Searching for god

 I’ve been on the search for god,

Some would say, since I learned how to question what we thought was normal.

I learned of that storm god, with the flowing white beard, basic robes, and misogynistic book,

While kneeling on wooden pews and praying the rosary to redeem all of humanity from Eve’s curiosity.

I would dream of women storming the castle (church) and their leader (the hottest one since Lilith) would lock eyes and say something like,

“You are the chosen witch and we have come to take you from this place and train you in the old ways of the goddess. Come with us now and thrive.”

I’m not totally unconvinced that wasn’t what happened, but anyways…

I often think of god.

The concept of it. The thought of it. The power of it.

The word of it. The feeling of it. The sanctity of it.

What even is it?

These three English letters are almost too basic to describe the endlessness of infinity’s enormous creations.

So where did the word come from?

I’ve noticed that the American culture tend to just use words, ideas, and practices without attempting to learn the origins of that particular thing, myself included.

We have become too comfortable with what was passed down and trusting the candied pieces of history written by those who looked like us.

So in my research, the word “god” might possibly stem from the root ‘Ghut’,

Which means “that which is invoked”.

‘Invoke’ being late 15c. Meaning to call. ‘Call’ relating to the word ‘voice’ which goes back to ‘to speak’.

Another source says it might come form the sound of ‘Ghu’, which means ‘to pour’.

Also: Fun possible fact from the etymology website:

Did you know the word ‘god’ was originally gender-neutral in Germanic before the Christian’s took it and slapped dick on it?

Words are bit like the bumpers in a bowling alley with a really bad bowler,

Helping you along if you have the inertia to keep bumping into the parameters,

Leading you, hopefully, to one of those pins of insight.

So, if I am on a search for god,

And what I imagine god to be -

[Electrical aliveness, wild satyr joy, lush decadence, sleepy-soft-cozy rain, explosive orgasms, the taste of raspberries, the silky void, the weighted blanket of grief, the sparkle of the challenge, the depth of the oceans, the horizon line…]

The first clue was to examine what I poured myself into - [Ghu] -

Those 9-5 jobs, the relationships, the habits, the thought loops, the excuses, the fear, the dreams the aches & pains, the books and shows -

I had to look at the stories I told myself.

Just recently, I looked for god in-between my mothers tears,

pouring out after her own mother’s passing.

Yet, it wasn’t just tears for the loss of the physical presence of the mother, nor of the not-having a mother,

But more-so for the idea of what the mother could have been and wasn’t.

The illusion of the idyllic version of who that person could have been.

Those moments of a relationship created from stories that never happened, would ever happen, nor have ever happened.

The what-if moments of the future,

And the bitter:sweet dreams of what the past could have been and wasn’t.

That is what I saw pouring out in-between my mothers tears,

The completion of her lost stories,

This imagined prequel and sequel of a horrid middle book,

Where the illusion of happily-ever-after lives

Is where I found god’s house was built.

Don’t you know though, that the (ever-after) portion of this story is all make-believe?

God’s house was built by a master architect with only hopes and prayers.

But you won’t find god there.

I looked.

They left it abandoned ages ago,

Cobwebs and haunted tunnels are the only things that will bring you to your knees,

And people still do paid ghost tours to see if they can worship a man’s idea of perfection and submission.

Aliveness is, after all, that part that glues creation and destruction together.

And it’s in that seemingly horrid middle book -

Where chaos dwells and stories fracture - where the present moment lives.

Searching, dreaming, forgetting. Or is it forgetting, searching, dreaming?

Alas, I feel like it might be dreaming, then forgetting, then searching.

But, in any which way, you are in a roundabout.

With god as a sign post that says go straight.

So I suppose if god is what you pour into [Ghu], what you worship, what you desire…

How can god not be your imagination?

In my search, I find glimpses of god in the eroticism of life,

Of the actually feeling alive, the push and the pull of grief and joy.

And in the sounds of life that color in the pages a little more fully -

The singing, the crying, the talking, the laughing, the music of aliveness.

Pay attention to the stories in your life,

The stories you tell yourself, and the stories you pour into -

That is where the house of god lives.

Which leads me to the second-most part of my search - [Ghut] -

The invocation of god,

The word of god -

The voice you carry,

The words you use.

But that is another story for another time.