Ch. 10 The Eternal (continued)
The Eternal Question of God
Is God truly a good and fair Force of Love? A Creator, Ground, and/or Energy of Being? Is God the perfect actualization of our best potentialities or free and dynamic potentiality itself or some dialogue between the two? Is God an awesome, numinous mystery or something more relatable? Thou or Abba? Is God a noun or a verb or both? The state of love or love actively expressed? Is God the still point or the dance? Peace or Passion? Is God a cosmic intelligence or consciousness that preceded and then pervaded the universe? Is God a cosmic intelligence or consciousness embodied in us if we choose to live out God, or even if we don't choose to live out God?
Our questions are better than our answers but asking the questions is a precondition for developing the consciousness needed to receive the answers. Our understanding of God is evolving toward our eternal good and fair God of love. We come closer to knowing God by trying to better know God. We do not come closer to knowing God by sitting on our laurels. God did not give us life so we could hide from it or brains so we could not use them or hearts so we could let them harden. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” With our hearts, we will live out God's love in ever expanding concern for other people and all of creation. With our soul, we will center ourselves in and develop a higher quality of being out of our relationship with our good and fair God of love. With our minds, we will have the courage to face a fact though it slays us knowing that God is found in truth. Our faith is our commitment to see this truth through the more vivid light of love. We are committed to showing our love for God by focusing our energy on better understanding and living out God's love. We may never fully reach our goal but we will get closer through trying and through opening ourselves to a Wordsworthian reverie that nourishes our souls:
"I have felt/ A presence that disturbs me with the joy/ Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/ And the round ocean and the living air,/ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:/ A motion and a spirit, that impels/ All thinking things, all objects of thought,/ And rolls through all things." (Tintern Abbey)
