A God Image

        How to envision God? . . . Of course we cannot, but at times an image can help expand our understanding.   We participate in life, it is not of our making, it is given us . . . and here is this world and the vast universe; we know of it yet we can’t understand it . . . our souls whisper to us of God.

       In attempting to grasp for the unreachable, I suggest we imagine the Times’ Square New Years’ Eve ball:  a giant glittering multi-colored ball made up of thousands of small triangles of Waterford crystal glass.  A ball twelve feet in diameter, the entire thing, all surfaces, cannot be seen at one time.  As it turns light bounces off each surface, glittering like a giant jewel flashing multi-colored rays.  Each triangle is at a slightly different angle so either from the inside or from the outside, no single unit reflects exactly the same thing.  Even the glitter and flashes would be different depending upon the light and angle.

       The New Years’ ball with its 2,688-crystal triangles flash with 32,265 LED lights capable of producing a pallet of more than 16 million colors.  Sixteen Million colors?!  I can read the statistics but cannot make meaning of the numbers; I can only be awed by its magnificence.  Most of us cannot actually comprehend it for the complexity is beyond the average person’s ability to grasp, and this is a man-made object. 

       The complexity of God far exceeds that.  But consider it, for a moment, as an image of God. From the outside (our place in the world) we are awed by the magnificence of life’s wonder and being. With our limited perspective we peek out through one of those tiny windows (our religion) at the wonder as we pray and listen to explanations.  We imagine we ‘Understand God’ . . . yet that which is beyond our vision so far exceeds what we do see.   Whether from the outside or inside, whatever our position; as with the sphere, the total is not capable of being seen by anyone.   If our religion is open and progressive, it seeks to explore the many reports of the visions of mystics throughout the ages, for no two individuals see exactly the same thing.

       Unfortunately it is in the nature of people to argue, thinking we ‘know’ God better than someone else.  But God is so multi-faceted no one can truly know God.  When we seek the good, we know some bit of God as we need to know God.  We each look through different lenses and see different things.  It not a question of either/or, who is right and who is wrong, not ‘this or that’, but it is AND.   Each sees similar realities, or perhaps one is on the opposite side of the big ball and sees a very different reality but the whole is beyond encompassing by anyone; only is the ALL (the seen and that which is beyond seeing) the reality.