God Shopping...

The first year of seminary is an interesting experience.  For the past few weeks, I have been feeling like I am on a top speed freight train.  Everything seems to move by quickly, without ever enough time to process and simmer. 

So I have been in my quiet space the past few weeks, allowing the concepts and ideas that I have learned (am still learning) to "simmer."  I needed some time to process God.  Admittedly, I am not one to "talk talk talk" about it.  My process is to simply allow what is to be, to process, to feel uncomfortable...and to settle.

Short of an existential crisis, my concept of God is morphing..and what a incredibly strange experience that is!  For a while, I allowed myself to simply be with the discomfort of knowing that I am exactly where I needed to be.

I have felt however, in exploring the various concepts of God, that I simply needed to figure out which label I choose to impose on myself.  In a sense, it feels as though I am shopping for an appropriate "God" label. 

So the question is, what kind of "eist" am I?

Here are the things that I know, through the process of elimination, I am not:

• I am not a theist, that is, I do not believe that one deity exist.  
• I am not a deist, I do not believe that God created the universe and abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.

I was all ready to accept that I am an atheists, that is, I reject the notion that any deities exits.
And then, I get to grapple with the term panthesim and panentheism.

Pantheism is a belief that in everything, there is God.  That is, God is the universe.  Panenthesim is a belief that everything is within God and God is in the universe and beyond.

The next term I grappled with is monotheistic Panentheism, which, if I understand correctly is one way of saying the one presence and one power is God and God is in the universe and beyond. 

Whew!  That is a mouthful and I shall allow that to stay until THAT becomes stable!

So then, What the heck do I believe?  I return to my definition of "Truth."

Is there a God?  Yes.

To me, God still exist, although it is not an anthropomorphic Hebrew Bible J writer's God. I believe that there is The Truth.  This Truth is God - unknowable, unspeakable, unfathomable, perhaps undefinable.  Larger than the cosmos, bigger than the universe, unending.

The Truth:  We all have our idea of what the Truth is, religions all over the Earth express Truth in one fashion or another.  We are all expressions of the Truth.  That is why I honor the diversity of faiths across our planet.   But there is only one Truth - and this is God.   ~ELF