A Scary God or a Loving God? – Part One

I have decided to try to work out a huge subject in a sort-of series. If I want to begin to encourage others to base their relationships with God on love rather than on fear, and I believe people need to be encouraged to do so, then let me work out some basics about what all that involves. This is what I believe about God:

God exists. He is the Creator of this universe. He loves every bit of this vast creation, and that includes each of us. He lives within each of us (immanent). Yes, He is also outside of us (transcendent). But my point is that we are not separated from Him. He desires intimate personal relationships with each of us. He is morally better than we are. He is more knowledgeable and more powerful than we are. He lets us live out the consequences of our choices and actions. He is there to strengthen us through that if it becomes, well, unpleasant. He is in everything that comes to us, including the things we don’t like, but I honestly believe that life is just that way. In fact, we grow more profoundly in hard times than we do in easy ones.

Let me inject one disclaimer. In spite of my use of the masculine pronoun, I do not believe God is male. I believe that God carries all genders in His nature. However, I am comfortable with thinking of God as my “heavenly father.” And to say things like “God doesn’t impose Godself on…” is extremely awkward. I just stick with the masculine pronoun. Let me add that I frequently call God Mother, Creator, Source, and Universe also.

These are things that we are taught about God, by the church and/or by “conventional” faith.

God is a sort of “super human,” bigger than we are, smarter and more powerful than we are, as offendable and violent and vindictive as we are. He sits on His throne in the sky with zapper in hand, ready to let us have it if we make a misstep. He is a kind of benevolent dictator, loving and favoring us as long as we come up to His standards, ferocious and mean if we mess up. Even if we do our best to obey Him, He might still inflict terrible suffering on us “for our own good” if that is His will. And on top of all that we will be condemned to hell for eternity.

My own church teaches me that God is perfection itself, and we are horrendously imperfect. Perfection cannot live with imperfection. In other words, He loves us and can’t stand us all in the same moment. Theoretically, then, we are destined to spend eternity in hell, where we are far away from the perfection of God. But He still loves us, so He made a way out for us. Because Jesus died for our sins on the cross, we are saved. All we have to do is believe that Jesus did this, and we can go to heaven.

This all puts God outside of us, gives us a feeling of isolation from Him. And it leaves us with a tormenting question: He knows all, does all, and loves all, but we can’t explain how or why God allows such enormous suffering among His children.

I used to believe most of that stuff myself. I don’t any more. I am not trying to be arrogant; I just had an experience, almost 30 years ago, that taught me another way to look at God. It just happens to take me beyond the traditional faith that I was taught and into other paths. I came away from this experience knowing that I was loved greatly by this Being, that I wanted to get as close to this Being as I possibly could and stay there for the rest of my life, and that He is far above us and much vaster than we can grasp.

I know now that God loves me absolutely and unconditionally. There is a Mt. Everest somewhere, made of love that is all for me; when I use that love, it grows. There is no reason at all for God to single me out and give me such love (I totally fail to merit it), which tells me that I am not special and that He must love everyone the same way He loves me. He doesn’t favor any one of us over another, for He loves each of us. And everyone has his or her own Mt. Everest somewhere.

I went nowhere during this experience; it was an internal epiphany. That tells me that God is within me. He always has been. So much for His inability to be close to my imperfections! (Since that night, I have had other experiences that confirmed this conclusion.)

Because God is so vast and incomprehensible, we might as well stop arguing among ourselves about His true nature, what He wants, how He should be worshiped, etc. We all misunderstand God. One person’s misunderstanding is no better or worse than another person’s misunderstanding. No set of rules is superior to any other set of rules. There are countless ways to get to God, just as there are many roads that lead to New York City or San Francisco.

Because He loves each of us absolutely and unconditionally, He doesn’t care if we are male or female, black or white, gay or straight, Democrat or Republican. Dare I say it? Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Assembly of God. Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim.

