When you pray, or hear someone who does, what are the most common words used to address God?

My guess is “Lord” and “Father.” As I discussed in an earlier post (The Problem with God), using such symbols reinforces our mental image of God as a supernatural being rather than as the power underling being itself (as I propose in Rethinking God). Both terms bring to mind the image of a powerful male figure who exerts control over us. The use of the pronoun “He” only adds to this image. For this reason, I will now avoid using personal pronouns when referring to God. Similarly, I am careful when attributing human emotions and thoughts to God: I try to avoid talking about God’s anger, jealousy, will, or wants. Do these emotions belong to God or to me?

What symbols should we use then when thinking of God, especially a God that we do not conceive of as a supernatural person?

It is certainly possible to interpret the traditional symbols of God in ways that are not anthropomorphic. For example, we can understand God as “personal,” not in the sense that God is a person, but in that we experience God in a personal way, as the center of our being. Similarly, God as a “creator” does not have to mean that he formed the universe as a Creationist might think, but as the ground of being, God is always present as the creative, dynamic force in existence itself.

However, because of our tendency to anthropomorphize God, I propose that we avoid the use of symbols that encourage this mindset and find other fresh ones (whether from nature or science) that resonate better with the modern mind.

I’m curious to hear from anyone who reads this what symbols you might suggest.  I propose that we focus on symbols that characterize God as that which animates, sustains, and nourishes life – not symbols that stand apart from who we are and how we exist at our essence.  The problem, however, with conceiving of God as the creative power of existence is that this description is vague and difficult to put our arms around. God as a supernatural being is much easier to understand because it is concrete and finite.  We need symbols to understand God, but we must recognize that ultimately even our new symbols are woefully inadequate. If God is infinite, then any finite symbol will in some way limit God. We must also avoid the trap (as an ancient Chinese proverb says) of believing that the finger pointing to the moon is the moon itself.

Here, I will focus on three symbols: breath, light, and water. First, the idea of using breath as a metaphor for the divine is as ancient as the writings of the Bible.  Breath cannot be seen, it has a dynamic quality to it, and breath gives us life. In the Old Testament the word used for the human soul is nephesh, the Hebrew word for breath. In Genesis, God “breathes” into Adam giving him (and thus humanity as a whole) life. This mythological tale can be interpreted to mean, not that God literally breathed into a figure made from clay as a Greek god may have done, but rather God is that unseen and untouchable mysterious force that lies behind life itself as does the breath. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is described similarly as a wind that enters us.  Interestingly, the Greek word for soul is psyche, a word that today we use to mean “mind” but which originally also meant breath. In Hinduism, the Sanskrit word for soul is atman, which also originally meant breath, and which is considered to be part of the divine cosmic soul Brahman that lies behind all that is. In Buddhism, the core of meditation practice focuses on following the breath.  It is not a coincidence that the title of my first novel is The Breath of God.

Similarly, light cannot be touched or grasped, but without the light from the sun, we all would perish. Light warms us, comforts us, and provides the process of photosynthesis crucial to existence of life on this planet. Taking the analogy further, consider the relationship of a spark to a fire.  A spark originates from the fire; it dances; it burns brightly; but it’s existence is short unlike the fire which both births and is the essence of the spark. Within each of us is the tiny spark of the larger fire that is God. In the New Testament there are numerous references to Jesus as the light which illuminates the path to God.  Similarly in Buddhism, the Buddha was a man who lived in history who became enlightened and who lights the path for future beings to awaken to the reality of the world.  The word “Buddha” is not a name but a title, meaning “the enlightened one.”

My final new symbol for God was inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s water and wave example discussed in my earlier post (Rethinking God) but is one I think might be more relevant for the Western mindset so focused on individualism.  Think of each of us as a snowflake. Each snowflake is a unique individual with its own distinct crystallized structure. God is not a being who exists somewhere up in the sky producing snowflakes because he thinks they look pretty or they amuse him as they flutter to the ground. Instead, God is like the water that underlies the snowflake. Each snowflake has a relatively short lifespan – it is formed by the water vapor of the cloud, it descends (or “falls”) to earth, and then after spending sometime on the ground, it melts. The unique existence of the snowflake is born, lives, and then dies. But the water that makes up the snowflake still exists. After the snow melts, the water from that flake, along with all of the other unique but now melted flakes, forms a river that runs to the ocean. Then one day, this water that is the infinite ocean evaporates to the sky to form clouds and new snowflakes.

The water can be seen as the eternal, dynamic, creative essence of the snowflake. It is not only responsible for the existence of the snowflake, but it links each individual snowflake with every other snowflake – each is unique, yet each shares its essence in an eternal connection with the others. However, from the perspective of the snowflake that is made up of hard, linear lines forming a unique crystal, the idea that at its essence, it originates and then returns to a vast ocean of liquid that is fluid and undifferentiated and impossibly large cannot be comprehended.