We ask a lot from God. As One who is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient, our paltry requests – even those that include gut-wrenching and pathetic bargaining to spare a life or become cured of an incurable disease – are nothing for someone like God to grant. God can do anything God wants.
It is the same argument of old. If God is on our side, then the “favors” we ask are granted; God is pleased with us and acts accordingly. However, if we ask God to grant our request and God is not pleased with us, our requests are denied. We are shamed, shunned, and reminded that we are less than perfect. We are unimportant and dismissible. We are outside of the Light. Too much to bear, we turn it around to then believe that God is showing us a special kind of favoritism: God knows we need to suffer to grow in spirit. Father Knows Best. For this, we are supposed to be thankful. If we are thankful enough, we will end the circle of absurdity and maybe even rebirth. If we show signs of anger, resentment and heaven forbid, hostility toward God, we just may slip through the cracks to the bottomless abyss below.
When I was a young woman, I did something that would be considered a very significant sin in the eyes of the church (oops, I mean the Church). So grievous was my sin that, according to church doctrine, I would be forever be outside the love of God. God was not happy and crossed out my name from the Book of Life with a permanent marker. There were others. Here we were, a mismosh of evictees, victims of circumstance thrown into the ring with convicted felons, all to be fed to the lions of pomposity.
In that moment, on that day of sentencing, I was set free. Not by God, but by the absence of God. For if God would condemn me forever without reprieve, then I was free to live my life in any way I chose, good or bad, without fear of spiritual consequence.
What happens when we take God out of the equation? God has gone to the Bahamas without his cell phone. Drat. What happens when our intermediaries are gone as well? God-in-Christ-and-All-the-Saints-and-Buddhas have taken holiday en masse. The petitioner and the petitionees are incommunicado. Please leave a message after the tone.
Like my second daughter, I really want to believe in God. I want to believe in the God that others are convinced exists. I have looked for God as earnestly as anyone. I have boldly walked into the heart of all faith traditions and practices, attempting to leave no stone unturned. I did not find God. What I found was the freedom of not-finding, the wisdom that God can not be found. The best I can do is feel for the essence of life and witness the incomprehensible majesty and beauty of ordinary living. I can feel for what lives in you that lives in me, our common spirit that feels good and right and true.
My trinity is that of Wisdom, Compassion, and Beneficence. The three are inseparable and are in and of everything that exists. Now that I am free, I can take my them with me everywhere I go.
