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Can We Talk With God? October 05, 2009
Rev. David Alexander
The question, “Can we talk with God?”, brings up our relationship to Spirit. We have been told that we can talk “at” God, but can we talk “to” God? We may not have gotten a sense that we could talk to God as we were growing up—maybe we thought that we were doing it wrong. For many of us, we have “traded up” to a new idea that we could have a relationship with God.
Many contemporary thinkers like Ken Wilber talk about the three faces of God, three ways to relate to God: 1st person: the indwelling Presence, 2nd person: outside of ourselves and a personal relationship and 3rd person: Universal substance.
Most of our training about religion has come through the 2nd person: the personification of God as “He” or Jesus or another form like the Sophia (she). Basically, this idea is something that is outside ourselves and must have an intermediary or channel to be reached. Most of us have traded in this idea and have explored God in other ways. We recognized that we didn’t need a medium and we also recognized that we could see God everywhere—in music, art nature and creative expression, to mention a few. This is the most developed “face of God” in our society.
We are relational beings so the personal relationship (2nd face) is powerful. We can only relate to something through the filter of our won consciousness. Together, collectively, we created an anthropomorphic God and none of that is true about the divine.
When we don’t have all three faces of God developed, we are limited. When they are developed, we are in a more ecumenical stance because we recognize that people are just relating to God at a different level. We’re here to take care of each other.
Can we realize that we are speaking to God when we talk to our neighbor and when we are creating something?? Can we realize it when se are serving others and when we are meditating, when we recognize beauty? It is then that we have an appreciation for God.
Can we talk with God? Yes, indeed.
Question to Ponder:
1. Did you have an anthropomorphic view of God as a child? When did it change for you?
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