By this time, I had come to realize more and more that this quest for an acceptable image of God was (and is) an important aspect of my healing journey. As I found healing, I also found clarity, and as I found clarity, through my writing and the responses to it, I was being healed.

I still had no image of God as "Other," but that was becoming OK as I found greater integration in the discovery that, for me, the human and divine are one -- not two separate dimensions or layers of reality, but ways of talking about experience when we want to emphasize certain qualities that we feel. The sense of oneness was increasing in me, and as it did so, so did my sense that "divine," "spiritual," "sacred," and yes, "God" are not some separate categories of reality but aspects of who I am, who you are. They are ways of speaking of our everyday lives and experiences when we recognize and are open to the unlimited potential that is in our humanness.

Sometimes I felt like a throwback to some early heresy, but mostly it felt as though I was getting closer to some important truth by stripping away metaphors that cloud meaning as often as they illustrate meaning.

* * * * *
After stumbling around these many months in the exercise of theologizing, I have come to realize that my childhood experience in a Methodist church was too positive. Amid the dysfunctionality that surrounded me, the church was a safe and happy place. It taught a simple faith, not a fundamentalistic literalism, but a traditional country Methodism that attached me to the symbols as though they were fact. I accepted the whole package with a child's lack of critical examination, and I was never taught that it was open to examination.

Even through higher education and seminary, my goal was to learn what I was taught, and one of the things that I did not learn until much later was critical thinking. So the process of making a faith my own was delayed. Now that I'm working at it, you will recognize that I have had to clear away some things about which I felt negatively before I could be very positive. But when I accepted the whole package I was without tools for sorting the wheat (Jesus' teachings of unconditional love, compassion, universal grace, reconciliation, etc.) from the chaff (hierarchical, patriarchal, dualistic, legalistic, culture-bound world-view, with language that easily feeds bigotry toward women, homosexuals, and other minorities).

With that sorting process well underway, with some knowledge of other religions and mythologies, and with a general awareness of how modern science and psychology are changing our paradigms and perspectives, I have gradually approached the stating of a generic faith -- by that I mean that I believe that everything important for the physical, emotional and spiritual health of humankind can be stated without reference to deity. When that sorting has been done to the best of my ability -- when the process has been demystified -- then I will be free to choose when my 'truths' are best expressed in the language of Christianity, or Taoism, or Hinduism, or Jungianism, or Native American spiritism, or the cosmic creationism of Brian Swimme, or in nobody's language but my own.

For example, how did it all begin? There is a marvelously brief statement by Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate, of what scientists have learned about the big bang and the subsequent evolution that brought about the arrival of humankind. Cosmologist Brian Swimme's The Universe is a Green Dragon is an exploration of the creativity that suffuses the universe, of the role of humankind as the self-reflective participant in the planet's creative process, and of the universe as our primary teacher. "The universe evokes our being, supplies us with creative energy, insists on a reverent attitude toward everything, and liberates us from our puny self-definition." As with Lederman's statement, Swimme leaves room for, but does not assume, divine intervention. Nearly every religion supplies us with a creation story which we may choose to take as literally or as figuratively as we like. I seek to free myself from childhood religious conditioning so that I may find meaning in each interpretation. I choose not to be committed to one, to the exclusion of others -- not either/or, but both/and. Generic, when I so choose.

Given that introduction, if I were to write my own creed, this would be a first draft:

I affirm unconditional love;

I affirm forgiveness and the making of amends;

I affirm reconciliation as the path to peace;

I affirm the equality of all persons;

I affirm the creative spirit;

I affirm the ideal of wholeness of individuals, communities and the planet;

I affirm the natural order as the setting in which resources for health and wholeness are offered for our use;

I affirm supportive and loving community;

I affirm the Bible, culture-bound and flawed though it be by human authorship, translation, copying and canonization, as the source of the Judeo-Christian cultural myth and history;

I affirm that other cultural/religious myths are equally efficacious and that in an increasingly pluralistic world we are enriched by access to scriptures of religious traditions other than our own;

I affirm that every experience contains gifts for my learning and growth;

I affirm humankind as responsible co-creator of healthy and whole selves, societies and planet, as well as of the belief systems that give cosmic meaning to life; and

(In the Christian context) I affirm God as symbol of creation and wholeness, Jesus as example and teacher of my path to health and wholeness, and Christ (or Holy Spirit) as an appropriate expression of a continuing spiritual presence.

* * * * *
That is the creed; what follows is commentary:

THE SUPPLY OF 'GOD' is as great, here and now, as it ever will be. Everything, however common, comes to me as a GIFT, as GRACE. I have, in the commonplace of life, all the BLESSINGS I can use. I cannot add to that supply by prayer or by good works.

I NEED TO BE ME as fully and completely as I can be. As Jesus was completely Jesus, I need to be completely Grey. I have within me and around me the RESOURCES to accomplish that me-ness, to become the person I have the POTENTIAL to be, using the GIFTS that are mine to use. I can add to me through prayer and good works.

OPENNESS is the key to HEALTH AND WHOLENESS. I can't do it myself; I can't think myself whole. I can LET GO of control and let the process of connecting with those resources work its way with me; that is a choice I can make (not easily, and I may have to become healthier in order to let go, and I may have to let go in order to become healthier).

HEALING HAPPENS (if I let it); growth toward WHOLENESS happens (with my permission). I can decide to TRUST THE PROCESS, and I can try to stick with that decision.

I CAN'T GET THERE THROUGH RATIONALITY ALONE. There are 'depths' and 'heights' and insights and resources for growth that can only be reached through intuition, dreams, meditation, prayer, and other right brain activity. These OTHER WAYS OF KNOWING work with rationality to form a path to completeness, to spirituality.

