Prescriptions

God Undefined

 

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Last night I ate watermelon for dinner and it was so full and so sweet I am convinced God was in it and my grandaddy was too. And you know what he probably was. I can never not think about my grandaddy while eating watermelon, seeing the watermelon-man on the side of the road or even piled high in the pristine aisles of the grocery store. Nowadays, watermelons give me great joy, but they also make me weep. Weep because I want to go on 27th ave and pick juicy green watermelons with my grandaddy one more time. 

For many of us God showed up for us the first time through our parents. Laid our foundation of what we contextualized God to be. For some of us that was sweet and loving, gentle, kind, omniscient, nurturing, friend to all, Joel Osteen’s God. 

For others of us it was fiery and ferocious, fire and brimstone, ashamed, malicious, unnurturing, judgemental, jealous, controlling, critical God. 

For many of us, it was nothing, no sense of God, no sense of purpose, no concept of God, we wondered when the God people talked about on tv, in classrooms, at family gatherings may show up for us. 

I’m not here to argue what you believe. None of it is right nor wrong, because throughout the ages and lifetimes God has constantly shifted and evolved for each and everyone of us depending on our circumstances. 

The one thing that has remained consistent: ‘God’ or lack thereof taught us something that lives with us today: and it’s either repelling, separating or drawing us nearer to each other. 

Our choice. Our definition. Our language. Our words. 

We are the holy place. The holy place lives within all of us.  

I choose to be soft. 

I have been reckoning with myself lately about the gendering of God for myself. And I have to come to the conclusion for me God is a father. Mostly because I never had an Earthly one. And the one manifestation I had of a father was my granddaddy and he has now gone on and is an ancestor. So sometimes when I need a father, I cry out to my grandaddy or God sends me a watermelon. 

And when I need a mother I cry out to my godmama  whom I believe is in Heaven. Can’t nobody tell me that is wrong, cause it is I who has the power to define God on my own terms.  

Who am I to make you genderize God because I do. I don’t. I choose to be soft, as my sister Chrissy says. 

I choose to be soft because spirit comes to me in soft waves or mighty pulls I call downloads. 

As I teach and use spirit to guide me I am careful with my terms and words of God. Because so many of us have been harmed by other folks’s definition and meaning. Churches have pushed harmful rhetoric that many people have never been able to come back from. Alt left and right have pushed people further away from God for themselves that people never believe in anything at all. Some people never recover from other folks’ definition of God. 

For me God is in everything. From a piece of paper, to a bird, to the wind, to the ocean, to random people I meet in the streets, to text messages from friends, my grandmother’s voice, to watermelon. Everything is God because everything is energy. 

My sister Kaneisha said the word says, “we are made in the image of him. It’s hard for me not to see God in people. I live on the spectrum when it comes to personifying “God”. 

Let me affirm this for you: Everyone has the right, will and the power to find their own way in their own timing. All of us must define in our own terms of what feels natural for us, our own essence, our own being. And as time goes on that may morph and change into something else and that is OH-KAY. 

So I call God many things, El Shaddai, Holy, Redeemer, Universe, Higher Power, Source, Moon and the Goddamn stars sometimes, it just depends on what I need or the need of practice for others.

And all of them are right. Because all of them are us. 

I pray for you that maybe when you think about God, cry out and affirm for yourself that you won’t make God rigid. That you won’t contextualize God that won’t perform miracles. That you will create the source you need for yourself. That you will create softness, a graceful loving God for yourself, with boundaries of love and protection. That loves them some you. That as Beyonce says, “if you believe you are insignificant, you better think again, you’ve got to believe you are part of something way bigger.” 

Cause for me God is a Black ass King, a father, a healer and my friend. God is me. And God is love. 

God is undefeated and undefined by anybody’s words except my own.