"A God big enough to be God"

From Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir, by Joan Chittister [an amazing book, which I appreciated both the first and second time my good friend gave it to me ;), and which I now consider one of my favourites]. I'm going to quote a large section of the chapter called "The God Within: Who Shall I Say Sent Me?", but I'd recommend the whole book to anyone interested.
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Finding a God big enough to be God was a spiritual task of no small proportions. I started over. If God is not God, or is at best only half a god, a male god, then where do we go? The Jewish Apocrypha teaches in reference to the picayune nature of the gods on Olympus, 'If the Greek gods steal, by whom shall their believers swear.' I knew the feeling. When God cannot possibly be God, the soul loses hope that there is any God at all. And the heart goes dry.
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But to confront the heresy of God the Father, I discovered quickly, is to be called a heretic. It is to come face-to-face with the possibility of exclusion, one way or another. We must accept the notion that God excluded femaleness from the Being that is God. Or, we must deal with the possibility that in reclaiming the fullness of what it means to be made 'in the image of God,' we may well be excluded from the community that taught us to believe that in the first place. To belong we must either diminish the very definition of God or demean the spiritual status of femaleness. A woman who is willing to do that mocks the God of creation. Any man who is willing to do that does not really want God at all. He simply wants himself writ large.
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... I began to realize that the God they were giving me to believe in was too small a God to possibly be worth a life. At least, not a woman's life.
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What's more, I found that this God did not lead to God at all. If the God we say we worship, the God of all being, lacks the feminine--rejects the feminine--then this God is not God. This God is lacking in being. And the being of woman lacks something of God.
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It is not easy to find the way back to the essence again once an image is cast in stone. This image of the superior male and a male God had been taught in male institution after male institution for centuries. By this time, it had done an untold amount of damage to the image of women. Worse than that, it had completely blinded us to God.
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But the search for God is the spiritual quest, the eternal journey, the breadth and depth and height of the universe. To find God means to be obliged to search beyond the images of limitation, to the essence, to the mystery, to the spirit. 'God,' Juanita Helphrey wrote, 'is a cloud forming, an eagle soaring, a voice from the wilderness echoing through your ear.' And so I considered my own understandings carefully and wrote,
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God is. God is love. God made woman, too, in God's own image.... Those three sentences have become enough for me. They have become my life. They sustain me; they caution me; and they drive me on. There is not much time left now and these are the ideas that go with me into 'The Valley of Death.' Not the doctrines, not the dogmas; not the so-called 'definitive' statements about the otherness of woman--all of which are just one more example of male attempts to capture the power of God for themselves.
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This time the God I sought was big enough to be the God of Being. No other spiritual idea has had as major an effect on my life, on my sense of self and of my sense of the real meaning of God as the God, who as well as being Father is also 'God my Mother.'

Contemplating God

God is.
I think perhaps that is the most true thing I can say. As soon as I extend the sentence, it becomes less true, whether because I use a false noun or adjective, or simply because whatever word I put in that place can never fully encompass all that is god.
I am what I am.
The god of Moses chose no name, but claimed to be being itself--life, breath, being. To be--that verb which can't fully be described--is to be in the presence of god. God is.

On Preaching

It is not a simple task,
this thing they call preaching.
It is difficult at times
to interest,
to entertain,
to inspire,
to comfort,
to offer divine wisdom.
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But perhaps the greatest challenge,
the heaviest burden,
is to bear the responsibility
for what so many will do with the words you say--
or what they won't.
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If you stand before me
and say what I want--
and what I expect--
to hear,
there will be nods
and smiles,
joy and laughter.
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But sometimes,
your words bring a challenge,
and the sacrifice--or service--
you ask of me
closes ears,
furrows brows,
and hastens departures.

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The gospels teach love of enemy,
which is okay
if I must overlook
the fault of the one who looks like me--

but don't expect me
to call my government to account
for injustice it has perpetrated
on someone else's homeland.

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The Torah calls for hospitality to the alien,
which is a warm
and inspiring concept--

so long as the alien doesn't try
to live in my neighbourhood,
attend school with my children,
or benefit from my tax dollars.

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A Creator appointed caretakers,
and I am more than happy
to reap the fruit of creation's abundance,
especially if someone else
has tended that crop--

but I will only take offense
at your suggestion
that my irresponsible energy use
is polluting the environment
and causing famine
on a continent far away.

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To house the poor
and feed the hungry,
I suggest you start a committee,
and I will give a few bucks
(if I remember)--

after all, its not as if
it is really feasible
to invite them to my table
or offer a blanket in my home.

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And after all,
Jesus
was the perfect representation of God's will for humanity.
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I am called to simply have faith
in God's grand design for the world

--not
to work toward
the incarnation
of that design.

Breathing is the only way I know to pray...

When I search for you,
I do not find you.
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Should I conclude
that you are no longer
present,
active,
alive.
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Or is it simply
that I am looking
up and beyond and outside,
while you are present
below, before, and within.
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They have taught me to look for you
on the mountain,
in the storm,
in happy prosperity,
and most of all,
in the sacred charade of the saints.
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They have named you
Majestic,
Holy,
Powerful,
Sacred,
Other,
Supreme Judge of all that is.
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But I am learning to find you
in the quiet darkness of my own heart,
in the mundane rhythm of daily life,
in the tearful hope of the damned,
and most of all,
in those rare undeveloped regions of the earth.
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And I call you
quiet,
humble,
love,
peace,
Being itself,
the life and breath of all that is.
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Quietly, I contemplate the divinity of being,
and the being of the divine.
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Perhaps I have understood you most
when I stopped trying to believe
and focused instead on
simply
living,
breathing,
seeing,
feeling,
crying,
laughing,
touching and tasting and smelling.