Pop 89: Engaging God
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
Lately, I’ve been reading lots of theology, which is “the study of the science of religion,” that place where theo (gods and God) and logos (word) meet. Don’t ask me to define “God”; that’s why I’m studying theology. However, I will say my sense of God is completely connected to the overwhelming sense of wonder linked with the surrender I feel when I walk along the river. Especially at this time of year, when snipes dive, robins sing, and goldfinches flitter about like bright flames with wings.
God is a word fraught with misunderstandings because who can understand such a “thing” as God? You have to want to give God a whirl. And I want to engage whatever energy it is that stirs my aforementioned sense of wonder. I want to be in touch with something that humbles me, requires me to treat others with respect, to revere nature, to sit quietly and be still instead of getting caught up in trying to accomplish too many things in order to earn a sense “self-worth.”
I like the Indigenous term: The Great Mystery. It evokes a sense of spirit, sublimity, and incomprehensibility inherent in the universe. I also like my friend Mike the physicist’s definition of God. Mike’s business card reads: “Wile E Coyote, Mad Genius” and user the monkey: “Well, yes, actually it IS rocket science.” When I asked Mike if he believed in God, he replied: “I don’t know. But I do believe in the universe. The Uni-Verse. The single-story. It’s all one story, Madonna.” There. Done. Conversion accomplished. So easy.
Conversion, by the way, simply means: “turning.” We become converts every day. As a matter of course, we turn from being a PC to a Mac. From keto to carnivore to vegan. From coastal to inland. We even go from female to male with less consternation and reproach than we go from believing in “the finite materiality of the universe” to “something more than all this.”
Why study God? A friend asked. Why not religion? Because while religion focuses on “re-linking” (from the Latin re-ligio) ourselves with the divine, theology asks: what is “divinity”? To mangle Hamlet’s words to Horatio: I already know how I roughly hack and hew at my ends; I am more interested in the divinity that could help me shape them more gloriously. Or, as the philosopher Joan Chittister writes: “God is the mystery nobody wants. What people want from God is not mystery but certainty. Not to believe in the immensity of God in such an immense astral history is to believe only in myself and what I see around me. Without a God, I am God.”
It behooves me to move past my grade two God. God is not the “He” god of my childhood, a simplistic private member’s club president. Nor is God my latest love-interest for whom I would die, or at least learn to make lasagna. Nor is God technology, a saviour who promises to save not souls but time and money and the hassle of other people.
My interest in theology resurges every time technology promises new “links” to the rest of the world through new devices requiring terms of agreement which are more like ultimatums. If I do not agree to this policy relinquishing my privacy, I am warned, my new gadget won’t function optimally.
The “links” and “webs” and “communities” of the digital age are not the links this physical animal needs, wants, and yearns for, especially in this age of isolation. As an organic entity, I thrive on real live community. I agree with author Anand Giridharadas when he says you shouldn’t be allowed to call yourself a community until you’ve had a barbecue together.
And, in my mind, no web can replace the web made by the cat-face spider in my flower pot. We are herd animals, meant to hear, see and smell each other. We also need to develop the skills, patience, and reflective skills that come only from being together. Theology is a study of the bigger picture, of that single story universe wherein not everybody has to agree with everyone else on everything in order to live together. More important than agreeing or even understanding each other is tolerating differing opinions, living in paradox, agreeing to disagree, all skills that come when finding ourselves face-to-face, not online. Only in person do we laugh, joke, play and “get ‘er done.”
Val Marie is a village run on volunteerism; we must show up at each other’s harvests and brandings. We need to celebrate every new baby and marriage and mourn every lost life together, in the flesh. It is only in actual physical community that we mature, survive, and flourish. As Martin Luther King wrote: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” We may be fools for all the latest technological toys and devices, but what good are they when what we really need is to sit at a kitchen table with a friend, drink coffee and confess our worries?
Contemporary theologian Ilia Delio wrote recently about studies revealing “the harmful effects of the uncontrolled internet, including negative brain plasticity, heightened aggression, depression, loneliness, lack of compassion and narcissistic behaviour. Computer technology developed rapidly in the twentieth century, and we immersed ourselves in it without fully understanding what we were creating or how these inventions might affect human personhood and community. Within several decades, we have created an information-drenched culture fractured by tribalized and oppositional factions. Technology has sped up evolution, but we are on a blind and random trajectory, with no real common goal.”
The difference between knowledge and information is enormous. Knowledge makes room for the mystical and requires the time it takes to grow wise. It grows out of real-life encounters generating a full-bodied wonder. Those are the only terms of engagement I am willing to enter into.