Does God Communicate? Her parents talk to God. Her partner feel God’s presence. They all say that the Holy Spirit guides them. Yet God has never spoken to her. That doesn’t mean she stopped believing in God. She believes. How could she not when she has been taught since infancy that this Christian God was real, that he created the universe, walked through a perfect garden with Adam and Eve, and blessed the faithful. This woman tried so hard to be faithful. She did not feel blessed. What was wrong with her? Had God forsaken her because of some terrible thing she had done, something she could not remember? She…
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Is There a Sentient God?
When the World Is Burning As I write this, forest fires in California, Oregon, and Washington are destroying vegetation and property, displacing families, and killing animals and people. Although this is just one more hit in an ongoing attack by a warming world, just one more season of worsts, these fires have sent hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. In areas that aren’t burning, smoke hangs like a thick and acrid fog, making our eyes sting, leaving grit in our mouths. Many people are suffering. When the world is burning, we flee, or we fight. In the face of immediate danger, we’re unlikely to wonder if the god…
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A Time for Everything
All is Vanity “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Eccl 3:1 NRSV). [1] These words start the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes. They were written by an anonymous Qoheleth. This Hebrew word is not a name, but a title. It means preacher or teacher or someone who speaks to an assembly of people. And the very first thing we hear from him is, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). Qoheleth repeats this phrase throughout the book and expands upon it, giving many examples to show that life is meaningless. The work we do…
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Does God Feel Grateful?
Does God Feel Gratitude? Although we start each of our Sunday-afternoon circles with a particular topic, one can never be certain what we will end up talking about. For instance, we once got sidetracked when one of our members asked, “Does God feel gratitude?” How do you answer a question like that? First, what do we mean by “God”? Second, even if we could define that ultimate entity, how can we understand its experiences? After all, we don’t know that the Divine has emotions, at least as we understand them, and gratitude, as I am defining it, is an emotion. Which brings us to our third question: what is gratitude,…
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Balance and the Autumn Equinox
Where Is the Balance? The equinox is a time of balance, when night and day are equal. In that moment of symmetry, all is well with the world and with the heart. For an instant, at least, there is calm. Or so I imagine. In reality, I fly through the equinox like though any other day, managing a smattering of exercise, scraping together enough food to keep me well, cleaning when I must, and creating when I can. In between, I snatch moments for rest and relationship. Time passes in a blur. Balance eludes me. Not everyone feels out of balance because of busyness. Some people are bored. The seconds…
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With Prayer, What Matters Is that We Start
Every once in a while, I meet with a patient who wants to know how to pray. The short answer is that there is no right way. You can find instructions, of course, but you can also find instructions that defy those instructions, so in the end, you just have to do what feels best to you. That isn't where I start with people, though. First, I have to figure out why they're asking the question.
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Chance, Randomness, and the Fault in Our Stars
The Elusive Nature of Randomness Our universe is ruled by randomness. Not that we generally acknowledge that. Most of us believe in a powerful and purposeful divine being who plans events, guides our lives, and has a mission for each of us. It’s hard for us to understand the world any other way, for our minds see patterns everywhere. We naturally create meaning out of chaos. As Leonard Mlodinow explains in his book, The Drunkard’s Walk, randomness and chance are common, yet we still imagine we can predict the future and control events that cannot be controlled. We downplay the way fortune – or misfortune – impacts our lives. [1]…
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Hagar and the Power of Naming
The Power of Naming When he enlisted in the army toward the end of World War II, my father changed his name. A Jewish refugee from Germany, he was traumatized by and ashamed of his heritage, so perhaps that had something to do with his rejection of his birth name, yet it was also common practice back then for immigrant soldiers to change their foreign names to English ones. In any event, Karl Heinz Stiebel become Charles Harry Stevens. Did this matter? Changing his name made it easier for him to pass as “white,” which he did. At one point, though he considered himself an atheist, he attended a Methodist…
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Feeling Forsaken and Being Found in Psalm 22
Psalm 22 and Feeling Forsaken Psalm 22 starts with the line Jesus famously spoke as he hung on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? (1-3) In my years as a chaplain, I have listened to many people describe how forsaken they felt, abandoned by God, alone, and afraid. Most of them blamed either God or themselves. If they felt angry at God, they often felt guilty about it. Though I never felt guilty because of it, I was angry at God for many years. Not that I blamed God for…
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Finding Our Way to Holy Relationships
Everything Is God According to A Course in Miracles, what we see and believe about the world is an illusion. Our egos inform us that bodies and minds, concrete objects and forms, are all that exists, and that each existence is a separate self. Caught up in this illusion of a vast ocean of separateness, we feel lonely, anxious, and incomplete. Therefore, we seek out something that will fulfill us, complete us, ease our anxiety, make us whole. Born into these bodies, we have forgotten that everything is of God, that everything is God. In this state of forgetfulness, we look to someone or something outside ourselves to make things…