The God Box

Hello, My Dear Blog. It's been over a year since I last posted. Goodness, I didn't mean to be gone so long. Perhaps I haven't had much to say, or maybe I just lacked the words to describe my thoughts and ideas. Anyway, it's nice to be back.

I'm fascinated by today. There was a total eclipse of the sun, which crossed the United States. Here in Utah, the eclipse wasn't to totality, but close. The experience was very cool, and I was happy to share it with my wife and kids, and even a couple of friends. Other friends of mine saw the eclipse from the areas of totality, where the moon completely covered the sun for a couple of minutes, darkening the land they stood on, and chilling the air. The photos I've seen from those areas of totality are amazing to say the least. No, beautiful. No, breathtaking. No...maybe words won't do. Maybe my words will limit the expansiveness of the event. And so I'll just say I saw it, I was moved, and I'll leave it at that.

At work, I had a discussion, which just happened to coincide with the subject-matter of my last post here---God and boxes. It was a lovely discussion during which beautiful truths were unpacked. Once again, I thought about how limiting thoughts can sometimes be. I thought about how religion can at times stifle one's spirituality.

For those who believe in "God," there has been at some point in their lives an introduction to this idea of deity. Perhaps their parents presented them with the idea of God. Often, as was the case for me, it was a combination of things. My parents introduced me to the idea of God. They taught me that I could talk to God, and that God would listen to me, and even answer me. They taught me that with God anything is possible. They introduced me to Mormonism, and Mormonism introduced me to a box.

It was a neat little box. It was beautifully, intricately wrapped, with pretty paper and lacy ribbons and bows. No one had given me a box like this before. It felt special. It was special. Not long after I received it, I opened it up.

Now imagine, if you will, a neat little box, with the top flaps opened, but the contents remaining neatly, tightly inside. What is inside is so special, so sacred that one must handle the box with the utmost of care. The contents are packaged well, with a sufficient cushion of bubble wrap and packing peanuts. The contents fit so nicely, they are clearly safer left inside. And at that point, it doesn't matter. One doesn't need to remove it from the box. He/she knows it is special and powerful because he has been told so. He can see about the top 15-20% of what lays inside anyway. And if he wants to know about the rest, he can just ask. (Although, if one asks only those who had also not removed the contents of the box, what good did that do?)

For many years, I loved my God in a box. Still do, actually. I could pray to God and often I'd get answers. I could feel that God had the power to affect my life in different ways. I could feel God's influence at times. Other times, I felt my god lacked the power to help me, or to help other people. On a few occasions, I thought I felt something that seemed likely to be God, but I had never seen that possibility when I had looked or studied my God in a box. And the people around me, who also had similar boxes, were unable to explain my experiences as God. They'd never seen that side to God. They'd never read nor heard about God behaving in such ways. Several years ago, I began pulling my box open a little further, shuffling around the styrofoam peanuts, and peeking at the sides of God I hadn't yet allowed myself to see. I saw even more power, more beauty, more possibility for miracles and wonders. As the years went by, the box was becoming a little tattered, less secure, and less useful.

Now, I don't want to project my experience onto anyone else's. I don't want to tell anyone what to expect. But just imagine again that box which contains something so powerful, so wondrous, so...well, again with the limitation of my words. Imagine that you can open the top flaps and see what's inside. You see the neat wrapping and packaging. But those packing peanuts and bubble wrap are keeping you from seeing what can be seen, if only you take God out of the box. Once you do so, you're able to free God from those cardboard constraints, and you're able to free your mind to limitless possibility. You will then be able to observe all of the sides of God. You might not understand it all, but there will be nothing keeping you trying to reach higher understanding. You'll quickly realize that God never needed to be kept in that box.

What have I learned from my own God box experience? I've learned that the box is neither good nor bad. The box was a handy wrapping in which to introduce God in the first place. The wrapping helped me understand that what was inside was indeed special and important. The box actually helped me feel that I was special and important. Yet, my relationship to God became so much more once I took God out of that box, out of those constraints, beyond religion's written and spoken limitations. With the box, I was telling God how to be. But without the box, I was allowing God to be God. They say "with God, anything--including miraculous things--is possible." I've learned that God IS possibility, and allowing possibility allows for miracles.