I feel that one of the most misunderstood concepts is that of God. When I first began as a practitioner and then a minister, I even stayed away from even using the word when speaking or praying because of fear of offending someone. Some people have such a negative reaction to the word God, that they can hardly bear to hear it.

Walter Starcke, in his wonderful book IT’S ALL GOD wrote, “Under the guise of one word, humankind has shed more blood and also healed more illnesses, excused more hate and also bestowed more love, created more confusion and also solved more problems than any other word or combination of words… that word is God.”

No wonder we both love and hate the word, depending on our particular reality. God stands for so many things that isolate us from each other. Walter Starcke continues to expound that until this world can accept the diversity of the understanding of God unique to each person and be okay with that we will never heal.

For me, it is more than a word. It’s an understanding, and it can only be understood as it is understood by each of us through our own consciousness. This is why Ernest Holmes wrote, “…that we should never try to take someone’s God away from them unless we can give them a better one.” We can never give anyone a better God than the one that they have. We can only expand and grow in our own understanding of God. When I can look out from my own understanding and recognize your understanding then I will have found the meaning of God.

The path is walked with different steps,

Different colors, covenants and commandments kept;

Words with meaning to you and to me

Bring us within from where we see:

Krishna, Jesus, the Buddha, Allah,

Siva, Elohim, the Presence, the Power,

Within or Without and worlds without end,

Immortal, eternal, a healing, a friend;

Love, Light, Beauty, Peace and Joy,

The Almighty, the meek,

A girl or a boy;

Mother and Father, Intelligence Divine,

Imminent  transcendent  the choice is yours and mine;

Father, Son, the Holy Ghost,

Jehovah, Allness, It’s the Most

Loving, Peaceful, Source of All,

East and West, wherever rains fall;

Intelligence, Mind, Heart, the Source,

Personal, Impersonal, my only Resource

The Thing Itself – God

Is more than a word,

The tree, the flower, the mist, a bird;

You, Me, all searching for Truth,

Something we cannot see. Is it aloof?

As close as our breath, as far as we see,

God is whatever we conceive Him, She, It to be;

The “I” is the only one that can know,

May we accept this for all and allow each to grow

At their own pace, in their own way,

Yes, He, She, It, We will have the last say,

Exclaiming loudly wherever we look

It was always LOVE

Whichever road we took.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita