god revealed, and other things

i don't know what god is, but i know that i felt his presence in these flowers and their intoxicating scent this morning. i felt transported, if only for a few instants, to a place of bliss. i felt inspired and uplifted by this presence.

i still have a hard time with the name 'god'. with the label. it's such a loaded term. some people see the word 'god' and form an immediate mental construct of what i mean. i would not want to convey the wrong idea; i don't even really know what i mean by god. for me, it's part mental construct, based on what i've read and thought about, and part intimate personal experience. i could refer to it as so many other things, but i don't know of any one word that captures my meaning and experience of god accurately. so i fall back on the one term that everyone recognizes, and try to explain myself as best as i can.

the other day i came across a term for god that i really liked: "the shadow of the turning". i love this. it's so beautiful and vague and hard to get a grasp on. supposedly, this is a gnostic term, but i came across it in 'eat, pray, love'. another gnostic reference to god, which i love is 'thunder, perfect mind'. it makes me shiver just to speak it.

and since i'm mentioning gnostic stuff, i thought i'd say that i'm now reading another great book by elaine pagels (the historian of religion who wrote 'the gnostic gospels'). this one is called 'the gospel of thomas' and it's blowing me away so far.

i have to admit that i've never been drawn to christianity before, mainly because of the church. i felt drawn to jesus, based on the stuff i heard about him; i thought that he'd be someone i'd really like to know and hang out with. but the standard christian stuff i heard from most church-going people, i didn't think too much about.

i never read the bible, and the few times that i went to church, i felt mostly drawn to the silence and peace i found there. not so drawn to the religious culture, and the teachings themselves (or maybe it was the people delivering them) seemed to me too rigid, and not very spiritual. i guess i never felt god in church the way i felt god in the flowers this morning.

but anyway, reading elaine pagels gives me a totally different perspective on christianity. i love reading about the history of this movement, but most of all, i love her discussion and interpretation of the (gnostic) gospels. this stuff, i feel much more drawn to. it speaks to my personal experience, and i can relate to it on a deep level. some of the passages she quotes from the gospels are so powerful and beautiful, that to me, it doesn't even matter who said them and when. why argue over trivial stuff like that when you're given something that is imbued with truth and beauty? (elaine pagels would say that the main reason you'd argue over who said what and what did they mean has to do with control).

anyway,

peace