What about the names for God? Most of us in our prayer are stuck in a very limited number of “religious” names and images for God -- Father, Lord, Savior, Mighty, for example -- that narrows our ability to know God in more than the few ways we have known God since childhood. In some cases, if as children and even adults we associate God with important figures of authority in our lives who have hurt us, to pray to God using those names can do us injury. Not only does it limit our ability to know God in other and truer ways, it also keeps us from the healing love God intends for us. Where we know we are being hurt, in our private prayer we avoid those names, no matter how hallowed the tradition. At the same time, in praying Scripture daily we work hard to get to know the God of the Bible, a God who is infinitely complex and many faceted, mysterious, and at the same time intimately loving. We meditate on what kind of God can be described as “living water” for us. We try to hear deeply who our God really is when Hosea describes God as a gentle father who did not think it beneath him to teach baby Israel to walk. We ask to know the one who cares about us so much that our names should be written on the palm of God’s hand. While we are learning all this, we also begin to understand in our hearts the importance of the truth that so many writers of the early church fought for: God is so infinitely inexhaustible that none of the names Scripture gives to God, not even all of them put together, can ever finally define God. Whether we pray to God as our peace, rock, mother, wisdom, water of life, father, maker of the world, Spirit, friend, healer, comforter, redeemer, great bird -- all these names are finally provisional. The God we come to love who is our light, our life, and our joy is wonderfully beyond us.
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Dear God, please help me to keep struggling to know you, through your many names and images in scripture, art, and worship, in silence and in namelessness.
Oh, Higher Power, Lover of my life and Creator of my being, thank you for the breath of each day, infusing me with Your creativity, truth and healing. Welcome, Creator, into my core, where I ask You to dwell and pulse me through with energy to create in partnership with You.
Oh, Higher Power, whose name can be myriad, please release me from my constraining fears. Help me trust Your goodness and delight in life's joy. Please stir my desire for joy, and in stirring, unclog my blockages to experiencing it. I love You, Godess, and I thank You that You care and love about me. Amen. Awomen.
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