Dear Friends in Christ,

I am always pondering (it is sort of professionally mandated for a pastor) the ways in which we think and speak about God. We cannot think or speak of God without images and concepts, but no image and no concept can ever capture God, not even the best of them. They always have to be held lightly in the hand, like a fragile butterfly. Try to hold onto them and idolatry results. One of the benefits of inter-religious dialogue is that it broadens our ideas about God. Poetry, which is always about God, even when it doesn't know it, has this same effect.

For example, the American poet, Hart Crane, said this: "The true idea of God is the only thing that can give happiness—and that is the identification of yourself with all of life." Actually, Crane is not so much defining God, giving us an idea of God, as he is telling us what happens to us morally and spiritually when we come close to God. AND (this is important), he is asserting that being in God-space does not abstract us from life as some puritans and dualists seem to think, on the contrary, God's presence drives us deep into the bone and marrow of life itself. When you know who God is, suddenly you identify yourself, you have an identity, that puts you in solidarity with life in all its forms and processes. Christians call this "incarnation." God comes to us in ourown flesh.