A minister was preaching to a congregation of children and adults. In trying to explain his definition of God, the minister said passionately, "God is ageless! God is timeless! God is eternal!"

At this one of the children in the congregation spoke up. A small voice could be heard saying "God is not at Turtle."

Over the years I have collected stories dealing with definitions of God. In the 1960s, in a philosophy class in college, a professor read a story about two explorers who came to a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing many flowers and weeds were growing . One explorer says: "Some gardener must tend this plot."

The other responds: "There is no gardener." they decide to resolve their disagreement by pitching their tents and setting watch over the clearing. No gardener is seen.

"But he may be an invisible gardener." said the believer. They set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. Although there is still no evidence of a gardener, the believer insists: "There is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks; a gardener who has no scent and makes no sounds; a gardener who comes secretly to tend the garden which he loves."

The skeptic responds: "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener, or even from no gardener at all?"

The parable of the garden represents the age old debate about the existence of God.

Later in school I learned that atheists and theists have not always been able to have open, free-flowing discussions. In 1838 a former Universalist minister, Abner Kneeland, got in trouble with the law in Massachusetts over the definition of God. Tried and convicted for blasphemy, he served a 60-day sentence in jail. After his release he traveled to Iowa, where he worked, with little success, to establish a community of free thinkers. Abner Kneeland’s criminal concept of God was contained in a short statement.

A PHILOSOPHICAL CREED

I believe in the existence of a universe of suns and planets, among which there is one sun belonging to our planetary system; and that other suns, being more remote, are called stars; but that they are indeed suns to other planetary systems. I believe that the whole universe is NATURE, and that the word NATURE embraces the whole universe, and that God and Nature, so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, are perfectly synonymous terms. Hence I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe that in the abstract, all is God; and that all power that is, is in God, and that there is no power except that which proceeds from God. . . . Hence, I believe that God is all in all; and that it is in God we live, move, and have our being; and that the whole duty of man consists in living as long as he can and in promoting as much happiness as he can while he lives.

Written at Hebron, New Hampshire, May 28, 1833

Another description of God I like arose out of my study of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. Kant proposed that space and time are the forms in which humans view the universe, but that the universe, what he called "things as they exist in themselves," does not exist in space and time. Kant said we can never experience things as they exist in themselves, therefore we can never experience the existence of God. He took "a leap of faith." The German philosopher said he had faith that God existed even though he could not directly experience God.

Over a hundred years later Martin Buber went beyond Kant and proposed we can experience God independent of space and time. Buber said that God is the experience of a unity that exists before our perceptions are divided into categories such as space and time.

He said we experience this unity through the special relationships we have with people, with nature and with works of art. We experience God in "the between." God is experienced in the I-thou relationship between two people, or between a person and nature, or between a person and a work of art.

A story illustrates the difference between an I-Thou relationship and an I-It relationship. In the story the wife of a British colonel in India was expecting important guests for tea one afternoon.

To see people as human beings, to feel the beauty of art, to feel the beauty of nature is to encounter the unity that underlies our lives. Sometimes it takes tragedy to make us sensitive to this unity.

After the terrible tsunami the day after Christmas, I thought of a story by the Unitarian Universalist minister Robert Fulghum that he published about 15 years ago.

On a long flight from Melbourne to Athens, an Indian college professor in hydrology and Fulghum stood in the forward alcove of a 747 comparing the route map with what they could see out the porthole in the door. They crossed Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and into Athens. Much of what they crossed was ocean.

The Indian professor of hydrology noted that they had just left a country where people worshiped the sun—on the beach with most all of their clothes removed. And they were flying over countries whose people believed it was the will of Allah that women should be completely covered, even on beaches. The name of God varied from country to country; the holy book was not the same; the rituals and dogmas and routes to heaven were not the same. And so certain were the followers of different religions of their righteousness, they would gladly war with one another—kill each other— to have their beliefs and metaphors prevail.

Clearly this troubled the professor—grieved him. The professor pointed out the Indian Ocean beneath them at the moment.

