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Images of God

Reading has many delights.  Reading can open up our worlds.  For example, I have had the privilege of traveling to quite a few countries.  But I am not going to go to all of them.  Doing that would likely take the rest of my life and I don’t want to do that at this juncture of life.  And quite frankly, some of the places I don’t want to see.  I think of North Korea in this vein.  As far as I can tell, North Korea is a tough, probably awful place for those folks living there.  No trips to Pyongyang are in my future!

Another thing I appreciate about reading is the fact that I often find out something I had not intended to learn.  Often, I read something knowing that I want to learn something specific.  And I am not disappointed.  But there are also the times when I was looking for one thing and learned something else, too.  That is serendipity.  Surprise!  This happened recently.

I am preparing an article for presentation and, later, for publication.  Part of what I will do is use some particular thoughts from one of my favorite theologians, Illa Delio.  Delio is a theology professor at Villanova.  She is also a Franciscan and, at least, an acquaintance of mine.  I have had her on my campus, and she is a delight.  She is one of those people who brings you want you would expect, i.e., a women of some deep theological insight.  But she also brings things you might not have expected.  For example, she has a very good sense of humor and can say something profound with a twinkle in her eye!

These characteristics become evident when you read her autobiography, Birth of a Dancing Star.  It is both revealing about her evolution as a person and a person of faith.  And it reveals her characteristics as a person.  From those pages emerge a woman who is obviously quite bright.  She is full of spirit and is a person who continues to look for and be open to the Spirit.  As we would say on the farm, she is also ornery.  As a kid, she was always up for a prank.  She has had her issues with a couple more structured---one can say rigid---religious orders.

The thing that intrigues me is realizing as she changes, so does God.  Of course, this does not necessarily mean God changes.  But she certainly changes the way she looks at God.  I have enjoyed watching her grow as a person, while savoring how her idea and images of God also have grown.  I want to share one such passage that reveals her in this process.

After being affiliated with the contemplative Carmelite sisters and then another religious order, Delio wound up living as a Franciscan.  In the course of this personal and religious growth, she moved from having earned a doctorate in pharmacology to study theology.  This led her to a doctoral program and some intensive reading of some of the Franciscan greats, among whom is Bonaventure.  She tells us that exposure to the thirteenth saints provoked new insights into who God is and how God works.

In one passage she notes that through her studies, “I began to appreciate God as a fountain fullness of love…” (144)  It is easy to claim this is a re-affirmation of the tradition from the New Testament writer, John, who held that God is love.  Delio is going to expand this in a way we don’t see in the New Testament.  She does it first of all by describing God as a fountain.  It is a fountain that is full of love.  With this image, she begins to develop it.

God as a fountain is “an unstoppable, irresistible wellspring of love who is the source of all life…”  God is now imagined as a wellspring.  It is a wellspring of love.  Even more detail is offered.  It is an unstoppable and irresistible wellspring.  It comes to us and we welcome it.  It is indeed good news!

Delio shifts images again.  Now it becomes an ocean.  She writes that God is “a divine ocean of love…”  This reminds me of an important Quaker founder, George Fox, who talks about and “ocean of light and love.”  This image of God leads Delio to talk about her relationship to the ocean.  She quips, from this ocean “my life flowed like a river into the unfolding fabric of space-time.”  It is cool to see myself and you as a “river!”  There is so much more we could do with this image. 

I will add one more important line from Delio.  She says, “I came to ‘know’ God as the infinite mystery of my life---entwined, entangled---and I began to realize that the choices I make affect the life of God.”  I resonate with the idea that God is mystery.  I can believe in mystery, although I cannot explain it.  And Delio adds one more insightful piece.  My choices affect the life of God.  That is a bold idea.  No doubt, some folks will recoil from such a statement.  But I like it.  

That seems to me to be the nature of relationships.  All relationships I am in are affected by the choices and actions of all the folks in that relationship.  Why would it be different for God?  After all, I am a river related to the ocean which is God.  I am the water from the wellspring of love, which is God.  I am in God and God is in me.  

God affects me, to be sure, but I apparently also affect God.  It is both a challenge and opportunity.   

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