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anise · 01-04-2005, 11:14 PM

If I stand before you, and I place my hand upon your heart, and your hand upon my heart, and you look into my eyes and we speak to each other in true communion, one to the other as though the other were the center of the universe, and if we lose ourselves in the beating of the hearts and the joy of true communion with another living, beautiful, vibrant thing, that is God.

I like to say that God is the metarealtionship amongst all things. It dwells here in me and in you, but it is not merely our personhood, our the summation of personhood, humanity, the ecology, the universe. It is all of those things, but it is also the relationships between all those things. The continual unfolding of life, the changes and dances of life, the great mystery of two things meeting and being changed by their meeting. All of that is God. It is foundation of mystery, the ground of being from which everything grows and is nourished. It is that which allows me to see you as Holy in your own right and to offer myself wholly to you.

Ultimately God is a mystery, ineffable and unknowable. But I think we want to understand it, to relate to it. To draw it down into our lives so that we remember it and interact with it. So we create Chariots, vehicles that draw the divine light down from heaven and into the world. We give these Chariots various faces--HaShem, Persephone, Allah, Jesus, etc. They are not God. The moment we name God we limit it, and God is without limit. But these names draw us into relationship. These names and faces show us how to be in the world, and our knowledge of how we must be in the world shapes how we treat others--how we stand in relation to *everything*. Our Chariots are important because they shape the entire gamut of our being. If I pray to God the way I think it might be (the nameless, faceless eternal no-thingness) then I get nothing from that. It's like praying into a vast, dark, deep hole. But if I fill that hole up with wonder, with stories and rituals, emanations and emotions and I pray into that and trust that those things will carry my message towards the Beyond then I feel fulfilled. I have something with which I can relate, and by which I can judge myself. I have a standard for my life under the observation of my Chariot, the interface between me and That Which Cannot Be Named.

As to whether there is an aspect of being-hood that is a manifestation of God, I do not know. I like to think there is, and I live my life as though there is, and I commune with that and ask for guidance and blessings and aid, but I do not pretend to know how those prayers are processed. Maybe there is an aspect of God that is sentient and that meddles in human affairs, or maybe there isn't. I don't know, but for me it doesn't matter. I am comforted in my faith that there is, and at this stage of my life that is good enough.

01-04-2005, 11:14 PM	#12 (permalink)
anise Registered User iTrader: 0 / 0% Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: austin, texas Posts: 2,667	If I stand before you, and I place my hand upon your heart, and your hand upon my heart, and you look into my eyes and we speak to each other in true communion, one to the other as though the other were the center of the universe, and if we lose ourselves in the beating of the hearts and the joy of true communion with another living, beautiful, vibrant thing, that is God. I like to say that God is the metarealtionship amongst all things. It dwells here in me and in you, but it is not merely our personhood, our the summation of personhood, humanity, the ecology, the universe. It is all of those things, but it is also the relationships between all those things. The continual unfolding of life, the changes and dances of life, the great mystery of two things meeting and being changed by their meeting. All of that is God. It is foundation of mystery, the ground of being from which everything grows and is nourished. It is that which allows me to see you as Holy in your own right and to offer myself wholly to you. Ultimately God is a mystery, ineffable and unknowable. But I think we want to understand it, to relate to it. To draw it down into our lives so that we remember it and interact with it. So we create Chariots, vehicles that draw the divine light down from heaven and into the world. We give these Chariots various faces--HaShem, Persephone, Allah, Jesus, etc. They are not God. The moment we name God we limit it, and God is without limit. But these names draw us into relationship. These names and faces show us how to be in the world, and our knowledge of how we must be in the world shapes how we treat others--how we stand in relation to everything. Our Chariots are important because they shape the entire gamut of our being. If I pray to God the way I think it might be (the nameless, faceless eternal no-thingness) then I get nothing from that. It's like praying into a vast, dark, deep hole. But if I fill that hole up with wonder, with stories and rituals, emanations and emotions and I pray into that and trust that those things will carry my message towards the Beyond then I feel fulfilled. I have something with which I can relate, and by which I can judge myself. I have a standard for my life under the observation of my Chariot, the interface between me and That Which Cannot Be Named. As to whether there is an aspect of being-hood that is a manifestation of God, I do not know. I like to think there is, and I live my life as though there is, and I commune with that and ask for guidance and blessings and aid, but I do not pretend to know how those prayers are processed. Maybe there is an aspect of God that is sentient and that meddles in human affairs, or maybe there isn't. I don't know, but for me it doesn't matter. I am comforted in my faith that there is, and at this stage of my life that is good enough. Last edited by anise : 01-04-2005 at 11:18 PM.