Who’s Your God?

 Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274), who was the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, defined God as a "circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." This is a definition of God that resonates with me.  This is, at least in part, because it is a paradox.  After all, how can a circle have a centre everywhere and have no circumference?  And yet, for me, this definition of God seems to sum up God better than any other definition I have encountered. 

This paradox gets at the problem of trying to define God.  How can we define the undefinable.  Any definition we have is, of necessity, incorrect because it limits God which is unlimited.  However, the paradox is that we have to define God to try and understand what we are talking about.  Of course, theologians, clergy and all kinds of people have been defining God ever since the cavemen (and women) gathered round their fires and looked at the night sky and made symbols on the walls of caves.

We can say that God is eternal but people will misunderstand that eternity is not a long time, it is outside of time as we know it.  Again, we can try and define eternity – one on-line source defines it this way, “a state to which time has no application; timelessness.”  However, it is beyond our understanding of time – at least Chronos time which is the time that we experience each day with the sun rising and setting and we move one day further from our birth and one day closer to our days on this earth running their course. In this, we are dealing with Kairos which an on-line source defines as, “the right time” from Ancient Greek, Kairos variously refers to an “opportune presentation” in rhetoric and a “spiritual opportunity” in Christian theology.

With all this I will put before you the question, what is the definition of the God you believe in – if you believe in God or a God.  If you don’t believe in God or a God, what is the God you don’t believe in?  In either case, are there aspects of God that possibly don’t fit into that definition?  Are you open to the possibility of encountering a God which doesn’t meet that definition?

In any case, I hope that whoever or whatever the God is that you encounter on your journey God will bless you as Jacob was blessed when he wrestled with the angel (God’s messenger).