Oh my Gawd!

I started reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert last night. The story contains a great deal of discussion about God, meditation and spirituality. She relates an intense "conversion" experience on her bathroom floor. I identified deeply with her account. When I first faced serious illness and my own mortality, I was hopeless, terrified and desperate. I began an exploration of and search for God. I thought I was dying and God seemed like the only option. You know the old adage; "There are no atheists in foxholes".

I was born a Catholic. I possessed a reasonable though unexamined faith. I abhor the ideology, politics and practices of the Catholic church today and throughout history. I am no longer Catholic.

But as much as I disdain the institution, I am grateful for the spirituality that I developed while growing up Catholic. My mother played a huge part in my spiritual development. It was her loving interpretations of the sacraments and scripture that made God real to me and the Catholic faith bearable. Her example of open-mindedness and love was powerful.

Ultimately, it was prayer that moved me from Mass to mysticism. It was a Catholic Spiritual Director and dear friend who taught me a method of meditation that leads to detachment and contemplation. Not contemplation as a cognitive process of thought or reflection, but as a means of resting in the non-thinking, non-emotional, pure presence of God.

Over the years I have let go of words, thoughts and even feelings in my meditation. I simply remain faithful to the practice. Meditation led to my detachment from many things including liturgy, Eucharist and most of the things that define religion. Nearly 20 years of this prayer practice has made concepts of and intellectual explanations for "God" irrelevant to me. The word "God" for me is charged, and a good bit of that charge is negative. I live in the deep South, the "Bible Belt".

I've met some very unpleasant, cruel Christians in my life. They have spit in my face when I marched for gay rights, they have turned their backs when a friend who died of AIDS needed a funeral and a burial. They harass young women acting on the most painful and difficult decision of a lifetime. They defend unspeakable hatred and brutal judgment in the name of God. These experiences have played a significant role in my discomfort with the word "God".

I don't like the word God. But it's a perfectly adequate word and most people are comfortable using it and that is good enough for me. I don't have a word, I just have this "place" without words or thoughts. A non-physical space where a silent presence gently overwhelms. I know my words are contradictory and inadequate but that's about as close as I can come to what "God" is to me. The Gnostic's "The Shadow of the Turning" or St. John of the Cross's "The Cloud of Unknowing" --these seem better to me. But ultimately all words fail.

So, I don't have a word or words for "God". As a writer, that's a problem. I considered inserting a smiley face as a substitute for the word "God" but I couldn't find one that possessed sufficient dignity. I shall for the purpose of writing simply use "god". I don't feel the need for more name or gender discussions here. So often our tiny visions of god get in the way of us loving god and each other.

This morning I found myself in the woods with my dog. We passed by an incredible spider web, It was perfectly symmetrical. My reaction to it was a prayer, a little indrawn breath of delight and gratitude. Then for some reason I started thinking about what I had read so far in Ms. Gilbert's book.

Her fervour and excitement at the beginning of the ultimate journey was beautiful. I reflected that the passion and intensity had gone out of my relationship with the divine. My faithfulness is always the same, I return to my prayer. Often the thought of meditating seems unattractive to me. The thrill is gone, I don't receive the same "buzz" that I experienced in the early days. But now, unlike before, I experience god in nature; trees, plants, the sky, the earth, the sea, the universe, all animals and humans, every cell, molecule, atom and smaller particles, you get the general idea - god is present in everything.

While enjoying Ms. Gilbert's account, I felt a nostalgic longing for the mysterious, intense sense of god which used to fill me and sustain me. I used to walk around in a haze of mystical ecstasy. Now I participate happily and peacefully in this world but I no longer experience the same intensity or frequency of "consolation" from god. I question myself, have I become bitter or jaded?

So today when I saw the perfect web, I experienced god, I felt happiness. Returning home, I grabbed my camera and walked for another while until I found the web again. I could not capture the light or the perfection of it, the sun had moved. Rather than being frustrated, I felt happy. I gained some insight into the change in my relationship with god. I may not feel like I used to but like the web, I can't go back or capture those times in words and pictures.

Now, when I receive a caress or some other "gift from god", that's it. I can't hang on to it, analyze it or possess it. That moment will have to do. And it does.

I hope I will continue to show up and meditate. The rest is out of my hands. Thank god.

(Sorry about the title, I couldn't help myself, I'm a New Yorker.)