On Saturday morning, I met up with a friend of mine from small group at church and we walked together to the church’s new office space to help another friend do a quick clean of the space before the move-in. Serving with people is one of my favorite things to do and as much as I hate to admit it, I enjoy cleaning. You’ve got a clear, achievable, practical goal and you don’t have to give the task at hand 100% of your brainpower. I like it the way I like gardening- you’re doing something good and useful with your hands. Not that I garden all that much. But I like the idea of being able to.
When we were done, we made lunch, which was lovely, and talked about accents and vacation days and the benefits of having a church without a church building and then we walked back home. On the way over, it had been freezing but sunny, but now the clouds rolled in and I felt the happy feeling slipping away. It was going to drizzle that cold, useless rain on me again after teasing me with just enough sunlight to think that maybe the sun might stick around this time.
I stopped by my flat, grabbed some books and went to the library. On my way, a few tiny snowflakes mixed in with the rain and I smiled in spite my grump. One landed on my eyelash and I almost hated to blink it away. I rolled my eyes at the whole situation and thought to myself, Fine, if this is all the snow we’re going to get, I’ll enjoy it while it’s here. I put on Hamilton and bounced to the rhythm of the words while watching for the lighter snowflakes hiding in the raindrops.
I got some good work done, though I’m always just a little bit distracted in the library. It’s probably the product of my first week there. I let myself daydream a little too frequently and my brain can’t take the place entirely seriously. I considered calling it quits early and just spending a couple of minutes in the chapel downstairs before going back home- my brain’s been bouncy lately and it could be nice to try to calm it down. I got distracted by an article a friend of mine shared about getting out of a spiritual rut, though, and ended up heading straight out the door before closing time.
Out in the courtyard, it was snowing.
The whole way home, it was snowing.
And hours later as I sat by my window writing, it was still snowing. These big, beautiful flakes that back home mean that the snow’s about to be done, the wind picking up and swirling them around my window. It’s so pretty, I assumed it must be fake, but I caught a flake or two on my tongue, a perfect second of fresh cold in my mouth, which I’m pretty sure is what heaven tastes like, so this snow must be real.
It’s so easy to say, poetically, that God is in the snow. It’s so easy to say that this wonderful, beautiful thing that nature’s doing right now is a pure blessing- enough snow to look nice and fill the soul with something like joy, but not enough to cause any problems. I think we as humans, when our hearts are in the right place, respond to beauty in nature with awe and that awe can be translated pretty directly back into our religious beliefs.
I’m happy to find God in nature, I think, but I’d hate to limit human interaction with the divine to the days and times when the world looks bright, the times when your heart is inclined to believe there’s something good out there after all. You need a God of the ugly as much as a God of the beautiful. And it’s a big step from the God who sent the snow to the God who sent his Son. I’m going to need something more.
I can shrug my shoulders and say that we encounter God in the good- in the beauty of nature, in the love of friends and family, in honest, challenging, but not exhausting work. I’m particularly prone to seeing God in other people’s words and in music, a kind of spark or truth or depth that points me toward something bigger than myself. Christianity fills in the rest, in my spiritual life. So there are moments, maybe, when we’re confronted, but there are also tried and true places we can go looking for God.
When I pray, God’s up and to the right. That’s where I look, that’s where I locate my idea of the thing that I’m praying to, that’s where I address my concerns and my frustrations and my petitions. It doesn’t matter if it’s my bedroom, a cathedral, the car, the street. I like to find a physical corner of a room to look at, but even if I don’t have that, it’s up and to the right. I know that’s problematic in terms of humility and deference, but I was always told to come with boldness before the Throne because God listens to me. It’s only rarely that I’ve gone to God in prayer and felt like there wasn’t anything there. I don’t really feel the need to manufacture a religious experience.
Nor do I want to, really. I want everything in my spiritual life to be genuine, authentic. Which is laughable, right, because there’s not a single aspect of my thoughts about God that isn’t steeped in the religion I grew up in, the society I grew up in, the influences of the media I consumed and the breadth of the world I live in. You can’t strip all of that away, no matter how hard you try. You can consciously set some of it aside, maybe, but we are built out of our experiences. We see with our own eyes. You can’t get outside of that to some kind of universal true. Like it or not, we are stuck in our bodies and memories.
So maybe we do need to look for God in the beauty of our planet and our universe. Maybe we do need to see God in our positive relationships, in the wonderful things people can do for each other, the way we can care. Maybe we need to seek God in art and words and music and all the good things people can make. Maybe that’s the best place to start. If we can encounter God in that tangle, maybe, with practice, we can see God in the tangle of ourselves.
