Who is God?

"What is your beloved more than another beloved?" - (asked by the daughters of Jerusalem in Song of Solomon)

How God is obscured in the dim glare of our everyday. We have thrown him into a great heap of religious relics and gold-plate, useless artifacts thick with the dust of age, but none of the deep patina'd sheen of the ages. We've covered the Living God with stale incense and dull chalices full of murky potions, the magnificence of cumbersome robes and gothic arches, and the choking must of books unread and out-of-date. We have exchanged the shining splendour of One who wraps himself in light like a garment for the smoke-and-mirrors flash of long-robed pastors (or pirates?) on healing tours.

Where is the God who dwells in cloud and rides on the wind? Where is El Shaddai, the many-breasted God? Who has seen that One who also calls himself Love? Have you heard him, seen him, sensed him - the deep One of the Ages? There is nothing of western sophistication about him. He is wild and ancient and vibrant and warm. He is wide and pure and great and humble and free.

I saw God this week, in a son of Punjab who stooped to touch his father's feet; in a field of snowy whiteness and a gold-flushed sky; in a dog full of eagerness and trust and single-hearted patience; in a bundled baby, warm and round. He was there, in the bright flutter of a scarf; in the spin of a bicycle wheel; in the bent back of an old man shovelling snow. I heard him in the voice of a friend; in the howl of a wind that bent trees; in the beat of an eastern drum.

God is all about, everytime and everywhere, and he is almost nothing that they say he is. He is Great and Good. He is Love and Life and Light and Truth. I long for the day when every energy in the universe will bend itself toward him, loving and singing and spending itself in and for the heart-breaking beauty and the deep fullness of the One who is Love.