TO QUOTE MOTHER MARY, LET IT BE

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Trying to be all things to all people leads to chaos...then extinction. It is our trying that leads us away from the spiritual path and sets us onto the self-determined path, leading to our failure.

That flash stayed with me which no doubt led to the thought concerning an ongoing discussion I've heard about. There seems to be a movement in my fellowship whose purpose is to substitute the term "Higher Power" for the word "God."  The reason being in order to be inclusive to new members who don't use the word "God" but have their own word. They, too, would now use the term "Higher Power."

To me, this is akin to reinventing the wheel...our early leaders who wrote our literature used the phrase God as we understand Him. According to me, as we understand Him, if we have a receiving mind, takes care of any and all other names that we understand Him/ Her/ It to be.

I paraphrase Clarissa Pinkola Estés from her book "Untie the Strong Woman" as quoted in Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today:

[God] is known by many names and many images, and has appeared in different epochs of time, to people across the world, in exactly the shapes and images the soul would most readily understand [God], apprehend [God], be able to embrace [God] and be embraced by [God].

[God] wears a thousand names, thousands of skin tones, thousands of costumes to represent [God]  *** there are more than six billion people on earth, then thereby [God] comes to us in literally billions of images. 

The self-determined objective of trying to nail down a single name, or of being all things to all people, takes our eyes off the prize...of coming to believe.

Thank you.