God Lives in the Spaces Between
If you’re familiar with who I am as a person, the title of this blog may come as a shock to you. I have had little use for a God or Gods in this lifetime, so much so that I’ve had to train myself away from staunch arrogance and annoyance at people who have a relationship with something divine. In my later life, I realize that this spiritual wall I erected was done in a vain attempt to distance myself from the thing that I so desperately needed — which was to both see and honour that something does indeed exist in the spaces between.
In high school, not only did I have a reverence for all my English teachers, I devoured the written word like it was my only hydration in a world that felt like a near-constant drought. I was in grade 11, when I first read Fugitive Pieces, one of the works that moved me so much I (still) read it annually. While I can’t remember the exact age that I first discovered Desiderata, a poem by Max Ehrmann, it seemed to connect with me on a cellular level despite not yet having the life experience to really understand it. It’s lengthy, you can read it on your own time if you like, but one line always stuck with me:
“Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.”
(It was written a long ass time ago, which is why the assumption that God is a man, is there.) The concept of redefining things in my life to best fit me, was something that I wouldn’t go through until far later on. But it was still important for me to read this, and begin the very slow process of trying to understand that things are not all they may seem, and that there are usually (actually, always) more than two options. For years, I perceived ANY kind of religion, divinity, spirituality, mysticism, or even magic as all one indistinguishable pile. I couldn’t conceptualize that there could be threads of ancestral knowing, embodied understanding and connection to something that could be described as divine, within a convoluted, mismanaged and sometimes dangerous notion like organized religion, or even, one single deity — made in the image of man. At the time, I couldn’t figure out how you could reach into this pile, find connection with other humans who have experienced moments of transcendence and a trust in something that is larger than ourselves, without subjecting myself to the hardened surfaces of church pews and the feeling of innate (dangerous) submission and hypocrisy that lives alongside large, ostentatious churches.
“He remembered a phrase in Saint Augustine, which had been his only available reading for so long, about the city of God, which he took to be located in the next world: ‘there our being will have no death, our knowledge no error, our love no mishap.’ In that world, if he had understood the saint correctly, suffering would be transfused with moral meaning and converted into joy. In the last hour before dawn, he longed to believe this, and he even attempted a prayer, attempted in his mind to knock on the doors of the great silent universe and shout, ‘is anyone there?’ Nothing answered him, and as the light of morning slowly flooded his cell, he wondered ruefully why it is those who believe most passionately in a merciful deity who are themselves most murderous and cruel.”
— Jill Paton Walsh, Knowledge of Angels
For years I felt something akin to envy for people who felt a spiritual connection — whatever that looked like for them. I felt even more envy when I met humans who were ok with the notion that not only did they NOT know, but that they weren’t SUPPOSED to know. I was raised among people who not only weren’t religious, but looked down upon those who were. So much so, they were innately distrustful of anything even resembling spiritual connection — Christian God or not. I’ve grappled with the idea of a single God, and have worked for many years to find tenderness for people who find comfort there. Who find solace in their own understanding of mortality, who find like-hearted people, community, and understanding. I’ve had to work to get back here from anger bordering hate at all the harm the church has done.
However. I lived there for so long, that I robbed myself of any potential to understand the magic of things. The quiet whispers of divinity found in everyday life. The pauses in-between big, earth shattering moments, where we’re confronted with the impermanent beauty of it all.
I’ve come to realize that this feeling is what some people describe as a God. But maybe, it’s what others describe as source energy, karma, magic, or spirit. Maybe, we all have been experiencing something similar but just package it in the way that suits us best. Maybe… we’ve all been trying to find the perfect verbiage for a universal truth.
God (whatever you conceive her* to be) does indeed live in the spaces between.
The sound of birds. The smell of rain. The bone shiver when we hear a good song. The smell of freshly made coffee. The pause between opening our eyes, and stepping out of bed. Déjà vu. Strange and precarious timing; the kind of timing that convinces you if just momentarily, that something larger is at work. The sight of your child walking to their first day of school. Goosebumps. Electricity. Boredom. In the space between the bottom of the exhale, and the beginning of the inhale. The feeling of the bra (or socks) coming off at the end of the day. Satiating a craving, exactly. Tender back tickles. The feeling of your child’s eyelashes against your cheek. Warm wind. Close calls. Subtle joy.
This. Is where God lives.
Whatever that means to you.
