“But what are winters like?” city people often ask me about living in Cook County.
“Well, it’s usually not colder than the Cities,” I answer. “And snow up here is a treat rather than a pain.
“But the darkness…. it can be really something…” I think back to my first winter here, when I traveled in mid-December to Philadelphia. It was chilly there, but there were artificial lights! I could go out and walk in the evenings past the shop windows. Wow!
And yet, I want to tell city folk: “The stars… When it’s this dark you really see them scattered by the millions across the sky!”
In my last column I wrote about the way our definition of the word “believe” is changing. To believe no longer means “to give mental assent to something” and is moving toward meaning something more like “to hold dear” or “to belong to.” This shift—essentially from Enlightenment to post-modern thought—is good news for those who want their spiritual lives to be characterized by depth and integrity.
Many outspoken atheists have not made this shift in their understanding of the word “believe.” Many still assume that “belief” means giving mental assent. If you assume that all that can be known must be known rationally, you are really limited in what you can know. It’s like going to a symphony concert with earplugs in and complaining that you can’t hear.
When some of my atheist friends say, “I don’t believe in God,” I want to ask what God they don’t believe in. Often, I suspect, that the God they don’t give mental assent to is more like the old man with a beard in a New Yorker cartoon, or one preached by the religious right. “Don’t worry, dear,” I want to say, “The god you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either…”.
The “god” of New Yorker cartoons or the religious right is easy to despise because this god is so small—easily encapsulated in pen and ink or in a verse here and a verse there. (Small but also a caricature…. It’s hard sometimes not to feel insulted by people who assume that is the kind of God I adhere to….)
If not that New Yorkertype god, where do we see God?
Here are some places I’ve seen God recently:
. In the stars in a night
sky.
. In the Boreal chorus
gathering to sing lovely
music for the community.
. In the life of Nelson
Mandela, and change for
good.
. In the crush of people
at a fundraiser for Donny
Brazell.
. In the boisterous
exuberance of a golden
retriever in deep snow.
. In a group sharing a
Thanksgiving feast around
a table.
. In the Minnesota
legislature’s willingness to
affirm loving commitments
between same sex couples.
. In the roaring of Lake
Superior in a storm.
. In crafts—when people
choose to make something
that is not only warm
and practical, but also
beautiful.
. In a community gathered
around the table to share
bread and wine.
. In a reporter asking,
“What would it take for
the USA not to attack Syria
over its use of chemical
weapons?”
. In making snow angels
with my granddaughter.
. In someone asking me
a perceptive question
and really listening to my
response.
. In a community honoring
Mark Abrahamson for his
teaching nurses.
. In peace negotiations in
the Middle East.
. In a crescent moon in
that dark sky.
. In _________________
____________________
(your answer here).
None of these involve seeing an old guy with a beard sitting on a throne. No, we meet God in unexpected places—true since earliest days when God spoke from a burning bush.
If we can encounter God in all these places, why go to church? It is in a faith community that we can share our “God sightings.”
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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