So what has pushed me in this new direction? I’m not a theologian. I can’t quote the Bible chapter and verse. I’m just a laywoman who has been transformed. Now all my beliefs and ideas about things of God are filtered through that transformative experience. The faith I was taught as a child no longer makes sense to me in the light of what that experience taught me. That’s all there is to it.

The reason I have gone on at such length here is that I observe that many people are afraid of God. I am here to say that we are loved, and we have nothing to be afraid of. I met that Love. I know it. I am loved absolutely. And I trust that Love absolutely. So can anyone else.

Stay tuned.

Psalm One

I rarely worry about what people think of me, and I am gradually learning to just walk away from the question for good. Actually, there have been ways in which I never much cared…and others in which I did, deeply. Ego has wanted some things connected with the issue of how others see me, the kind of personal or professional reputation I have. Well, personal is not as important now as it used to be, and this direction of growth slowly deepens. My profession and I didn’t like each other when all was said and done, so I have no profession and, obviously, no professional reputation to worry about. While the question still comes up from an ego standpoint, it does so less frequently and less powerfully than it used to.

With that being said, it occurred to me one day recently to wonder if people think about me as being like the tree in the first Psalm, calmly and strongly overcoming drought. Going by things I’ve heard people say, I just found myself wondering about it. I don’t know where the thought came from. It may have been ego – I honestly couldn’t tell – and it may have been just a framework for reflecting on this Psalm. Whichever, I am using it to reflect on this Psalm.

Here is my own inelegant and mildly feminist paraphrase of Psalm 1: “Blessed is she who seeks wisdom, avoids the ungodly, doesn’t sin, and isn’t scornful. Her delight is in God’s law, and she meditates on it 24/7. She’s like a tree by a river, fruitful in season, unharmed by drought, always prosperous. The ungodly are fluff blown by the wind, and they cannot stand near judgment or righteousness. The righteous stand; the ungodly perish.”

I’ve always been attracted to this Psalm. I’m not sure why. I think I just like the picture of the tree and the river. The tree is always prosperous, fruitful, even overcoming drought. (I can’t say that I study the Bible 24/7. And I don't dare to say that I never do anything wrong.)

As the tree in the Psalm stretches its roots down toward the water, I stretch my spiritual roots each day toward the Source that nourishes me. That’s simply our instinct, to reach out for God – however we understand God to be – for strength and wisdom.

I am in a drought, as far as material considerations are concerned. I struggle with fear of poverty and isolation as I face the coming of old age. I deal with frustration at my job situation; the only job I can find is 53 miles away from home and pays minimum wage, and I have just gone back after a four-week layoff. (And there is no guarantee that I will avoid being laid off again.) If I look like I’m coping well, I can tell you bluntly that it doesn’t feel that way.

But if that is how others see me, my witness must be fairly good even though it doesn’t reflect my feelings. That would make sense. You rarely see yourself the way others see you. So maybe I do have some resemblance to that tree. We all need feedback from others about how well we do – or do not – walk our talk. There are several ways in which I know I don’t walk my talk very well; I also believe there are some ways in which I do. I won’t try to say which of those is stronger; that is between God and me anyway. I just work to do my best each day.

The only thing I may do differently is to continue to reach out for God even when I’m not in a drought. Because to me, prayer is about relationship with God, not shopping lists. I don’t need to “need” something in order to want to pray.

So if I happen to look like I’m flourishing in a drought, that is probably the explanation. I don’t mean to take credit for it. That’s just how it is.

I don’t know how that tree feels about it, but there’s my take on the question.

Back At Work!

It was almost a comedown. After being laid off, and getting strongly supportive letters of reference from my employers, and sending an email to all my friends asking for prayer support, and applying for unemployment insurance, and trying to get a part-time job through a government program…I was called back.

By now, as I reflect on my first week back, it feels as though I had never left. It was good to see the people there again. Needless to say, it’s good to be earning my way again. But I realize that I was beginning to get seriously tired of some features of what I do for this company, and they are all still there.

