Monday in the Second Week: Elizabeth Broyles

What does God look like?  I have wandered deep and wide with other religious traditions.  I have been moved by the many faces of God they honor.  They leave me yearning for some that resonate in my Christian tradition.  Now, Jesus is a face of God for me.  We Companions have several powerful, beautiful icons of Jesus.  Jesus of Sinai is my favorite--the large one that graces our small altar where we pray moves me deeply into the mystery.  Icons offer one face beautifully.    I wonder what the other faces of the Trinity look like.  Does the Creator have a face?  How about the Holy Spirit? I yearn to see more of God face to face.  Articulating this desire could make me a heretic, I suppose, because Jesus isn't just part of God.  Yet we do say that God is one and a trinity of "persons."  

When I reach for an image of God in my mind's eye it inevitably comes up "Father," and likely a great white and bearded one like Michelangelo's.  Try as I might, nothing else comes from my memory banks.Seeing The Shack this week offered a deeply satisfying possibility.  Not a white God, not an exclusively male God, the images in this film based on a popular book fed and enlivened me.  Long have I needed an image of God that would include me.  "Created in the image of God" has been important in my journey, yet I did not grow up seeing myself reflected in the masculine images that were present.  The Shack imaged the three Persons of God as masculine and feminine--and multi-cultural.  I could breathe in a new way and I wept with relief at the gift.  The dialogue theologically resonant, too.  I'd like to hear some of it a second time.

I do recommend it--perhaps as part of Lenten practice.  I found it a great way to seek God's face--and to ponder that question "What does God look like?" as a way to wake up to more.  The possibilities for imagining God's face are as infinite as God is.  S/He has many faces.  I think it is one of the ways God enjoys being with us, playing with us and stretching us.

For some of us the stretch will be too great.  The question of God's gender rocks the boat.  For some of us seeing God as a different race has never occurred as a possibility.  There is a great invitation in it for all of us, though.  We are called to remember that while we may experience a sense of increasing closeness and "knowing God" over the course of our lives we also cannot fathom God, really.  God is beyond whatever we may cook up on a good day or concretize God as on a bad one.

What does God look like?  Ponder away, but know that S/He is always lovingly present, infinitely accepting of our attempts (which can never honor the fullness) and, I would bet, gently amused as we grope around.  Many blessings in your musings this Lent!