Today’s story is a contemplation of God. Yes, that God, the one that has fallen out of favor in today’s society. Many claim to not believe in any god and that we live in a post-spiritual age, but they continue to search for spiritual expression.
I was raised and educated in a traditional, liturgical, Christian community and still find beauty in the Stained Glass, and music of the Pipe Organ. For me, God is not some mythological, supernatural being with a long white beard and a magic wand, but God is the essence of the natural world.
Societies throughout human history have used God to explain the unknown and to provide their pre-history. Today we can still encounter God at the intersection of the known unknown and the unknown unknown. God is the Big Bang, astrophysics, and quantum physics. Dark matter, dark energy, and maybe the grand unifying theory. God can also be found in a child’s laughter, the music of a bird, and the shape of a cloud. There is no one way to a relationship with God, but its important to accept and feed your relationship.
The world’s three predominant western religions all began in the same region, worship the same monotheistic God, and began in service to the poor and abused in society. Each developed a priestly class, which eventually became a major source of power in their society. That power devolved into a desire to maintain the status quo and to solidify their power base at the expense of service to the vulnerable and to new ideas they could not control. These religions shaped western civilization over the past two thousand years in every way imaginable, and we need to recognize both their positive and negative impacts.
Today there are voices within the religious community that recognize the need for change and speak of religious renewal. This renewal would be welcome by many, but its success now and in the future is dependent on the wholehearted acceptance of knowledge and willingness to accept responsibility for past errors.