A Treatise on God

I almost had Rico in earshot when he turned away and walked toward the group he'd just sang a few songs with. He sang, he rapped, he prayed, in English, in Spanish, in song. Watching him, you could tell he was devoted to his art and creativity, he was that lit from the inside. I waited for him to turn and walk toward me again, feeling that familiar nervousness I feel around anyone accomplished at their art.

I'd heard his name mentioned last week as a possible performer at an upcoming hip-hop showcase a student group I advise is planning, so I wanted to meet him and get his contact info. After we'd exchanged introductions and information, I asked him how the show had gone for him, and he said, "That Rev of yours is a trip, isn't she? I got so fired up before the show when she prayed with us. I was like, 'Damn, this spiritual connection stuff, that's what I've been missing'." The fact that he was moved by my Rev and felt just fine saying "damn" while standing on the pulpit endeared him to me.

It also reminded me of how I ended up in a spiritual community at all: I'd sensed I was connected to something that just wouldn't be ignored any longer. Around the same time, about four years ago, a friend dragged me to Inner Light. Which I hated in equal measure to a searing need to come back. Tonight, in the presence of Rico's relaxed shoulders and excited eyes, I wondered if perhaps I didn't have to struggle so much with God, or the idea of God.

A couple months ago, an old friend confided in me that she’d thought all my God-talk in the last few years meant I was a Christian. I recoiled at the thought that anyone, especially someone I love so much and who knows me so well, would assume I had converted to Christianity.

Now, if someone mistakenly assumed I adhered to “pure” Christianity, the kind that fights for social justice for all (yes, for all) and works for peace and wouldn’t make Jesus cry for the perversion of his teachings, that’s not SO bad, even if it’s not true for me. But buried in my recoiling is my own continuing ambivalence toward being associated with a religion that always felt sinister to me.

When I think of Christianity, I think conservative politics, homophobia, and male dominance. It means a scary, white, male God. It means that the only way to be saved is by accepting Jesus into your heart. It means closed-mindedness and self-righteousness. It means that when the crazy lady, Marguerite Perrin, from the reality show Trading Spouses, flipped out about being a God warrior and screamed at her terrified children that they didn’t pray for her and that gargoyles and psychics are “dark-sided,” she didn’t seem so crazy.

It means all the worst ways in which Christianity has slid into fanaticism. It’s a type of Christianity so un-holy that when I, a former atheist-leaning agnostic, use the word God, even dear friends worry that I may now be one of "them."

So to clarify, here’s what I mean when I use “God,” in no particular order:

First, the truth is that my God loves those Christians, too. It’s naïve of me to think that I am one of the believers that is somehow more evolved, for surely those Christians think the same of themselves. I do believe my God holds up for all of us a higher possibility for living as spiritual beings, and that fretting over those who are approaching this spirituality business in ways I don’t understand or agree with is a waste of spiritual energy. That doesn’t mean I don’t fight for things like gay marriage or refuse to engage with those “others.” It just means that I work for and towards a more inclusive world and not against those who have a different vision.

Second, God is a limiting word for me. Three letters that lend themselves to such wildly different interpretations can’t ever describe a thing that morphs the second you try to describe it. This is why creative people struggle to translate the feeling of love into color, or shape, or form, or song. They try to because it’s such a singular experience, and because it can never truly be represented. Real love has to be felt, perceived, to understand it. So it is with God. I use the word, though, because it is easy and recognizable. When I read or hear the word God these days, I just as often hear "Energy," "Universe," “Love” or “Peace” or even the sound of waves breaking or feel the sun on my face, and they all approximate how God rests in me.

Third, sometimes I find it hard to believe in God. I was an atheist longer than I’ve believed in God, almost as long as I’ve been alive, and my agnosticism took hold for only a brief year or two before God came along and refused to be ignored. I sometimes have to make an effort to call this event or that person God, and sometimes it’s more out of habit than faith. Sometimes, I look around my church, at the hippies, the SNAGs, the gays and lesbians and the folks of color who love God enough to put up with the rest of our majority white congregation, as we learn that "Oneness" won't let us off the hooks of racism and heterosexism, as we learn how to rock with the choir and praise like we mean it and I think, "What the hell am I doing here? My friends would think I've lost my mind."

