In the Name of God

In the entire year of 2012, I made four blogs posts. This is my sixth post so far in 2013 and it's still January. So while I'm not exactly regular about it, I'm going to give myself a wee little pat on the back because, hey. Who doesn't want a pat on the back? I usually have at least an inkling of what I want to write about when I hit the "new post" button, but today I got nothin'. Just figured I'd start typing and see what came out. Um... (pause wherein I go to the kitchen and eat some dried apricots)

I was thinking about God today. I wrote a long comment about these thoughts on a friend's blog which quite possibly had nothing whatsoever to do with what she had been talking about, but it's where my mind went with it. I was not brought up religious and have never felt a need to apologize for my lack of religion. I don't consider myself an atheist or an agnostic or anything at all, really. And yet...back when I was a teen I felt I needed to develop my own definition of God; something that made sense to me, that I could live with, that would lend a personalized pseudo-spirituality to my life. So I did and it goes like this: God is "The All." Not just that God is IN everything, but the God IS everything; the total sum of everything that exists. Everything is equally and interdependently God: a pebble, a mountain, a sandwich, a gun, air, music, you, me. Pretty simple, but I liked it.

I worked out that definition when I was in high school and have stuck with it ever since. I've even been kind of proud of it. But today as I was writing it, it struck me as a little hollow. And I wondered why I had ever wanted to define God in the first place, and suddenly had the notion that perhaps in doing so, I have taken away my ability to be open to some bigger, unnamed truth.

Naming things can be problematic. I read somewhere that a prelingual child will not recognize shades of a color as the same color-- chartreuse, pine green, mint green, celadon-- appear to be their own utterly unique colors until a child learns the word "green." The label then forever changes how the child sees the world. This group of colors is green. That group is red. So extrapolating here, has deciding that I need a definition for a concept of "God" prevented me, in some very fundamental way, from understanding the universe and how I fit into it?

The closest thing I have to a religious philosophy is an abiding respect for Zen. The idea of maintaining a "beginner's mind" resonates with me. I'm feeling the need to go back to that now.

Okay, enough of this nonsense. Back to the old grind.

Readin' and Writin' and Suchlike

Reading: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler. And staying up much too late at night to do so. Third chapter in, and I like it so far. A refreshingly straightforward style and storyline.

Writing: blog posts. I want credit for this, okay? And I have what I think will be a fun story idea for my next writing group prompt. Nothing on paper yet, but circling around it in my mind.

Good Eats

Beef stew with lots of veggies in it. Raw carrot and beet salad. Dried apricots.

My Adorable Child

...is asleep. As should I be. Cop out? Sure. But after two nights in a row of fives hours sleep each, I'll take it. Goodnight.