The mist cleared and I stood on a piece of land that stretched into infinity…flowers were dead and streams had run dry and there the sun rose no more…
This is a dream I had…seven years after deciding to go on a journey…to “find” God. This is the story of how I came to realize that the barren land I treaded on in the dream that early morning, was actually the physical manifestation of my soul in one of God’s multiple dialects.
My first conscious determined destination has always been Christianity and whether I liked it or not I soon came to learn that I had decided to follow this religion, although I was constantly told that was a “lifestyle”…something’s definition I became very unsure of, but either way I saw nothing wrong with following a religion. During my seven years I learnt so much theoretically, and grew more and more closer to God…or so I thought.
Ultimately, I came to “understand” God as a divine perpetual being that formed and conserves the universe who is not only omnipotent and omniscient but one that oozes with benevolence and was represented in Biblical scripture as a being that was above all concerned with people and their salvation…or did I? Was I really close to God? If so why was I so miserable? How could I claim to believe in the Christian God if I at times rebelled against God and shook my fists in the face of a sacred heaven?
It took me years to learn that I had been taught to understand God as a set of rules, and like Miguel de Unamuno began to understand that “those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe in the God idea, not God”. It took me even longer to admit that what I had been taught was not what aligned with my heart, and so my spiritual battle began…who was I to change what others understood God to be? I was someone who felt like they did not believe in God because according to that, that would mean that there could be a chance that God might not exist…and that would not align with my heart either because I knew that God existed.
The more I began to question who God was the more I became obsessed with a quote by Scarlett Bene that I came across, “God can never be a definition. He is more than even the entirety of the dictionary” and every day that I struggled to sleep…I battled with the question of how God could have been condensed to such an imperfect grammatical sentence when I failed to imagine God, let alone understand God…how? I could not comprehend why it was being made so complex to be with God every day and why most of the people around me were so convinced that trying to explain God made it easy to be with God…why could I just not “get it”?
Then…one day…my feelings saw God…and I too ask, as Sylvia Plath did…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to tell them that I saw God this morning?”…
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to make them understand that God speaks to us in unlimited dialects of the one language?”…
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to make them understand that the art of life lies not in understanding God, but getting the message?”
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to make them understand that we will never be able to perceive and understand God, that we have to remain content with the fact that we did not know God but knew of God…or even worse, that we only knew the idea of God and not God?”
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How was I going to tell them that I now see God every day, everywhere and every time…in every living thing?”
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to explain to them that I prefer to meditate and rather listen to God than pray and talk to God?”
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to make them understand that the closest one can get to God, even though it will be far from God, is to Love many things?”
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
“How am I going to make them understand that God is a perfect poet who is writing a novel called Life, and that our role is to let God write it?”
…”Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
This finely knit parable handed over a detailed fabric that spoke in textures…it said: “Lands lay barren not because the farmer neglects it, but it lays barren because the farmer neglects its worth.”
Gifts Of Dreams…GOD,