But when I feel sure, without a doubt that God's real, it’s such a rush that I know it before I’m conscious of it and when my mind catches up to protest, I find I can’t deny what my bones know. That fortifies my faith enough to keep me going when I’m not so sure.

Fourth, I feel God a lot, and twice, have seen Her. This is true. Most recently, it happened a year and a half ago, when Thomas ended our relationship. The night after I wept sad, fat tears for hours, and that's when She has came to me. Luminescent dark skin and shining dark eyes, with long, nearly-black curls cascading over gossamer robes, barefoot and smelling faintly of lilac and jasmine. She reminded me of a less ornamented Virgen de Guadalupe. Too sad and weak to protest, my logical mind succumbed to my devastation, which looked up at Her and asked, "Well, what the hell took you so long, I've been like this for hours." She curled up next to me, warming my skin where she touched, her scent insanely comforting. The fanatical atheist in me scrambled for a logical explanation, but she felt so solid and real there next to me, holding the pain in her hands until it felt bearable again, that I surrendered to Her. Both times God has taken this form with me, it just stopped mattering if she was a figment of my imagination, or a hallucination, or as real as the eyes your reading this with.

Most of the time, though, what I call God is simply a sensation: an expansion in my chest or just beneath my skin, or words that get typed or written down by my hands but not from my mind, and I think, "Oh, hi God." I always feel God as a feminine presence.

Fifth, I never doubt God when I am singing. Singing clears out all my hemming and hawing and struggle and pulls me right into divinity.

Sixth, I believe that there is no separation between God and anything else. God is energy; just molecules holding together in different ways. It took me years to make sense of this for myself. After all, a pen is a pen and not God, right? Well, maybe. It’s rather pretentious of me to assume that a pen isn’t as sacred as I am or as God. Besides, the sacred vs. the profane question lacks interest for me. How am I, who consistently has sex too soon in new relationships, Divine? How is the man who cut me off on the freeway Divine? How is my brother, who annoys the joy out of my mother’s life, Divine? How is my father, who makes no attempt to know me, Divine? These are the juicy questions, the ones that challenge me to keep loving past all that doesn’t make sense. If God is energy, and everything is energy, then I'm God, and so are you, and so is anyone who's ever hurt me or anyone else, and well, that changes everything. It calls me up to heal so that I can be of good service to the world, and this calling up, this business of healing, feels like a really rich and rewarding place to live.

And maybe that’s it, that for me, believing in God is more interesting than not believing. It inspires me to be a better, more compassionate person. Choosing to believe in God, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when I'm not quite convincing myself, keeps me closer to the magic and mystery of life.

So my bottom-line take on "God"? I don’t think anyone needs to believe in God, any god, to experience the sacred. It’s just that I do.

I ended the night on a good note: licking the remains of raw chocolate macaroons from my fingers. It was a pretty good recovery from a crying spell on my chiropractor's table earlier in the evening.

He'd explained that sometimes in this type of spinal work, emotions come up, and that it's normal and acceptable to emote in whatever ways feel right. But I, of course, decided I wasn't going to be a crier.

Rev D's joke comes to mind: Wanna make God laugh? Tell It your plans.

At the end of my treatment, as he always does, my chiropractor said, "Take a few moments and sit up." I took longer than normal, because I didn't want him to see me crying. But I couldn't stay there forever, so eventually I pushed myself up, and as I faced the wall to my left, I knew I wasn't done crying. When he noticed my eyes, I saw his face soften with compassion, and he asked, "Did something come up?" Yeah. Fear. Fear that no one will ever love me. The same stupid, ridiculous fear that even I am tired of thinking. I can only imagine, beloved readers, how bored of it you all are. Indulge me please, if you can, it's simply where I am at.

I didn't answer his question, but a few defiant tears spilled out before I could stop them. He reaffirmed that this is normal. I told him I didn't like crying in front of people. "Wow," he replied with such softness his words were velvety, "doesn't that take a lot of energy to hold it all in?" Oh my God, yes, it does. "Ian, that's not helping me here," I sort of laughed, and cried some more.

