On the way home I stopped at Starbucks and it took a bit
longer than usual because they had to unlock their cash box to get change. When
the girl handed me my caramel macchiato she also gave me a card that read: “We
apologize if your Starbucks experience was anything but wonderful. The next
time we see you, please enjoy a beverage, on us.” After reading it, I decided
the doctor’s office should hand out something similar. “We apology for letting
your pee get frozen and you had to drive all the way across town to do give us
another sample. The next time you are scheduled to pee in a cup we will wave
your co-pay on the test.” Now that would have made me feel better about the
inconvenience.
I pulled over to enjoy my caramel macchiato and noticed the
sky was bright blue with fluffy clouds and those clouds pulled me back in time
to when I was going to Sunday school classes back in the 1940s. The teacher had
a board on a painter’s easel that was covered with flannel and she’d slap cut-out
pictures on the flannel as props to tell Bible stories and they would stick. I
have a vivid image stuck in my head of God standing on a flannel cloud looking
down on a field full of cut-out cows clinging to the flannel. Can you image
kids in our hi-tech world paying attention to a story told in flannel and cut-outs
images from a coloring book?
I acknowledge and respect the fact that all
of us have the right (and duty) to follow our own path to God…just as I have done
decades ago. They may see God as an all-knowing, all-powerful “him” sitting up
somewhere controlling and creating everything down here on earth. Many people
believe in this kind of God. Many people believe in a literal interpretation of
the Bible or the literal interpretation of other religious scriptures from
other religions. I would never try to persuade anyone to take my point of view.
But the image of a God sitting on a flannel cloud just never worked for me. The
definition of God that I subscribe to is this one: God is Love, Love is God.
Back when I used to service weddings as
a bridal consultant in the floral industry, I had occasion to talk to a lot of
clericals from a wide range of Christian denominations and other religions. One
conversation in particular, that has always stayed in my memory bank, happened
when I found myself standing at the front of a church reading a silk banner
stretched across the back wall of the altar area.
“It pretty simple isn’t it?” A minister
smiled as he came up beside me.
“Simple?” I said.
“Yes, simple to understand what God is
all about when you break it down that way,” he replied, nodding to the banner
that read, God is Love, Love is God.
“You mean when you set aside the
personification of God that man has assigned,” I asked, “and you just look at
what that personification is supposed to convey?”
“You’ve got it!” he beamed, “I thought
my sermon tomorrow would be harder to teach.”
“In one of my art history courses,” I
told him, “We spent a lot of time studying the personifications and allegorical
stories in early Christian art work. I did a term paper on the way
personifications were used to teach the illiterate masses about morality.”
The minister laughed. “So I can’t count
on my flock tomorrow catching on as quickly as you did?” He nodded to the
banner again.
“A piece of cake,” I told him.
The conversation continued as I set up
my wedding candelabras, taped flowers to the ends of the pews, and laid an
aisle runner down. He was a good natured man, an interesting person and a joy
to talk with. If I had had the inclination to be a church-goer I would have
enjoyed his services but by that point in my life I’d come to believe that
there are many paths to God. I had found my way and I didn’t feel the need for
a minister, priest, rabbi, or other religious leader to keep me on the path to
spiritual growth. And I still don’t; I am comfortable with my journey to inner
peace. The Buddhists have a saying: The secret is there is no secret. The minister
that day at the church put it another way: “Understanding God is so simple,” he
said, “that most people think they’re missing something and they keep looking
for answers in the scriptures.”
So how would I---an agnostic if your definition
of the word fits me---respond to widows who can’t make peace with their loss because
they are still looking for a lesson to learn from God for why a good man had to
die and leave them all alone? I’d tell them that maybe they lack a real understanding of why we are
each here on earth. I tell them a well-known secret: we are here to love one
another. We are here to be God-like, to create goodness and overcome evil by
spreading our love, by doing good things. When a death in the family happens
that's heart-breaking but God (aka love) didn’t cause it. Love (aka God)
helps us get through the pain. In my spiritual world, there is no lesson to learn, no punishment given.
It is what it is. Shit happens. People live. People die and pee freezes when a sample is
left outside in the winter. ©
