In Mormonism, the Trinity, at least as mainline Christianity understands it, does not exist. Instead, there exists the Godhead: three real “flesh and bone”, perfect physical and glorified persons sharing a common purpose, shared power, and joint authority. (For reference, we mere mortals are “flesh and blood”, imperfect physical beings, and won’t be gloried until the Final Resurrection–and even then, only perfect Mormons will have that honor.) So not three personages in one God, but three Persons in one Office. (Kind of like the collective presidency of the Swiss Federal Council.) And yes, Jesus was white (“someone had a dream, and painted an exact portrait of Him! It must be True, because it was another True Blue Mormon who dreamed it!”), and God the Father had a long white beard. We all existed before we came to this earth, God and Christ devised a plan for us to also earn perfected physical bodies and return to live with the Godhead, yadda yadda yadda. God demanded unyielding justice: sin of any type cannot enter God’s presence, and because of our inability to rid ourselves of sin without aid, God sent Christ to absorb our sin and give us mercy. (Penal substitution theory, for those of you keeping track at home; more on this on a later post.)

As you can see, I had a very clear vision of what and who God the Father was. Everything fit in neat little legalistic, ontological holders. I had an answer for almost everything. I KNEW who God was. Even when I left LDS, I still held onto most of my understanding of the nature of God. And then I met Fr. Errol and The Episcopal Church…. Really, what were these new words I heard during sermons, and read about online in TEC forums and articles? “Ground of our being”, “the God who surpasses all understanding”, even references to feminine divine? And let’s not forget this totally irrational concept of 3-in-1 and 1-in-3. Nope, not making sense, need to dive into scholarly works, engage in deep, long discussions of words, translations, philosophies, and interpretations. Thank God for wine to help keep Fr. Errol and I sane on those nights when the discussion went until 2, 3 in the morning.

I started, slowly, ever so slowly, to loosen my concrete assumptions of my Creator. And I started seeing God as not a person, not someone I could walk up to and shake His hand, but more of something much larger. And then it whacked me upside the head. I didn’t just loosen my concrete assumptions of what God was, I abandoned them wholesale. In its place was… nothing. Oh good Lord, I was scared. For one of the first times in my life, I didn’t have an answer. I was the one who knew things, the one coworkers went to when they couldn’t find the answer. I was the cocky (but still introverted) teenager who knew I was better than you, because I knew the Truth of God. (God, please forgive me for my arrogance, pride, and conceit in my youth!) Now, I was wading into deeper water, and the bottom suddenly fell away. Struggling to stay afloat with an upended worldview. It took more discussion, lots of prayer, and plenty on meditation and music to realize that I didn’t need to have an anchor. I was struggling to find that rod of stability that was my surety. But I was clinging to it too tightly, and searching for it too frantically to initially realize that God was keeping me afloat, and my rod was trying to weight me down. Gradually, I calmed, and contemplated, and made Fr. Errol cry for joy when I told him I no longer knew God–but I now could feel God.

I’ve started formulating a rather vague understanding of the nature of God, totally indescribable, but only an inkling of understanding is present within metaphors and riddles. The cosmic life force that holds galaxies together, the sentience of the universe attempting to understand itself, the fundamental forces that bind subatomic particles to each other and give order to chaos. These are my answers now. And to them, I add imagery given by my partial understanding of quantum reality: quantum reality is the theory that the universe, in all four discernible dimensions (x, y, z, and time), is quantized, discrete, countable. There is a smallest measure of space and time. Much like the warp and weft of the finest fabrics, there’re spots where nothing exists. Not empty space, but truly nothing. And we know there is more mass and energy in this universe, holding us together than we can see, touch, or record. So, could God be “dark matter” or “dark energy”? Is God this force that permeates everything, space, me, you, my dresser drawers, and sits between the warp and the weft of the universe, holding everything together? It makes sense. After all, I’ve come to realize that God is so incomprehensible, that we cannot even conceive of the questions to ask about God’s nature. Much like literal nothing, if we were to experience God as we are, we would go mad. So I’ve come to classify God as that which inhabits the space between spaces. It’s as good an explanation as any, and why not? I can park my answers wherever I need them to be for now, and pick up the questions God provides as my life raft. May I never lose the wonder I felt when I imagined God like this.