BY SPIRITUALITY, I mean that through openness to resources within and beyond myself I can experience feeling GROUNDED, CENTERED, CONNECTED, NURTURED and more fully AWARE. I stand, as it were, amid the energies and forces that, when allowed, will move me toward completeness. I AM ATTRACTED BY the allurement in those forces. I experience feeling in touch with, or a part of, more than I am alone -- the community, the cosmos, a higher power. I am EMPOWERED to CO-CREATE.

I HAVE GIVEN UP, let go of, trying to find out who or what God is, or if God is. I needed to make that effort as part of my spiritual journey, but I have come upon many signs that TO DEFINE IS NOT TO BE OPEN TO THE DIVINE. Moses, in the burning bush episode, is told that God is simply I AM, not to be put in categories and definitions. Similarly, in Taoism, THE WAY is not to be defined. ZEN Masters ask questions that cannot be answered in order to point out the absurdity of trying.

I don't know who or what divinity is, in my religion or any other, but I believe that there are human experiences that, because of some transcendent quality, we identify with 'God.' In this sense, I find "God"

-- IN ME, when I am most completely the self I have the potential to be.

-- IN THE STILL, SMALL VOICE of conscience, intuition, or insight.

-- IN THE PROCESS that is greater than I am.

-- IN EXPERIENCES of love, strength, being, beauty, justice, compassion, healing, oneness.

-- IN MY ACCEPTANCE of each person, each thing, each experience as a gift for my health and wholeness.

-- IN EXPECTING TO FIND the spark of divinity within myself and others.

-- IN GREETING EACH NEW DAY joyfully and optimistically. -- IN THANKFULNESS.

-- IN ACTION THAT SEEKS JUSTICE.

THE RELIGIONS TEACH US HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS and how we may act to flow with the universe:

-- Not to fight for control, but to let go.

-- To love unconditionally.

-- To live life in awareness of divine order.

-- To transcend the material.

-- To work for justice.

PRAYER IS LIVING LIFE IN ITS SACRED DIMENSION. It is a way of putting us in touch with the divine in everyday life. It is a way of clarifying our aspirations. It is an expression of giving up control and the need to understand. It is a way of focusing our lives and our efforts. It is not a way of getting what we want, however noble our wants may be. Petitionary or intercessory prayer has no efficacy except as it activates us, individually and collectively, to accomplish some goal.

As noted in my introduction, not all of the Judeo-Christian tradition that is embedded within me is positive. I turn to Eastern cultural traditions in order to balance or correct a Western world-view that is essentially patriarchal, linear, and dualistic. From new understandings of physical and biological sciences and psychology, I find a world view that is organic and interrelational rather than mechanistic and cause/effect, a world-view that is more akin to Eastern than to Western perspectives. I find in Native American beliefs a respect for the planet and all its inhabitants that should be informing our ecological survival. In a world of increasing respect for diversity, I am glad to have sustenance and insight from other cultural traditions as well. This is "both/and."

ANALOGIES, METAPHORS, PARABLES are useful for teaching, but I find that one of the least useful (is this just my hang-up?) is that of speaking of God in anthropomorphic terms. From portrayals of God as super-person, I hear obligation, should, ought, and the need to be deserving in order to be loved. I hear a God who will take care of me if I do it right, whatever 'it' is. I hear reward and punishment. I hear a God who may act on whim or who may play favorites. I don't hear health and wholeness. God as super-person belongs back in the pre-literate times of tribal story-telling around the campfire. That was useful in the days of gods and goddesses, as a countervailing force against other deities. Jesus moved beyond that with references to God as spirit, as love, and as incarnate. (Actually I appreciate the beauty and imagery of metaphor and parable, but I want to be very sure that everyone knows when we are speaking literally, and when we are not.)

THERE IS JOY in experiencing grace as love, in feeling empowered by the spirit within, in the sense of belonging to the cosmos, in living thankfully and prayerfully, in living fully. There is joy in co-creation.

OK, I know that my writing has not been entirely free of metaphors, religious or otherwise. Even much of the recent scientific writing is metaphoric, both because mathematical language does not communicate for many audiences and because narrative language does not exist for some of the concepts. But is the process that I have described above diminished in any way if I do not use the word "God?" It may be for you, but not, I think, for me.

Do I believe in God? At this point, I don't have an image of God that I find acceptable. I do not believe in God as some entity "out there" who controls it all for our ultimate benefit. I don't mind the use of "God" as a kind of poetic shorthand for those very human experiences that seem to transcend our everyday lives -- unconditional love, a synchronous event, the power of community, unexpected healing, the mysterious, awe and wonder, joy, thankfulness. Important experiences do have cosmic meaning, and using the word "God" acknowledges the significance we feel. But sometimes there is a kind of integrity in simply identifying it as "mystery" or "unexplainable" or "fortuitous" or "wonderful." There is also empowerment in giving humankind credit for co-creating those experiences and ascribing meaning to them.

When I choose language to express my reality, I will pay great attention to perspective. I need a language in which the universe is seen as user-friendly, one that provides resources for health and wholeness, and one in which I can see myself belonging and participating joyfully. I need to be able to see myself and what happens to me as part of a bigger picture, a cosmic picture. I need to gain self-esteem from that vision. I need a process to trust. I need experiences of grace and bounty that I receive as love. I need community, not necessarily a consensus of belief (though that would be nice), but a community of caring and sharing and risking without judgment.

A key to all of this was provided by a good friend whose response to "Happy New Year" was "It's decisional." I think that I have spent two-thirds of a lifetime discovering the personal and cosmic meaning of "It's decisional." I am searching for a faith that leaves me sufficiently free of old tapes and triggers to make my own decisions. That's my problem. This is my journey.

It's decisional, thank God.