Why do I say this was almost a comedown? Because I was looking ahead. Strengthening my spiritual practice. Seeking work that would make more of a difference in people’s lives. Using my time and energies for creative projects such as making an arrangement of an old hymn. It was a relief to be able to have time and energy for such things again. I had supposed they would call me back eventually, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. Going back this soon felt like looking backward instead of forward.

So now I am left with saying: “Somehow, I will do these things anyway.”

Somehow is about how it feels, so far. But then, this is just the first week. I’m sure I will need some time to settle in. I race to make an hour or so in the evening for some piano practice, or some writing time, or – my goodness gracious – some meditation time. And a couple of weeks ago I had all the time I could have wanted for such things. I trust I will settle in here too.

And with all that said, there is a chance that I’ll be laid off again in a few weeks. My job consists of working on a specific project for a specific client of this company I work for, and the entire history of the project has featured unpredictability. We never know what is going to happen when. But there is also talk of training me on something new, which sounds like they are going to do their best to keep me around for a while.

I’m glad to be working. I enjoy the people I work with. The long commute gives me time for a lot of thinking and reflecting that goes on under the surface. That is good for me, however difficult it may be for my car and my gasoline budget.

So far, however, the whole scene feels like a huge exercise in surrender. Or detachment, if you prefer to use that word instead. Whatever you call it, it’s letting go. It’s doing the best I can there each day – and then coming home and doing the best I can here as well – and letting go of all the rest of it. So far, I would say it has all been sort of uneven, but it should improve as time goes along.

After all, somehow I will do it.

Somehow.

What Is Old Age Anyway?

For several years now, I have been struggling with an affliction that I could call “outdated views of old age.” When I was growing up back in the 1950s, 60 years old was “really up there.” Today, that has changed dramatically. Now, 60 is “the new 50.” I have had trouble grasping that.

There is a government program that promises to help “mature” unemployed workers find part-time jobs. In my recently unemployed condition, I decided to go to the local office for this program and see if I could find some work to help tide me over. I am mature, I am unemployed, and I supposed that was all that is required to take advantage of this program.

The lady who runs this program is herself quite mature; she’s in her 80s. I bit back the old cliché that she is well preserved. But she is. She and I have visited quite a little over the two weeks that we’ve known each other; like me, she can’t really afford to retire. And she didn’t care for retirement very much when she tried it, anyway. I had thought this lady was around 72 until she told me she is 81! And at that moment I began to see something new.

I have been uncertain about how I feel as I contemplate continuing to work at an age when most of my contemporaries are retired and enjoying their freedom. To be honest, I have had more than a tinge of self-pity about it. My life has been one of inner searching, not accumulation of retirement funds, let alone anything resembling monetary wealth. There has been no career, no high-paying jobs; now I near retirement age with an exceedingly slim balance in one savings account, no IRA, no investments. I cannot afford to retire. And I have a Ph.D. Even though I realize that this situation is the result of my own choices, somehow it doesn’t seem right.

But after meeting this lady at the government program’s office, I see another side to it. Continued activity. Challenges. Things that will keep me physically healthy and mentally alert as I move on into those “golden years.” There’s nothing wrong with doing things that keep me healthy and alert as long as possible. My only request is that I might find work that does more than just build a bottom line for a cadre of anonymous shareholders.

As it turned out, I am too rich (although I can’t afford to retire) to qualify for this program. All the time and work to register produced nothing. The job interview I got through the program led to nothing, although I think the people wanted to hire me. That’s what happens to me when I try to get help from the programs I have paid taxes into.

But the opportunity to get acquainted with that 81-year-old lady, who enjoys working and likes the way it helps her stay spry and alert, taught me something. That makes the entire fiasco worth the time I spent there. I know now that age really can be just a number. I’ve been writing myself off based on ideas about old age that just don’t hold true today. Now - I don’t do that any more.

The disappointment was worth that.

