A person is not a science project to be examined, analyzed or dissected. A person cannot be known with the clarity and exactness of a lab experiment.
A person is more like a poem that gets written moment by moment, stanza by stanza. The words can come like rain drops and soft breezes. Or sometimes like thunderstorms or wind gusts. There are always surprises, words that don’t rhyme or stanzas that go on and on, only to end abruptly.
God, by all names or no name, is not an answer. Not like a sentence with a period that says, “This is it. This is all you need to know”.
God is more like a question that leads to yet another question. And then another. The answer is elusive, just beyond one’s fingertips. It is the questions that make one’s life worth living. It is the questions that invite one to sit in stillness or dance in the wind.
When life smacks you in the face and knocks you flat, don’t look for God and expect answers. Instead look for a poem. One to read or listen to or maybe one to write yourself. Ponder the words, especially the questions. Let the questions take you to someplace new, somewhere unexpected. You might be surprised by who you meet, what you will discover.
Stay in the poem. Return to it whenever you are invited. Slowly, ever so slowly, God will appear. To sit with you. Dance with you. Cry and laugh with you. Don’t worry when God seems to disappear. Remember that God is in the poem, in the questions. And, in some mysterious and often elusive way, God is in the deepest part of you.
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Sue Kenney, California, USA
