My background is Christian and I am a member of a Christian denomination, but I make no claim of "knowing." My claim to agnosticism is a claim to free-thinking, of being a seeker not bound by Christian dogmatism and doctrines, but free to question and to think about Christianity and religion in general; to embrace the concept of being in a "Cloud of Unknowing".
This post is about my views on the topic of God. As a "Christian" I will reference the Holy Bible as a primary source for discussion. Again, I don't claim to have original thoughts. All thoughts are based on encounters with the thoughts of others]
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the dwelling place of the Most High, God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved. Psalm 46: 4-5
We are born of and born upon a stream of conscious activity. No one can adequately speak of the ineffable; of that concept known as God. Can we even assign a term to describe this paradoxical, phenomenal non-phenomenon, this immanent indwelling presence that is always with us and yet beyond us, our very selves and yet more than the sum of all that has been, is, or will be? Does a three letter word do it justice? Does it say too much?
The best we can arrive at comprehending this incomprehensibility is to give it a name, God; itself a metaphor, a verbal symbol of what cannot be empirically demonstrated or adequately explained. As a nominative term, "God" can be easily treated as a thing, an object, a person, or a god; something that can be manipulated by our will or by our appeasement, but the essence of God is not a thing, not a noun.
GOD IS A VERB.
God is being. God is action. God is always active. God is the I-am-that-I-am, or better yet, the I-will-be-what-I-will-be; the I-Is-ness, the enveloping paradox that is life itself; the life in which we find ourselves living. God is Love. God is Light. God is Life, or to make it more active God is En-loving. God is Enlightening. God is Enlivening.
God is the very essence, the very core of all being-ness. God is the encapsulating fabric of life itself. As the apostle Paul said, paraphrasing Greek philosophers believed to be Epimenides and Aratus, "For in Him (God) we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28) In this sense, we are all incarnations, manifestations, emanations of God.
We are all born of God and are being born along by God. This is our time to be, our here and now. This is our time to be loved for who we are and to love others for who they are, our time to shine and to enlighten, This is our time to live and to enliven. What happens after this moment in time we must commend to that endless stream of love, light, and life upon which we are born.
With the Psalmist, we can envision God as a stream, always flowing in and through and around all that is (the city of God). The Is-ness of God is the part we share with God, the constant creative activity that is in a permanent state of being or becoming. At the same time we need to understand the difference between Is-ness and impermanence.
The physical life we are experiencing on Earth right now is not permanent. Is-ness is not to be confused with immortality. Immortality is rooted in the concept of time. Is-ness is not about time. Is-ness has no past, present, or future. Is-ness is. Is-ness is the ongoing stream of being that we are part of, from which we emerged. In this phase of being we will experience death. Death is a natural part of physical life. According to the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, "It is appointed that all humans die once." Heb. 9:27.
Being in a physical state we will wear out as all things physical do. We will die and the here-and-now present will end for us; the point at which physicality ends. The elements of which we are made of, the star dust that comprises our chemical and atomic make up will return to their separate states. The Is-ness of which we are part of remains and we will be born away; absorbed by the very stream from which we emerged.
Will we re-emerge? Is there more? Perhaps. Hypothetically speaking, nothing is lost in the Is-ness of God, the city of God. Look into the vastness of the night sky and ponder the light we see in the distant galaxies billions of year after their physical source ended.
We are in the City of God, the all-that-is. The entire cosmos is that city. We are the dwelling places of the "Most High." The flowing river whose streams are the very Is-ness of God that gladdens the heart of creation, of all that is. God is at the very center of all that is; the core of being. The Is-ness of God is immovable since God is always on the move.
Until next time, stay faithful.
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