Understanding God. Impossible.
Understanding God is impossible.
When I first read that, I was bummed. Thomas Keating‘s actual statement is: “God isn’t something you can understand.”
I have spent a whole lot of time and energy trying to figure out the what, how, and so many why’s about God. That bummed. Hard to accept that I can’t understand God. I didn’t want all my effort to seem like a waste. My human mind wanted to understand my relationship with God. My ego thought I needed to understand logically, rationally that we are Oneness rather than a two-party partnership. That same ego didn’t take kindly to the announcement that understanding God is impossible.
At the same time, my heart (I think) felt pretty relieved. It is sort of like when the teacher says you have to read the lesson but there won’t be any test. I enjoy the reading and the pondering and the questioning, all those efforts. However, they haven’t turned up answers that make much sense to my human-being-logical-mind-and-ego. Keating’s statement gave me some freedom. The freedom of trying to make it all make sense in and to my human mind/ego. The freedom of no test.
Understanding sanderling
Cindy and I recently spent 4 beautiful days on the Texas Gulf Coast. Once beach-ensconced, I easily allowed myself to let go completely of my work responsibilities. I knew the power of my e-mail auto-response. It informed workmates I’d not read their messages until my return on Monday. I loved the freedom of non-worry about tasks to be completed, reports to be prepared, meetings to be scheduled. That would happen as it should when I got back to work.
I was experiencing the power of letting go. The more I watched children dig in the sand for no purpose other than to dig, the more fully I let go. The more I saw sanderlings scurry along the waterline with endless energy, the more easily I released. And as I heard the waves spilling on top of one another, the more I realized the “humanness” and the limitations of striving to understand.
I realized the freedom of not needing to understand the waves or the birds or the children. Or God. The more I am working to understand, the more dualism, separation I am insisting upon.
It seems a bit ironic that allowing myself to not understand God makes faith much easier to understand. Faith is holding true to that which is beyond understanding and for which we need not achieve understanding. Ironic and wonderfully fulfilling.
A Prayer That We Not Understand
God beyond Understanding,
that’s tough to take at first.
Our love of all the beauty and majesty and miracle
of your creation spurs our curiosity of everything
that makes it possible.
The human mind, so logical, wants to know
your what and how and especially your why’s.
The answer is allowing thoughts to release and let go of asking.
The satisfaction is to savor the beauty, the power, and the glory
of all that is from you, is you.
It is enough to know you are and thus are we.
It is enough to know our Oneness.
And so it is. And so we let it be. Amen.
Love and blessings,
11 August 2017
In: Authenticity, Faith, God, Power, Prayer · Tagged with: Faith, God
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