God is not a noun, he is a verb.
"He" is not a he, nor a she, nor an it.
He is not an object in Space.
He cannot be measured, or weighed, or observed, or accounted for by the scientific method.
God is love, they say, but love is not something that can exist by itself.
Love is in the relationship between beings.
Love is something that we do. Love, too, is a verb, not a noun.
Nouns are convenient tools of language. They help us to describe the world. But they do not exist outside of language.
A tree is not a "tree", but a dynamic process of becoming, a life-force, an existence, a presence, a being in a relationship to beings.
A human being is not a body but the act of being human.
There are two fundamental forms of relationship in our world: the relationship of love, and the relationship of ownership.
The two are diametrically opposed.
You cannot own the sky, nor the air, nor the waters of the earth. You cannot own the earth, but only share it. We cannot own each other, even for a wage.
That is why the concept of private property has to be abolished before we can know God.
God is relationship, not ownership. He exists only where human beings make no claims to property. Therefore he exists most dynamically amongst the poor.
He does not punish. He does not serve.
He did not create the tsunami.
He was there with those victims of the tsunami as each individual relationship to love, as every act of unaccountable bravery, as every attempt to save a life, as every life saved, as every act of sacrifice for another human being. And he was there, again, as every grief, as every tear, as every lost mother's lost hope, as every act of mourning. And he is here, again, in every act of sympathy, in every act of generosity, in every act of concern. And he is here, again, in the work of the rescue forces, in the healing of the sick, in the provision of sustenance, in the clearing of debris, in the burial of the dead, in the building of homes, in the building of lives, in the rebuilding of hope.
You cannot pray to love, but only act upon it.
Who will embrace the living? Who will offer kindness to the dispossessed? Who will hold them close in our hearts as the unyielding grief sobs through their bodies as it sobs through their lives? The mothers without sons? The fathers without daughters? The husbands without wives? The wives without husbands? The orphans without a future? Who will help them to find their future?
Tell me: to whom will you cry when the great tsunami wave comes to wash away your life?
You will cry to your mother who gave you birth, who sacrificed her body that you may live.
Because God is relationship not ownership. Like the relationship of a mother to her child.
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