Do you talk to God?
It might surprise you to hear that, as an agnostic, I bother talking to God at all. But agnostics, while not believing in God, don’t disbelieve either. We hold open the possibility on both ends of the belief spectrum. So I frequently find myself talking to the God Who May or May Not Exist.
It comes naturally. When you’re alone in the cosmos, speaking to a hypothetical divine presence takes the edge off existential loneliness. So many things never get said in life. This is the chance to say them.
In my version, the God Who May or May Not Exist uses the pronouns He/Him, She/Her, They/Them, It/It. I don’t much care for the name “God,” though it is the unavoidable title our culture has bestowed on the presumed/proposed/supposed supreme entity. The Bible isn’t much help either. Yahweh (remove the vowels and never say it) is the unnamed, or as some claim, “I Am Who Am,” which sounds like an unsolved, and unsolvable, riddle. In other words, The Mystery. I prefer the simpler “You,” honoring Martin Buber’s spiritual masterpiece, “I and Thou,” and the sacred word “I-You,” which can only be spoken with your entire being. Now that’s saying something.
We address our personal version of the Supreme through various strata of speech: straightforward intimacy (Jesus to Abba on the cross), coy informality (Tevye the milkman from “Fiddler on the Roof,” wondering whether it would ruin some vast eternal plan if he were a wealthy man), formal solemnity (Bible, church talk), defiant grievance (Job, the only person ever to put the biblical God on the defensive), and respectful humility (likely how you would speak if you genuinely believed a divine presence were listening … in real time).
Aloud or in thought, we use words carefully chosen, or chosen for us, or recklessly thrown out depending on our states of mind and emotionality, comprising a wide span of categories: solicitations or lamentations, psalms or blessings, bargaining or pleading, queries or requests, indictments or gratitude, suggested improvements humbly submitted for consideration as junior partners and loyal members of the Grand Covenant — all under the aegis of “prayer.” We the pray-ers, these our prayers. Few keep a running tally on how many are “answered.”
Lately, my prayer practice involves unleashing a mid-night rant, rave, or rage, an end-of-my-rope exasperation, an “I can’t do this on my own” cry for help, for courage, for guidance, for grace, for strength, for understanding, for forgiveness, for clarification, for a better brain, for a kinder heart, for a goddamn break!
The response, invariably, is deep, measured, peaceful silence, like the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey with that steady red light, observing, missing nothing, quietly in control, a non-judgmental divine presence — unless you try to disconnect it.
Inevitably, wrapped in the presence of that powerful silence, if I listen long enough, something comes unstuck in me (if only it could stay unstuck) and what it all comes down to is that, in spite of my efforts, love is still not the dominant force in my life. My shoulders droop in resignation, and I relent and say to Who May or May Not Exist (and to myself who sometimes exists), “I know, I know … Just do it.”
And I marvel, what wise being is this whose silence is not indifference but contains an answer?
And I realize it’s not that He/She/They/It has nothing to say, it’s that the divine has an extremely limited vocabulary, distilled to a single word. This Monolith isn’t mute at all but speaks only the language of love, which is manifested everywhere. In fact this Spirited Singularity never shuts up.
I end our “conversation” with the most beautiful prayer I know, by e.e. cummings, a poet who wouldn’t even uppercase his own name. But even he capitalized You:
i thank You god for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should any tasting touching hearing seeing breathing human merely being — lifted from the no of all nothing — doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Then in the dead of night, lifting myself from the no of all nothing, I resolve once more to obey my silent sidekick’s only commandment:
Love.
Just do it.