…A GOD PERSON?

Stage 35 / Sunday 31 May / Éauze

 

I’ve been en route for 5 weeks. I’ve made 35 stages and covered 734 km: such progress since the surroundings of Morestel ! Last week I walked 134 km: this is the shortest weekly distance so far. But it was painful for the neurons of my brain raking and working a field that others have plowed considerably before me, without finding any treasure up to now (Cf. Jean de La Fontaine [fable V,9] – The laborer and his children)! Here is the summary of my intellect’s work:

“To exist by essence, being "I" of the ego, “me” of the soul, does this justify a God person?”

 

Eight days ago, overcome by what I considered a small miracle, I represented God to myself as a benevolent guardian watching over me. But yesterday, on the contrary, two classic arguments attempting to prove His existence happened to be self-destroyed by pure logic. I had wanted to name a timeless entity with the name of God. I learned that this is not enough to affirm the eventual reality of His person: there is no known reference point to which God can be compared. And it is exactly because He is unknowable that so many religions claim having found, in good faith, the true lockout of His concept. In fetishism, Buddhism and other systems of thought, some therefore disregard conceiving of Him as a person, and that is a priori plausible.

 

I must accept to be tolerant, because I don’t see any clear clue, up to now, authorizing the affirmation of God’s existence, not only in my thought, but also in reality. And therefore one must respect those who deny this thought, from the fact that informed matter alone cannot explain what informs it. In refusing to qualify God as a “person”, some define God not in an anthropomorphic manner, as do the religions of the Book, but as a great All: the collection of all information necessary to structure matter and living forms in the universe.

 

Artistic creation often gives to the one who experiences it the impression that his being is connected to something greater which inspires him. I experienced the same thing myself occasionally in searching for rhymes in my poor poems. That gives a particular feeling of existence more intense for a brief moment: was that what the first artists sought in the Lascaux caverns? A feeling of connection to a person who makes you experience a moment of transcendence, a bribe of contentment both instantaneous and eternal, a connection with a permanent all, the Being, simultaneously being-essence-and-existence – which helps a bit to understand what ecstasy is all about!

 

Is it an illusion, this relation of being to Being? This God giving the impression of personifying himself, and to have an existence other than mine? Is He a projection from me? Is it I who create God? Would I not be sinning by pride, in claiming here and now that God is because I am? I feel clearly than my “I” is, but I know also that this “I”, such as it is today, will one day be no longer! While only He, the supreme person of God, would be able to affirm: “I am.” This logic comes from my mortal state: my “I” compares itself to an imagined immanent state for the “I” of Him (who personifies God). Now, before the appearance of homo sapiens or the Cro-Magnon man in Lascaux, who could have envisaged God as person? Surely not the dinosaurs! And even less the atoms born just after the “big bang!” Therefore I must recognize that if I accept the possibility of God as a Being, it would be illusory to envisage the possibility of assimilating Him to a person. 

 

And if I decide to offer prayers, for example thanks for my survival on the Rocamadour stage, to whom should I address them? To a Being whose personification doesn’t exist? The stature of God now becomes so shapeless to me. How can you have a dialog with something unimaginable? An unimaginable being who nonetheless has concretely managed the big bang, created dinosaurs, and inspired the cave paintings of Lascaux! Who is this unimaginable being who often gives me a gentle nudge in the right direction and whom I imagine, in spite of everything, wearing the face of a “safeguiding” God? And if, quite simply, I were part of Him who is “I am,” and therefore safeguards Himself. Then isn’t it possible to envisage that safeguarding a part of Himself, which shelters my being, would find itself safeguarded with Him? Without particular and nominative intention! “Oh dear, poor me? No, lucky me!”

 

Itinerary from Lauzerte to Éauze (5th week)
and from Éauze to Mauléon (6th week)