As I read over what I wrote last week, I noticed a phrase I used: “my connection to God.” It strikes me now as one of those glib catch phrases we tend to use when we talk about faith and spirituality. We assume we all know what we mean . . . because of course we know what we mean! But what do we mean?
 
What did I mean when I used that phrase, beyond an easy answer to my dilemma of confrontation with faith dialogues that make me uncomfortable? Does “connection to God” mean to me what it does to others? And if not, then it does nothing to further any conversation about spirituality. As I think with a mind that’s been shaped by the scientific method (with its dependency on concrete and observable phenomena), where do I believe this connection exists? In my soul? And if that’s the case, what is a soul and where does it reside within me? The questions become more convoluted the further you follow them. I suppose that’s why we tend to avoid them altogether and stick with our simple jargon.
 
I have two places I tend to go when I’m trying to dig for meaning: the Oxford English Dictionary and Google. This time, when I Google the phrase “connecting with God,” the first hit tells me that the only way to connect with God is by personally receiving Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, a process that contains several carefully spelled-out steps. The next site tells me that prayer, in whatever form I choose, is my connection to God. Next I find a quote from the Sufi teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen: “When form is created, the ray of the power of God comes into each form. Thus a connection exists between the power known as God and the ray known as the soul. . . . The bodies that were formed with the ray of God’s power inside them will live with that connection”; this seems to indicate that we are connected to God congenitally, regardless of our decisions or actions.
 
Having spent much of the last two or three years immersed in the creation of Anamchara’s All Shall Be Well, the writings of Julian of Norwich in modern language, I find that Julian’s thoughts are constantly close to the surface of my mind. Julian was no sloppy theologian. She thoroughly analyzed each of her visions, taking years to break them down into their deepest and truest meaning, and she chose with care each of the words she used to explain that meaning. After spending so much time with Julian’s words, she’s become someone I respect. I trust her. Here’s what she has to say about our connection with God (from All Shall Be Well, chapters 52 and 53):
 
I realized in every soul kept safe by God there lives a will that never agreed to be separated from the Divine, nor ever will agree, despite the appearance of external circumstances. . . . Our Protector wants us to be assured of this reality, that a piece of our very essence remains whole and safe in Jesus Christ, our Divine Protector. . . . Our souls are knit tightly to God at the deepest level of their being, with a knot so delicate and strong that our souls become one with God, made endlessly whole and clean and safe.
 
. . . We contain in our beings both Jesus our Risen Protector and Adam, who fell into death. In Christ, we are kept steadfastly safe; the touch of His grace on our lives raises us into the certainty of our safety—but at the same time, we are terribly broken, our emotions and vision shattered by Adam’s fall, so that we experience pain, sin, and darkness.
 
But in our deepest essence we continue to abide in God. . . . Divine Goodness opens our eyes to true reality, but our vision fades in and out, sometimes sharp and sometimes blurry, as God allows. . . . This mingling of life and death, rising and falling is so strange that we cannot even know where we truly are, for our perceptions are so sundered from each other that we can’t tell what is real.
 
According to Julian, then, our connection to God is in fact an inherent part of our very essence, as the Sufi teacher indicated. What changes is our awareness of this connection, not its actual reality. I do not have to struggle to change my being (I can let that rest with God), but I can practice making time for the things that nourish my spiritual vision, focusing on those things. As the author of Philippians says, whatever is true, whatever is lovable, whatever is kind, if there is anything worthy of praise, I should fix my mind on those things (4:8).
 
Which brings me back to last week’s question: how do I reach out and embrace religious perspectives (including those from my own background) that make me uncomfortable? As I’ve wandered through these thoughts, I’ve come full circle—and found the beginnings of an answer both to my question last week and my question this week.
 
Hatred, prejudice, spiritual blindness are all too real. They live in me as well as in the world around me. But as I turn my attention to hope, tolerance, faith—my commitment to love God and those around me—I am able to see more clearly, both the splinter in my neighbor’s eye and the two-by-four in my own.
 
And my connection with God also stands out more sharply against the confusion of my life, a connection to which I commit myself intellectually and on which I choose to build the prosaic, everyday details—the observable phenomena—of my life.