a kingdom built of seeds

“Piously we produce our images of you / till they stand around you like a thousand walls. / And when our hearts would simply open, / our fervent hands hide you.” – Rilke

We want control. We crave it. Many of us want to be told what to believe, how to believe, how to live, what to do. Really, it’s about believing and living in the right way. Because God is not a statement of beliefs and propositions, a religious dogma, a structure, a formula, or a set of ethics, rules, or principles (though he may give us these). God is transformative. He is a loving relationship. God as a “being,” a “person,” is somehow knowable, yet “God” as a word is complicated; his ways do not always allow for easy, pat answers and simple definitions. Why? Because it lessens the need for a dependent, trusting relationship. The “not knowing” is what causes us to seek, to search, to ask, to pursue. I believe that’s where God is found; I believe that’s what he wants. How can our relationship with God be thriving without this dialogue, this conversation, this desperation that stems from the constant darkness that ever surrounds us? 

We lean into the one who knows all, because we do not; into the one who is all, because we are not. Thus our confidence is not in knowing or being all; it’s in our need of, dependency upon, the one who does and is.

“We become so accustomed to you, / we no longer look up / when your shadow falls over the book we are reading / and makes it glow. For all things / sing you: at times / we just hear them more clearly.” 

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