this god problem is really a people problem

recently: I framed a study on Kandinsky that Arie brought home from art class + I will never get tired of looking at it or at these orange ranunculi. Why is it that my eye is drawn to the one broken stem?

I was standing in the children’s reading room of a bookstore off Fifth Avenue last month, reading a beautiful book by Mac Barnett with illustrations by Carson Ellis, called "What is Love?” when all of a sudden, I had one of those clear, quiet thoughts…that all the problems we have with God, are really problems we have with people.

Think about it. All of us are living out of our story. No matter how balanced, intentional, yielded, mindful, integrated, transcendent, or enlightened we may become (and really I hope for us all to become all of those things, by the way) we are still walking products of the molds that cast us. It cannot be escaped, or undone; only understood, and integrated. And this is, as far as I can tell, never going to become a passive thing…sometimes it can lie latent, or in some version of autopilot, and that is a kindness. But this status of becoming — of working with, and through — is lifelong.

When I am not weary from the “working it out”, I am so grateful that this is an ongoing process. How boring and stagnant life would become, otherwise. Catch me when I am worn down and worn out though, and I wish it were finished. Wish it would be and stay fixed. Both postures are very real to me, and I would do well to remember the influence that being tired has on my little lens.

So I’m standing there reading this book for children, and my heart is awake. And — spoiler alert! — this book is about a boy who goes on a quest to discover that love has been right in front of him all along; how it’s in front of all of us, if we have eyes to see it. How we all make sense of love through the lens of our own experience.

If that’s true (as it seems to me to be) and if God is love, then aren’t we likely to either lose the plot based on the people or circumstances around us, or otherwise to see it through or in spite of our own experience? God has chosen to let us find him in the middle of our stories; He doesn’t force his way in. So much so that sometimes I think many of us would say that we wish that he would, if we are being honest with ourselves.

In other words…other people are so often the way that we see / know / experience / find God…or, tragically, that we do not. If that is the case, then aren’t most of our hangups and doubts about God, really ultimately rooted in the ways that other people have harmed us?

Human beings are truly remarkable in so many ways: brilliant, creative, beautiful, kind. We are also tragically flawed, capable of such harm and havoc that it doesn’t make sense. The best of us is from God himself, and the worst of us, well, as I see it it…is an impediment to Him.

My favorite pages in the book are when the boy encounters a poet, who insists he has a really long message about love for the boy, and that the boy must sit and listen to him. The boy does not have patience for that, so he walks away telling the poet that he hasn’t answered his question…which I love, and relate to. There are never enough words, as far as I am concerned. My poet’s heart is at peace with this. And, it is at peace in the mystery of it all, with things not totally making sense, but being piecemeal and at the very least, beautiful.

Maybe I have said nothing at all. Or maybe I have. I’m not even sure, but I’m trying to grow in the practice of sharing my thoughts even if they are. a little half-baked. Here’s hoping we all can see + find the love that is right in front of us today.

xo