The thing is, most of the time I find my desire to appear fierce and happy, or fiercely happy, much more compelling than my need to let the pain escape as tears.

So, Jose has decided he's not feeling it anymore. This definitely bummed me out. He's a wonderful man and I have so enjoyed his company this past month. He's reminded me that there are sweet, kind men out there who are able to care for a woman in a way that is all about respect and adoration. I was seriously beginning to doubt that. I'm grateful he chose honesty now, before we made love, before I got any more enamored, before I engaged in too much imaginary "life with Jose" planning. I feel deeply honored by him and I see how he did this because he fully understands I deserve what I am looking for, and that he can't offer that. That is so much more respect than John or the man before John could muster for me; they waited three and six months respectively, and neither wouldn't have ended it at all had I not gotten tired of waiting and ended it myself. Jose did a hard, good thing in telling me his feelings had changed, even if it wasn't what I would have hoped for.

Today, my little emotional outburst waited patiently for almost all of the 24 hours or so since Jose delivered the news before consuming me. That's good progress for me. Typically I'm right in the thick of the same old, tired story: Since no man ever has found it possible to love me (romantically) for good, it can only mean: 1. I did, or, more worrying, I am, something wrong, 2. I will probably never get to experience the things I want most in the world: partnership with a loving person and parenthood.

This time, I weathered his leaving well, even with his irresistible long, dark hair swinging and a soft kiss lingering on my skin. I fell asleep fairly quickly and tearlessly, I woke without engaging it. I had breakfast with Thomas and we spent most of the time talking about Thomas' life. I went to yoga, had a date with my nieces, and later dinner with them and their parents. Even when my sister in law remarked that she supposes most people think the girls are mine because they look so much like me. A drop sensation flooded my insides as I thought, So many women my age are parents of 6 and 3 year olds. Just not me, and now I'm even farther from being a mom than I was just yesterday. Even then (even then!), I didn't hook into the self-pity. I really didn't lament this shift away from love with Jose much all day. I'd think of him, my body would give it emotional charge, I let it run through and quickly reminded myself I am grateful for his honesty. So, truly, I'm making progress.

But the fear was waiting for me on my chiropractor's table, despite my fine work processing most of the day. A tenant I can't evict.

As I wrote the preceding sentence, intuition planted a three words in my head: Rumi, sorrows, and welcome. I googled them and here's the answer:

Guest House
by Rumi

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

So, fear, do come in. I am willing to receive your guidance, and permit you to clear me out for some new delight. Yet, I will entertain you only as long as it takes for me to learn from you, and then I'll kindly ask you to leave.

Augustine Roberto Salcedo, 33, was in the middle of his dissertation on educational leadership at UCLA. He also served on the El Monte elementary school board and worked as assistant principal at El Monte High School. His body, along with six others was found, dead, in Durango, Mexico on the last day of 2009. He'd been abducted the night before from a restaurant, where he was eating with family members. He was one of a few Americans that have been killed as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico, but let's face it, he's brown, so most of the nation will never learn of his murder, or of the staggering violence happening in Mexico as a result of America's demand for drugs, chiefly, cocaine. If Augustin had been a pretty, white American woman, maybe we'd all know about this tragic murder. But even then, even though her face would be plastered across every evening news broadcast for days, even though emotional relatives would plead for the madness to end, I doubt Americans could personalize this tragic situation and start conversing around the hard questions it raises.

Here are some stats I heard on NPR's morning edition this morning (for the full story, visit: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3; scroll to "Calif. School Board Member Slain in Mexico"):

* In 2007, Mexican President Philipe Calderon began his offensive against the nation's drug cartels and by year's end, 2,700 drug-related murders are logged (these include civilians and bystanders, police, military, and cartel members).
* In 2008, Mexico's War on Drugs intensifies, and drug related killings nearly double to 5,600. In Mexico, officials speak openly of the drug war peaking and confidence that this trend would not likely increase.
* Last year, 2009, nearly 8,000 people have been murdered in drug-related violence.
* In Ciudad Juarez, a border city infamous for cartel activity and violence, 320 lost their lives in 2007. Last year, the number hit 2,600.

