It seems to me that "understanding" God is not necessary. What is necessary is the act of faith, i.e., accepting that there is something greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity, and the decision to turn our will and our lives over to that something. For many, especially at first, it is the Al-Anon program itself. When I was in Al-Anon, all those many years ago, a woman said one evening that her Higher Power was a doorknob. In retrospect maybe she meant that the doorknob had the power to get her out of a situation. But as I took it at the time, it was simply an object outside of herself onto which she projected Godness, maybe deliberately chosen for being so mundane and unreligious so as to avoid any association with her negative experience of "God" as she had previously understood "Him". Sort of deliberately ludicrous, but meant to function as any other pagan idol, statue of a saint, all the physical icons to which we assign sacredness.
For me, Christianity is in some sense like that doorknob ... I don't believe in it because of any internal logic of its own, I believe God is far beyond it, far beyond anything Christianity has to say about God. But I find that I have to come down from the Cloud of Unknowing in order to stay close to the ineffable God. In order for me to relate to God, I need a story, a picture, sacramental objects and gestures and practices. It is all metaphoric, all symbolic, but the more I can enter into it, the more I meditate on the Incarnation, and feel as if I have been fed on God in the Eucharist, and the more I practice the ritual devotions, for example, the more in touch I feel with the God who probably was never incarnate of the Virgin Mary and who is probably not today a dish of tasteless little crackers and a cup of wine. But I "believe" He is that bread and wine -- that is, I choose to treat the sacrament as if it were a sacrament, an "efficacious sign of grace" as the catechism calls sacraments. It is a sign, but it is no less efficacious for that, as long as I look beyond the surface of it to the Unknowable God. I go to Confess my failings and receive ritual Absolution, and I make a decision to turn my will and my life over by letting go of whatever faults and failings I have yet again gotten weighed down by since the last time, letting go of them as if the sacrament really did nullify them and I can start over, yet again.
The God of my "understanding" is willing to be approached through signs and symbols, stories and poetry. "He" could perfectly well be and is found in Ganesh, or Pachamama, or any other of the myriad forms and understandings people have dressed the ineffable in. It's like putting clothes on the Invisible Man -- he's not the clothes, but if you want to see what he's doing, you can only follow the movement of the clothes. It could as easily be a pink tutu or a kimono or a train of bone beads and eagle feathers as a brown suit. It's when he steps out of the clothes and we continue to watch their emptiness with the same attention, or pick them up and wave them around ourselves and call them animated, that the Invisible Man gets away from us. So to speak. And then people see us holding up the empty suit of clothes and say "your God is a silly myth!" But God is not a myth, it's our human mind that needs the myth in order to interact with the ineffable God. And God, in my experience, is perfectly willing to descend from ineffability into whatever outfit, whatever myth, suits the individual human psyche.
And now, this comment seems to have grown into a post, so I'm going to copy it into my own journal. Later though, because it's also taken a long time to put down and I need to get on my way.
Yes, i like this. And pretty much agree. "Faith is acceptance of emptiness and silence." It takes faith to create the Fog Of Forgetting. It takes faith to work a 12 step program.
For me, Christianity is in some sense like that doorknob ... I don't believe in it because of any internal logic of its own, I believe God is far beyond it, far beyond anything Christianity has to say about God. But I find that I have to come down from the Cloud of Unknowing in order to stay close to the ineffable God. In order for me to relate to God, I need a story, a picture, sacramental objects and gestures and practices. It is all metaphoric, all symbolic, but the more I can enter into it, the more I meditate on the Incarnation, and feel as if I have been fed on God in the Eucharist, and the more I practice the ritual devotions, for example, the more in touch I feel with the God who probably was never incarnate of the Virgin Mary and who is probably not today a dish of tasteless little crackers and a cup of wine. But I "believe" He is that bread and wine -- that is, I choose to treat the sacrament as if it were a sacrament, an "efficacious sign of grace" as the catechism calls sacraments. It is a sign, but it is no less efficacious for that, as long as I look beyond the surface of it to the Unknowable God. I go to Confess my failings and receive ritual Absolution, and I make a decision to turn my will and my life over by letting go of whatever faults and failings I have yet again gotten weighed down by since the last time, letting go of them as if the sacrament really did nullify them and I can start over, yet again.
The God of my "understanding" is willing to be approached through signs and symbols, stories and poetry. "He" could perfectly well be and is found in Ganesh, or Pachamama, or any other of the myriad forms and understandings people have dressed the ineffable in. It's like putting clothes on the Invisible Man -- he's not the clothes, but if you want to see what he's doing, you can only follow the movement of the clothes. It could as easily be a pink tutu or a kimono or a train of bone beads and eagle feathers as a brown suit. It's when he steps out of the clothes and we continue to watch their emptiness with the same attention, or pick them up and wave them around ourselves and call them animated, that the Invisible Man gets away from us. So to speak. And then people see us holding up the empty suit of clothes and say "your God is a silly myth!" But God is not a myth, it's our human mind that needs the myth in order to interact with the ineffable God. And God, in my experience, is perfectly willing to descend from ineffability into whatever outfit, whatever myth, suits the individual human psyche.
And now, this comment seems to have grown into a post, so I'm going to copy it into my own journal. Later though, because it's also taken a long time to put down and I need to get on my way.
Loving you, my brother.
Regina
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And pretty much agree.
"Faith is acceptance of emptiness and silence."
It takes faith to create the Fog Of Forgetting.
It takes faith to work a 12 step program.
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Convincing yourself that nothingnesses provide REASON for faith is the REASON for your faithlessness.
Keep following reason, and you'll never get to know the infinitudes of the clear spaces. Faith is required step 1.
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Each a family.
Arjuna looks only at the God, the true God, upside down and rightside up, hardly seeing Krishna at all.
The flute plays music, but the eyes of Him are on God. I will trust in Jesus and His incarnations over this inveritable sea of infants.
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