Draft Share: "Introducing: God"

לק"י

from "The Garden of Delight: An Open Discussion About God's Children and God's People"

Intro. "Introducing: God"

"The foundation of the foundations and the pillar of the wisdom sciences is to be aware that there is an ultimate Reality. It reifies all that is real, and all that is real in heaven and earth and what is between them is only real by virtue of Its reality. If it were considered that It is not real - nothing else could be real. If it were considered that all realities except It were not real - It alone would be real and would not be negated by their nonexistence; for all realities require It and It (be It appreciated!) does not require them, not one of them."

- Maimonides, Restatement of the Law (The Rules of the Foundations of the Law 1:1)

One thing which perhaps all things share is a connection to reality: we share a common source of existence in which we interact, communicating and creating and connecting. We each experience existence on many levels, as composites of elemental arrangements and as passionate savants, as members of families and communities and a species, as individuals and sometimes even as the universe itself. The continuity of our experiences points us to the continuity, the underlying unity, of the common "object" of all our experiences - reality.

Reality is known in a myriad of ways. We "name" our experiences of reality in our own personal languages, according to the particular qualities of every moment of our encountering the truth of reality's ultimate nature - "God," "the Compassionate One," "the Gracious One," "the Patient One," "the Protector," "the Savior," etc. All are "names" of reality, all are concepts of God which are tangibly experienced in the lives of countless human beings. There are ways of relating to reality which all humans have in common, and there are ways of relating to reality which are completely personal and unique to each of us. There are also ways of relating to reality which we create and celebrate in groups, sharing in the common outpouring of the soul, testifying to the reality of our own lives.

The very idea that reality is something which we all share implies that reality is not limited to any one of us. Reality appears to us in many forms and guises from the worlds around us and within us, but reality is never limited to just one (or any number) of those patterns and elements. Our "names" for reality can never capture the truth of what reality is, or what it means to be truly Real - though they help us to meaningfully connect to reality, moment to moment, throughout our lives. The ultimate reality is not a rock, or a bull, or a statue, or a man, or a star, or a being, or an idea, or a thing like any thing which we normally see or hear or consider - but we can see the reflection of reality and we can hear the echo of real events in all those things.

Comments, thoughts, suggestions?