own. “Perfection” is a meaningless idea, ultimately. What is perfection compared to an awkward first kiss or chordal dissonance that captures an emotion you didn’t know you had?
God is Creativity, and Life and Love and those things which can never be perfect because it is their messiness that brings passion. I want a God who spins in circles with me in my moments of joy and cries with me in my moments of sadness. I want a God who was in the pain of Christ at the crucifixion. I know that God exists because I feel God in those moments.
That is why I love God so much. If God were not in every ounce of pain and joy that all of us feel, God would be cold. A promise of “dessert later and brussel sprouts now” that is so simplistic a two-year-old understands it? That is not the God I know—not a God that lets suffering happen, that hands out “justice” as if it is black and white, but a God that suffers with me, laughs with me, bleeds with me, sings with me, Loves with me, Lives with me, and says “It is good.”
God knows the pain and joy of everyone and everything and knows that it is good so long as we understand that God is living in ALL of us and part of serving God is understanding that… it is bringing laughter, health, happiness to people… keeping in mind the greater good… understanding that serving God is serving Humanity because God is alive in all of us and feeling all of us.
Oh my goodness, I don’t understand God; Oh my goodness, that’s a beautiful thing.
The profundity of existence is more than we will ever be able to wrap our heads around… and yet trying is part of what makes it so beautiful.