"Staggering" barely registers the horror these numbers bring up for me. When I lived in Mexico a mere five years ago, the only talk of drug-related danger in I heard centered around a few areas in the capital and Ciudad Juarez. Now, there are hot spots all over the place. A low-level of fear has spread even into areas untouched by drug violence. I don't think a country can lose that many citizens and not impart a profound and unsettling sense of vulnerability to all who dwell there.


What happened? I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, the government started a War on Drugs. And now around 16,300 Mexicans are no longer living. Can you imagine the outrage a number like that would provoke here? Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe we'd still go about our days and lament privately the loss of life all these wars have on us collectively.

16,300 lives. Fathers, friends, lovers, mothers, teachers, service workers, children, even. Yes, some of the killed were knee-deep in getting drugs to users here in the US, but everyone of them was once an infant and child, full of potential and deserving of love and respect. Even the drug smugglers, every last one of the murdered didn't have to die, shouldn't have died.

16,300. We haven't lost that many Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a nation, we are, on the whole, weary of these wars and want our troops home, out of harms way. How do Mexicans living along the smuggling routes cope? What can they do when the war is at their doors, in their restaurants and stores?

What can we do?


Over last decade, the Mexican drug cartels went from controlling about 50% of cocaine trade coming into the U.S. to now controlling about 90% of the cocaine headed for U.S. distribution. These smuggling routes are worth billions of dollars per year and as long as that is true, the Mexican government cannot win a war on the drug cartels. The war will only escalate the rate at which murders occur. The Mexican government is in a civil war with the drug cartels, essentially, and we are supplying the motivation, the market, for it to continue. Secretary Clinton got it right when she said that our part in solving the drug crisis in Mexico is addressing the demand for cocaine in the U.S. When will we do this? How?

I know that to a cocaine user these numbers, and this reality is so far from the lines in front of them, and I am under no illusion that my little blog post would inspire anyone to swear off cocaine, but this is my only tool.

This ability to consume without thought of consequence is endemic to our culture. Whether it be food, drugs, media, or any other product, we have been so well trained by capitalism, by imperialism, by privilege to not ask questions like: Where did this come from? Who made it? Under what conditions? What statement am I making by consuming this product? Was anyone hurt, made poorer, or killed in the production of this item?

It is a mark of enormous privilege that we do not need to ask these questions in order to survive. But I'm willing to bet our neighbors to the south are asking how it is possible we do not ask these questions, how we do not see what our national appetite for drugs is doing to them, and when will we stop? And if they aren't, its only because if we've dared ask the questions, we don't want to hear the answers, and if we are forced to, then we deny their validity, and they are too busy trying to make a decent life in what's quickly becoming a war-torn country.

Ask the questions. So what if you don't use cocaine: ask them about whatever it is you had for dinner. Ask them about the clothes you are wearing. I hardly ever ask these questions, and when I do, I feel overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to answer them. If my rice came from the bulk bin at Staff of Life, and the bin doesn't say where it was grown or how, then I can ignore the probable answer: it's probably grown in the central valley where annual crops like rice shouldn't be grown year round because the climate isn't good for rice cultivation and it destroys topsoil and makes deserts of fertile land. If the tag in my shirt tells me it was "Made in Cambodia" and I get online to google "garment industry working conditions Cambodia" will I make the time to read? Will I think about all the fossil fuels it took to get the garmet form there to here? I know what questions I should ask, but my life is going to have to change if I answer them honestly. And from this tall hill of privilege I sit on, it's an endeavor I fear undertaking.

But, still, I urge you (and me) to ask the questions. Ask them of yourself and of others, ask me. It starts with the asking, and if we care enough, eventually, I have to believe the care will transform into readiness and we will hear the truth in the answers. I have to believe that given enough time for reflection about what we want our lives to be about, we will act on what we know is best for us, our planet, and our fellow humans. So just ask the questions, please.

I send out a prayer to Mexico tonight, to all the tens of thousands of people snatched from this plane as a result of drug-related violence, to the family, friends, and school community of Augustin Roberto Salcedo, to all who struggle to be good in this world, to all who don't even try or know how to. May all of us rest in peace (whether in death or in living), reflect with genuine curiosity compassion, and act in love.