He spoke of water, his specialty. "Water is everywhere and in all living things—we cannot be separated from water. No water, no life. Period. Water comes in many forms—liquid, vapor, ice, snow, fog, rain, hail. But no matter the form, it's still water.

"Human beings give this stuff many names in many languages, in all its forms. It's crazy to argue over what its true name is. Call it what you will, there is no difference to the water. It is what it is.

"Human beings drink water from many vessels—cups, glasses, jugs, skins, their own hands, whatever. To argue about which container is proper for the water is crazy. The container doesn't change the water.

"Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it iced, some fizzy, some with stuff mixed in it—alcohol, coffee, whatever. No matter. It does not change the nature of the water.

"Never mind the name or the cup or the mix. These are not important. "What we have in common is thirst. Thirst! Thirst for the water of Life!"

As it is with water, so is it with God.

"I don't know much about God," said the professor of hydrology. "All I know is water. And that we are momentary waves in some great everlasting ocean, and the waves and the water are one."

God is "the most heavy-laden of all human words." Martin Buber wrote that of all the words in the human language,

Of all the definitions I have collected about God over the years, a passage by the Unitarian minister John Haynes is one of my favorites. Holmes wrote:

When I say "God" it is poetry and not theology. Nothing that any theologian ever wrote about God has helped me much, but everything that poets have written about flowers and birds and skies and seas and the saviors of the race and God—whoever God may be—has at one time or another reached my soul! More and more, as I grow older, [wrote Rev. Homes] I live in the lovely thought of these seers and prophets. The theologians gather dust on the shelves of my library, but the poets are stained with my fingers and blotted with my tears.

Personally I do not believe in a God that can intervene in human affairs. I do believe in God as the unity that exists before we divide the world up into categories. I experience this unity, and it makes a major difference in my life, giving me a sense of purpose and direction.

There is a final story that I want to tell this morning. It is from the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

In a Unitarian Universalist village I might put up a sign that says "God, also called the Divine Reality, the Still Point, the Eternal, the Ground of Being, the Creative Force, the transcendent, and various other names, exists." The name is not important. But I believe one great hunger in human beings is to be in touch with this unity. "We can and probably will forget most of what we have learned in life—the math, the history, the chemical formulas, the address and phone number of the first house we lived in—and all that forgetting will do us no harm." But I suspect that the quality of our life and the future of the human venture is related to our ability to remain in touch with the unity that underlies our existence.

Sources:

1. Found in the sermon "Concepts of God" by Revs. Beverly and David Bumbaugh. The Unitarian Church in Summit NJ February 16, 1997.

2. Kushner, Harold, Who Needs God, Summit Books, New York, 1989, page 100.

3. Fulghum, Robert, UH-OH pp. 137-139.

4. Buber, Martin, Eclipse of God, Harper & Row, 1952, pages 7-8.

5. Buber, Martin, I And Thou, Charles Scribner’s Sons 1958, page 76.

6. Kushner, Harold, Who Needs God, Summit Books, New York, 1989, page 207.

Readings:

        Let us pray to the God who holds us in the hollow of His hands, to the God who holds us in the curve of Her arms,

To the God whose flesh is the flesh of hills and hummingbirds and angleworms,

Whose skin is the color of an old Black woman and a young white man; and the color of the leopard and the grizzly bear and the green grass snake,

Whose hair is like the aurora borealis, rainbows, nebulae, waterfalls, and a spider's web,

Whose eyes sometime shine like the Evening Star, and then like fireflies, and then again like an open wound,

Whose touch is both the touch of life and the touch of death,

And whose name is everyone's, but mostly mine.

And what shall we pray?

Let us say, "thank you." —Max Coots

At the heart of life, is fire.

We recognize this fire.

It is the light of truth,

the warmth of love,

the heat of passion,

the creative spark that bears many names:

god, goddess,

truth, love,

spirit of life,

ground of being,

first cause.

For Unitarian Universalists,

it is the essence of life itself.

We light this flame,

which burns at the core of our chalice,

which rests among us as we worship together.

—Donna Morrison-Reed