Bring Your Own God

by the Editor

 

If there’s one thing we here at EAP passionately believe, it’s that there is One Big Unalterable Truth, not just out there, not just transcendent, but here, immanent, inside every one of us, connecting us all, one to the other.

However.

EAP also firmly believes (and is happy to arm wrestle anyone who thinks differently on the subject) that from that One Big Truth flow whole bunches of Alternative Meanings, like streams running downhill from a mountain lake fed by a single clear, deep spring.

We do all get confused about this.  We forget that we can only see, from our own small perspective, one piece of the Truth, and so we tend – all of us –- to get quite vehement when someone else timidly, or maybe not so timidly, holds out theirs.

Pema Chodron tells a story – I think it’s a Buddhist fable – about a god who decides to have some fun with a village.  So he puts on a hat that’s red on one side and blue on the other and then, manifesting himself in all his glory, walks straight down the village’s main drag.

“I saw God and he was wearing a red hat!”  “I saw God and he was wearing a blue hat!”

And of course the inevitable ensues, and the villagers come to blows over the whole thing.

So then the god turns,  remanifests himself, and walks the other way down town.

“Oh my God – he has a BLUE hat!”  “Good Lord, he’s wearing a RED hat!”

More name calling, shouting, fistfights, etc.

Then the god manifests himself right in the middle of the main square.  As everyone watches in awe, he turns right.  Then he turns left.  Then he spins around in a pirouette.

Everyone stops what they’re doing.  Then they start laughing.  The god laughs.  They laugh.  And then they have a party.

Which is what EAP thinks we should all be doing.  So get partying.

While you do, really, have a look at Brian Griffith’s chapter from his book DIFFERENT VISIONS OF LOVE . It’s called “The Experimental Kingdom of God,” and in it, Brian talks about what it must have been like to have  lived through the early ferment of Christianity…before everything hardened, and the guys at the top decided to insist that God wears a red hat. 

Or is it a blue one?  I forget.

Welcome back.