What is the name?
When my dad was very ill due to congestive heart failure and during the process of healing from his heart transplant I stopped accepting that god was the name of the thing that helped him. My relationship with this god was very strong from childhood, high school and even part of college. But something in me stopped wanting a part of this god who is praised for all of the good and damned for all of the bad.
After my dad’s heart surgery was completed, his surgeon came to the waiting room to tell us and said, “It was successful, we have God to thank for this.” I was, of course, ecstatic that my dad was going to have this new life with his new healthy heart but the moment the word “god” came out of his surgeon’s mouth, I just stopped. I didn’t want to thank god for this gift because I didn’t ever blame god for the bad that ever happened. It doesn’t make sense but ever since then I stopped believing in God and started to believe in a truth that didn’t have a name. And ever since then, this truth hasn’t had a name.
Please don’t get the idea that because something bad happened to my dad, I stopped believing. Something AMAZING happened to him too and I still didn’t believe in this god. At least not in the mainstream, commercialized god that many Christian Americans believe in. It’s more this god, truth, supreme, divine something. This light that has no name.
Another factor into this was due to the religious studies courses I took in college. After learning about the different faiths and their gods or supreme truth they believed in, I also started to refuse to name this truth. Some religions didn’t believe in a god but were still very peaceful and believed in a divine truth, they just didn’t necessarily name it either. Or they named it Yahweh or Allah. Or these gods would have prophets like Buddha, Muhammad or Jesus. They have these great stories of great beings and their messengers with different names but the same message. All of these religions have this light that they want to share with the world and some of them named it.
And, even tough I hadn’t really staked claim into one religion, I still had faith that this light was watching over the world and helping with the circle of life; the balance of the good and the bad.
So now, I feel this warmth or light and I accept this truth that is peering out its head but MY head is strongly refusing to name it. This is mostly because I just don’t want to name it God or Buddha or Zeus or Betsey Johnson. But maybe down the road I’ll call it Fred or Tree. Trees are pretty divine, says my friend B.
Does anyone else feel the same way?
