Chapter 69: God IS

God is “the breath inside the breath.” – Kabir

In September 2022 I am on my first solo retreat in a dozen years, writing some of my “story” after a nearly six-year hiatus of reflection-writing since Mom’s death. Settled into soft chair, encased in blanket, holding warm mug, enchanted by pitter-patter on one day and lake-surface-light sparkles on another – I get to reflect. 

What has happened, what is happening within? What is different now from then, a half dozen years and more ago. 

For sure, my concept of God has morphed significantly. Among my collection of quotes are:

“God is Being Itself” – Franciscan John Duns and Dominican Thomas Aquinas

 

“God is a pure no-thing  

concealed in the now and here 

the less you reach for God 

the more fully God will appear 

God is my final end  

does God from me evolve 

then God grows out of me  

while I in God dissolves.”  

 – Angelus Silesius

 “the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE…” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“God is at least the set of forces that created and sustain the universe…” – Mike McHargue

God is “all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light – not captured in them as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them – but revealed in the singular, vast nets of relationship that animates everything that is… 

God is the unity, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go…” – Barbara Brown Taylor

“God is not what you think or even what you believe because God is a word unspoken  

a thought unthought  

a belief unbelieved.  

So if you want to know this God, practice wonder. 

Do what is good, and cultivate silence, the rest will follow.” 

– Meister Eckhart

“God co-inheres and interpenetrates everything... God is creation itself, endlessly outpouring, endlessly receiving itself back.” – Cynthia Bourgeault, speaking of Thomas Keating's understandings

Maybe a few words here toward the middle about who and what Jesus Christ might be:

Jesus is “at least a man so connected to God that He was called the Son of God” – Mike McHargue (my note: Jesus never refers to himself as Son of God, only as the son of man); 

“Christ is the name for the very shape and meaning of the universe. Jesus reveals this wonderful message in human form, showing us the full meaning of our own lives – in a way that we could love and admire.” – Richard Rohr

God is 

a field of cosmic consciousness, born as a universe, interbeing, 

ground of being (Paul Tillich), 

“True Being of all beings” (Rami Shapiro), 

I AM (Exodus 3:14), 

essence of life, luminous vastness…more intimate to me than I am to myself (Augustine of Hippo), 

incomprehensible to the intellect (Cloud of Unknowing), 

transcendent and immanent, ultimate reality, reality with a face (Rohr), 

known by diverse names, disguised as our life (Paula D’Arcy), 

inherent Goodness (Rohr), 

an insistent and persistent love, 

Oma love, 

“life power itself, the power of love itself” (John Shelby Spong).

  “in God all things hold together” Colossians 1:17       

“in God we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:28       

“My deepest me is God” – St Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510)

On the note of recognizing the goodness and god within, I wish for movement toward self love, compassion, acceptance.