…A SPIRIT GOD?

Stage 42 / Sunday 7 June / Mauléon

 

Hooray, a Sunday to rest in a quiet village and take stock of what I have accomplished since the departure from Morestel, 6 weeks and 42 stages ago. To recapitulate: I’ve passed through the following departments: Isère, the Drôme, Ardèche, Upper-Loire, Lozère, Aveyron, Lot, Tarn-and-Garonne, Gers, the Landes, and the Atlantic-Pyrenees, thus a total of eleven departments. I walked 159 km last week, which added to the preceding 734 km, make a total of 893 km, or about half the distance to be covered to Santiago.

 

Life is good and I reread my notes from last week:

“One, participating, stammering, so thinks the mind, figuring a spirit God?”

 

Thus, I have glimpsed a face of “spirit” God, consequence of thoughts that I consider as coming from outside myself. To this is added the fact that I was taught long ago in catechism that the human is considered to be in the image of God, which could justify that He exists, and therefore that it be seemly to address our prayers to Him. On the condition that He be a person … but now, had I not previously undermined this concept of a God « person », during my fifth week? I deemed that this would be too much, bringing Him to the human level and denying Him all superiority and transcendence. What face can He have then, this God who animates my spirit?

 

I review my notes from the first week: I had demolished there, hammering it with my chisel, the face of a “terrifying” God, a judging God to be feared, with an image much too human, and who would make his last creature crawl. In the third week I had explored the possibility of a “revealed” God, deciding that was overly serving a certain religious hierarchy thirsting for power, even if an authentic spiritual influence had initiated the legitimacy of their authority. So I then turned to the image of a “benevolent” God; but saying “benevolence” again indicates too much anthropomorphic willingness coming from a person, and is in any case torn down by the contemplation of so much misery in our world.

 

So there remains what I had explored during the second week: the image of a “safeguiding” God. This useful neologism allows suppressing the human image of a shepherd, but accepting the more subtle idea of the “spirit.” This safeguiding-spirit, by its nearly imperceptible breath, gently pushes my fragile dingy boat through reefs and dangers and makes me discover new horizons … Imperceptible ? Is it He who knew to bend my body in the right direction when my pole broke en route to Rocamadour ? Now, if this image has a windy side and therefore earthly, is it sufficient for a God reputedly universal, also looking after the material worlds and interstellar spaces. It is difficult to make the distinction between what my intellect suggests and concocts and what exists in reality, for the two modes of perception result from an identical way of thinking.

 

And the questioning returns: is it God who creates the thought or thinking that creates God? This led to the idea that the Inquisition would have used for a condemnation called heresy: did God really create man, or is it the contrary? And to be even more heretical, can I abolish the concept of “God” and keep only that of a safeguiding spirit—in other words, refuse the religious aspect of the Holy-Spirit? A save-guiding spirit without divine or human attributes, acting so discreetly that neither I nor anyone can ever know it, no more than my distant ancestors in the Alps could figure me out …

 

Right, I must make a decision; I’m at the halfway-point. OK, for the moment, too bad for the cosmos! From all my rough shapes, I retain this face of God both “safeguide / saveguide,” because the spirit I feel working in me adapts readily to the appearance of a real God. His dynamic would influence my spirituality; it would manifest itself in the spaces where the living and the thinking are concentrated. Praying is beneficial! “Oh God, ultimate source of life, source of the spirit radiating around the thinker, source of love which diffuses the simple individual conscience into collective conscience! Guide me, save me, I beg of You!”