Great Spirit?

Last week one of you asked a very interesting question that no one had ever asked me before:

“Every week when we enter meditation you always begin by saying, “Great Spirit.” Who or what is this Great Spirit? Whom are we talking to?”

A very good question!

But in that moment all I could think of to say is, “Well, I’m not entirely sure – but I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.”

Even that isn’t quite right. Sigh. Words are so inadequate sometimes.

Most days I’m a pantheistic (or maybe panentheistic) humanist. Which is really just a fancy way of saying that for me, the totality of existence in all its constituent parts (+ consciousness) is where I find divinity. The sacred. It’s where I find god.
I cannot prove this belief to be true, nor do I feel any need to do so. I am content with simply living as if it is so, and treating the rest of creation accordingly. Similarly I cannot prove that every human being is born with inherent worth and dignity – and yet I choose to live my life as if we are.

So when I invoke a “Great Spirit”, “Source of Love”, “Boundless Universe”, “Holy Creation” or any of the many names that stumble from my lips as I struggle to name that which is beyond names, indeed beyond all words – I do not really know who or what I am addressing. Maybe it’s a kind of cosmic “to whom it may concern.”

I do know that whatever it is I am reaching for – it is more than me. It is more than me and yet I am part of it. It’s whatever I am responsible to, accountable to – my home base, a flag on a mountain, an ancient spring, a distant star a forgotten song…it is that which is beyond me and yet paradoxically at my core. It is whatever calls me always a little further than I thought I could go, whatever I cry out to when my heart breaks and the song my heart sings when I hear a new baby laugh.

Call it what you will: Higher Power, True Self, Animus, Highest Values, Universe, Mother, Father, Ancestors, Truth, Silence, Mystery, Spirit, God, god, gd…

I don’t know who or what I am addressing on Sunday mornings, but I know it’s not me – and I know it’s not you – and yet in some ways it is I and Thou and more than that.
Maybe I don’t need to know, definitively, what it is I am reaching for, what it is in this life that fills me with wonder and awe. Maybe I don’t need to know definitively, what it is I am searching for – or even if it is “real” in the way carbon, iron or shrink-wrap is real.

Maybe I don’t need to name it. I know I don’t need to prove it. But I do need to do it – to reflect, to still, to meditate, to pray – to practice.

As for you, call it whatever you will, translate however you want – just do it. Sit quietly, still the tinkle and roar of your Self – and listen.