Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, December 05, 2007


I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking,
what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.
What I want and what I fear.

- Joan Didion, author, born on this day,
1934, in Sacramento CA


In my perception over many many years of contemplation, this is where Scriptures come from too. All Scriptures. When a human being begins to ask Joan’s questions - “What am I thinking?”, What am I looking at?”, “What do I see?”, “What does it mean?”, “What do I want?”, “What do I fear?” - “God” is at work. This is how the Source of Life and Meaning many call God reveals Its Nature, Its Being. I have come to believe that God is known only through the awakening and self-awareness of each individual person. Otherwise, God remains the utterly hidden “Other”, about which Mystery many religious thinkers have spoken.

Oh, I know. Many of us would like to believe that God puts a pen in someone’s hand and then uses that person as a conduit. Like Joseph Smith and the Golden Tablets. I don’t believe it works that way. The profound internal inconsistencies alone speak against such a concept - unless one is willing to accept a God Who is inconsistent! No, the Being of God and the Being of each human person are inextricably interrelated. When we have the courage to begin asking the critical questions about Life, the Two Solitudes awake in joy to each other.

This is why I read a lot more fiction than “theology”. Good fiction writers write out of the well of the Critical Issues of Life. As I think do the “writers” of scriptures. When I ask those questions, when I long to know what I’m experiencing and what it all means, I find the God Who is Compassion, Justice, Love, Gentleness. Baal, Molloch, the Hebrew God who would slaughter a nation, the Hindu God(dess) who would burn up a city, the Allah who would condone the “honour-killing” of women or the death of a woman whose school-children named a teddy bear Muhammad, the Christian God who would consign people to a Hell of pain - Nope. Not what I want Life to be. Or God.

Our understanding of God is fundamentally shaped by our own commitment to self-discovery. If on that journey we choose power, hate, aggression, such is the God we find. If we choose Compassion and Justice, the same. Indeed, God is at the mercy of our own self-perception and our choices.

Talk about a Vulnerable God! But in Jesus, Christians know this vulnerable God who places His/Her very existence trustingly in our hands.

This is only the beginning of a conversation. Keep thinking!


Brian+