Finding Gold In a Long Commute

Recently I was laid off from the job that I had held for 13 months. It took me some 18 months to find that job, not including a period of waiting after another job didn’t work out. I had felt financially stable, finally, and I was beginning to get some debts paid off. It was a good feeling.

Then the shoe dropped. Shoe, heck. Felt like Paul Bunyan’s heaviest boot!

I was surprised at how quickly I adjusted. Of course there was no job, no income, no certainty about the future. (They said I would be one of the first to be called back, but I can’t wait for six months and it will probably be that long.)

But also there was no getting up at 5:00 a.m., no 100-mile round trip every day on top of 8 hours spent typing, no more driving east at sunrise and west at sunset, no more reading minuscule print off product packaging, no more typing Spanish text…OK. There are things I can like about this. That’s good.

So let me think a little about that 100-mile round trip. I was literally adding 500 miles to my odometer every week. That’s 2,000 miles in one month. It was a lot of wear and tear on my car which, fortunately, was fairly new when I got this job.

Over those 13 months, I had time to watch each season in detail – the crops ripening in the summer heat, farmers harvesting during the autumn as the colors changed, the austere beauty of a winter sunset over a field full of snow, the challenge of driving in sleet and snow storms, and of course the new greening as the world came back to life, and the planting of the new crops.

There was time to think about the seasons, about the Creator of all things, about myself and the growth I felt going on within me. And I have to conclude that it was a remarkable year. Some really odd things happened to me during the year that I put 100 miles on my car every day.

There were several unitive moments – times when the world and life somehow seemed so beautiful that I couldn’t bear it. For instance there was the day last fall as I was driving home, enjoying the perfectly clear deep blue sky, bright sunshine, vivid colors, crops ripe in the fields and farmers working in clouds of dust to harvest them. It was, for several minutes, so beautiful that I wept briefly. There was another moment like that a few weeks ago as I waded through the crowds leaving the park after the Fourth of July band concert and fireworks display. There were others. These two were among the most vivid.

Then there was the boil-water order I found one day last summer when I got home from work. My job was close to a Wal-Mart, and I decided that instead of depending on boiling water I’d buy some bottled water the next day. (There wasn’t any left in town by the time I got home.) So the next day I went into the Wal-Mart, a store I had never been in before, and I had no idea where the beverages were. The usual greeter wasn’t around, and I wondered who could direct me. It was only a few seconds later that a man came steaming past me into the store, pushing a noisy shopping cart full of empty plastic jugs. Supposing that he intended to fill them with water, I followed him and he led me right to my destination. It was the timing of his appearance that made me see the incident as, well, not a coincidence.

And one day I was struggling with low blood sugar, at the end of the work day, and faced driving home at a time when I really wasn’t well. I prayed that somehow I would get home safely. Now I make a habit of driving 55 mph, which is the posted speed limit on the two-lane highways in my state. Everybody who comes up behind me passes me as soon as they get a chance. That day, however, there was a series of drivers who would come up behind me on each leg of my journey home. When one turned off, another would come along in a couple of miles. I was followed all the way into my home town. On a day when I had asked for help, not one of those drivers passed me. Again, I didn’t think that was a coincidence.

You see what I mean? Things that don’t normally happen to me were happening. Maybe it was partly a matter of me being more aware of what went on around me. But that doesn’t explain the afternoon at work when, for just a split second, it seemed that I was standing behind my chair and looking at the back of my head. It was over so quickly that it could have been just a figment of imagination. But I was flooded with emotions and sensations that clearly were not imaginary. It had been a true out-of-body experience. For a tiny fraction of a second I had been something more than I normally am, larger, more confident, stronger, more joyous. It was a true mystical experience. I can prove it…because to this day I can’t really describe those feelings; my description is only a guess. And probably the only truth we know about such experiences is that they are indescribable.

So all that driving was worth it, because it opened me up to new levels of perception and sensitivity. And that is what I need the most, after all. I’m working on this current unemployment situation from the inside out, and I’ll need all the perception and sensitivity I can muster.