Divorcing God

Last night I shared a meal with a lovely woman, Alexandra, who told me about an experience she had where she was asked to write a divorce decree from the God she was currently struggling with. Isn't that a fascinating and probably very productive exercise?
The most beautiful advise Christ ever gave was "love one another". It doesn't get any simpler than that. Those are three words that have traveled 2000 years and still hold the truth that if you will only attempt to love your neighbor, your friend, your enemy, your ugly step-mother, you're going to feel a lot closer to God, because in my book, in any moment that you are experiencing LOVE, that is the moment that you are in direct communication with God and all the goodness of Divinity can flow into and out of you via that conduit. As you receive, so you give. Annie Lamott, in Traveling Mercies, says that to "be loved is for giving and that for giving is to be loved." I know this is very simplistic, but I like my God that way.

The God I would like to divorce is the one that promises that my suffering will be rewarded in heaven. I divorce the God that says once I die my actions in one lifetime will determine whether I enter heaven or hell for eternity. I divorce the God that says women will always be weaker than men and must submit and obey their fathers and husbands and sons. I divorce a God you uses guilt to manipulate the masses. I divorce a God that uses anger to drive a point home. I dismiss a God who says love is only sanctioned for heterosexuals. I divorce a God who gifted woman with the honor of growing human life but would condemn them for choosing not to do so. I divorce a God who has only one son named Jesus who he loved so much he had him tortured and killed to prove his love to the rest of us who apparently, aren't really his children. I divorce the old and wizened, flowing white-haired Roman God image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, male, reaching out to male. There's probably more....I'll come back to this and then I move onto the God I'm willing to marry.

Namaste`
Connie