god is happening
What is god? Where is it? How can we understand it in this life?
That mystery is where we came from and where we will go, a concept so vast our human minds can’t touch it.
I have felt removed, apart from it. It gets lost in the physical world. Lost in what is tangible, what we can see and feel and touch.
We focus on the needs of our bodies, the ride of our emotions, the constant whirl of our thoughts, our relationships, responsibilities. It’s easy to forget god when there is so much around us right now overwhelming our senses.
In the year since Harley died I have carried her photos with me. I set them up wherever I stay along with the pictures of the faces god sometimes wears in my mind - Hanuman, Maharaji, the Godess Kali.
I set them up. I see them every day, but I don’t see them. They are just there.
Tonight I stopped and really looked at them. In this arrangement the deities are bookended by Harley. On the left she looks in as a puppy and on the right she looks back from close to the end of her life. In between was god and god and god.
I have struggled to make sense of her life, just like my own.
I was there for her entire story.
All her experiences.
Her tiny beautiful body, aging and changing through the years.
All the mistakes I made, the places I could have done better for her.
Her fierce intelligence, her unique personality.
All of the love.
The thousands of hikes we took together.
The business I started so I could spend more time with her.
The friends who loved her, who she would shower in enthusiastic licks and cuddle next to.
The time I wasted not being present or taking her presence for granted.
The last year and a half when I knew something was wrong, but couldn’t get a diagnosis from a vet.
The pain she was in that I could and couldn’t see.
The days I spent praying for a sign it was time.
The hand I felt on my shoulder telling me it was.
The morning the vet came.
How couldn’t stop imagining her body was breathing when it lay still for the first time in all our years together.
Holding her for the last time as I placed her in the ground. Except it wasn’t her. I could see so clearly that “her”ness had left that form.
So where was she? How could something be here and then not be here?
I thought god was where we came from and where we go, but seeing my images arranged in just this way showed me that god is also everything in between.
God is the miracle of our bodies, the complex ongoing marvel of our existence.
It’s our magical minds, our intellect, our unique knowledge that our existence is temporary.
It’s the exquisite irony that we inevitably squander the present moment, the short time we have here.
God is the natural world. The ever evolving weather patterns, varied landscapes. The infinite forms of life and how we coexist with them.
God is us and everyone. The ways we connect and repel, how we hurt and heal each other.
It’s our hearts, wanting to love and be loved, closed from hurting, afraid open and be broken again, which we inevitably will and they inevitably will be.
God is the symphony of life, the dance of fate and free will, the complex choreography that guides us perfectly, imperceptibly or kicking and screaming, to where we need to be.
God is this essay. God writing god to god and it god reading it.
This is it.
You sitting in front of your computer or holding your phone right now.
Your thoughts, your body breathing, heart beating, eyes blinking.
The chair, the room. The air.
The world outside the window.
What you are doing now and what you will do later.
Every experience you have had or will have.
Every joy, every hurt.
Everyone you have ever or will ever love.
The love that has existed for you that you took for granted or turned away.
The love you feel now.
The fact you are alive, that you exist.
That we inevitably take it for granted.
That we will look back with appreciation and regret no matter what we do or don’t do.
The mystery of god isn’t that it’s nowhere or hard to see.
It’s that it’s everywhere all the time and we can’t see it because there is nothing but it.
I look back on Harley’s life and I regret that I didn’t do even more to make it perfect. I wish she hadn’t suffered - pain of tumors, being denied even a single desire, spending even a moment without me, of ever being hot or cold or hungry or thirsty.
Then I remind myself that we didn’t step into life on this planet to experience perfection or avoid suffering - that is where we come from and where we go.
We came here to live.
To live fully.
To be ourselves, with the complex joys and tragedies of our personalities.
To live our stories from traumas to triumphs and back again.
To use and move our bodies to experience the world.
To watch them grow then age and decay until it’s time to drop them.
To dive in headlong or wait on the sidelines.
To fail and succeed.
To be compassionate and contentious.
To be wrong and be wronged.
To fight with your whole heart in a battle you know you will lose.
To touch and understand the infinite preciousness of each moment.
To squander them, anyway.
I thought there was some way to get to god. That I had to try. That it was somewhere to go or a way to be.
Turns out I’m already there. I have been all along.
God is here.
God is happening.
It’s all there is.
I write this knowing I’ll forget it ten minutes from now.
And that is god, too. Watching the dance.
Each of us remembering and forgetting, expressing the mystery in our own unique way.