Images of God

I don't know about you, but this is pretty much the God I grew up with -- maybe not the triangular halo, and maybe mine had a fuller mane of hair, but otherwise... this is pretty much it.

And despite any efforts on my part to talk about the feminine aspects of God, or the Inner Divine, the fact is that when I'm thinking of God, or talking about God, this is most likely the image that really lies behind the words.

Which may be why I don't talk about God much in this blog -- even if I do self-identify as an Episcopalian. Because the word God seems to be very hard to separate from this picture, taken in Naples, of an old, white-haired, white guy peering benevolently down at us from some window up in the heavens.

Which is NOT the politically correct picture of God. And why is that? Hmm; sounds like an essay question on a contemporary theology exam: name ten reasons why this traditional image of God limits our understanding of faith. I could approach that as an intellectual exercise and get all preachy on you, or I could wander down the psychological road and talk about the issues with my own father that make the concept of "God the Father" pretty hard to find appealing.

But I suspect the more important question to ask, or to try to answer, is why would I take this picture? Why would I respond to this image by attempting to capture it, and why, this morning, does it seem to want to be in my blog?

And I suspect, if I am to be honest about it, that there is something inside me that leaps forth in joyous recognition at the familiar. It could, of course, just be nostalgia, a longing for the good old days when I believed He was out there, watching me, looking after me, loving me in His fatherly way, believing in me, my potential, and my motives when the circumstances and people around me seemed to question that.

Because somehow, from the time I was about 2, I had this sense that that loving presence was out there; a tender observer, aching with me when my heart was broken, rejoicing with me in my successes, holding my hand when I was hurt or scared, teasing me out of my fears and chuckling with me at my occasional foolishness. In a lot of ways God was a safe lap to crawl into when life was overwhelming.

And now, as a grownup, while I understand all the ways that this concept is both limited and limiting, I sense also that it wasn't a bad thing to grow up steeped in this particular world view, and that in some ways it comforts me still. It is, after all, easier to grasp than the more nebulous concepts I tried to instill in my own children; the God who is somehow both male and female; who is somehow both within us and around us; protective of our own good while still looking out for the larger good of society as a whole.

As I write this some words come back to me from Compline -- my favorite Episcopal service -- and I can hear them sung as they were nightly in the little chapel at the Episcopal Student Center at Dartmouth College, back in the years between my marriages when I was finding soul sustenance there. It's called the Song of Simeon, and the antiphon, sung at the beginning and end of the song, goes like this:

Guide us waking, O Lord,
And guard us sleeping;
That awake we may watch with Christ,
and asleep we may rest in peace.

This morning I was reading about the importance of forgiveness, and there was a lovely meditation practice offered for forgiving, not just forgiving others for the wrongs done to us, but for forgiving ourselves, both for the wrongs we do others and for the wrongs we do ourselves.

So maybe I should forgive myself, even if it is politically incorrect, for occasionally returning to that image of the Father God -- understanding, of course, that it is one of many ways to understand the concept of the Divine. And maybe it's not a bad thing to ask that He guide us and guard us, that when we are moving consciously through our days we may see as Christ sees, loving as best we can. And that when we are asleep, or just on autopilot, not fully conscious, that we may spread peace as well as rest in it.