The subject for my online service on 15th February was Lent as A Spiritual Journey. One of the readings I chose was by the Christian theologian, Frederick Buechner. In it, he asked a series of questions, which I'm going to reflect on as my Lenten practice for this year. They came from his book, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary, which is rather wonderful. So I'm going to attempt to answer one each week (except for the first two weeks in March, when I'm in New Zealand and will have no computer with me).
The first question is: "If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why?"
The short answer to this is yes, I do believe there is a God, because I have experienced His/Her presence. But my relationship with God has evolved over the years. As a child, the primary school I attended observed the cycle of the Christian year, and held an assembly every morning, so I learned all the lovely C of E hymns. I also owned a very nice Children's Bible, so I knew many of the stories from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
Did I have a relationship with God in those days? Well, I took His existence for granted, and accepted the stories I read fairly uncritically. It wasn't something I thought about much.
After running into issues with Christianity in my teens, and having discovered Unitarianism, the God I believe in was loving, and omnipotent, but strangely powerless (I know, that is a paradox). I believe with Mother Teresa that we are God's hands in the world, and that He/She can only work through us. I do trust that God exists, and believe with the Quakers that there is "that of God in everyone", and that each of us is "unique, precious, a child of God." And that therefore it is up to us to treat every human being with compassion and respect. Even those we dislike and distrust.
In 2012, my husband and I did a touring holiday in France, visiting several of the marvellous Gothic cathedrals. When we visited Chartres Cathedral, I had a close encounter with God, while walking its labyrinth. I had walked labyrinths before, mindfully, and had found it an uplifting experience. The experience I had at Chartres was of another quality altogether.
When I first entered the labyrinth, I realised that the people in front of me were moving really slowly, stopping every few paces to pray or meditate. My initial reaction was to overtake them and carry on, but my guardian angel nudged me at the right moment, and I decided to go with the flow and see what happened.
Gradually, as I walked, slowly, mindfully, my mindset changed, and I began to pray: firstly, the Metabhavna, the Buddhist prayer of loving kindness, but then, the Lord's Prayer, over and over again, in whole or in part. I offered my prayer up to the heavens, in the sure and certain knowledge that *Someone* was listening. It was the closest I had ever come to a direct experience of God, and I don't think I will ever forget it. It took me 90 minutes to reach the centre of the labyrinth and I simply wasn't conscious of the passage of time.
In the years since then, I have come to believe that God is Love, and that Love is at the centre of everything. And that God in the form of the Spirit is active and present in our lives, if we are only wide awake enough to sense it. I believe that we are all made in the divine image and that God has been waiting for the unique, divine incarnation that is each of us since the beginning of the universe, and that He/She sees each of us as perfect and whole and beautiful, exactly as we are. And that this perfect, whole, beautiful being lives inside each of us and is loved by God, and has been loved by God since we were born, and that there is nothing we can do (however good or bad) that will change that.
Today, I have an active awareness of God, the Sacred, in the natural world, in my everyday life. I have come to recognise that God is everywhere: in the world, and in me. And that is good.
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