On the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas facebook page the question was posed:

How do YOU – as a UU – think or talk about God? What do YOU mean when you say the word?
If you don’t ever use that word or want to, do you use a different word? Or do you just avoid the idea all together?

When someone asks me if I believe in God. I ask them in turn “Who’s asking? If it’s a Christian asking then I am an atheist. If it’s an atheist asking, I’m an agnostic.”

I hesitate to use the word God because it might be mistaken for that all-powerful creator described in places like the Old Testament and the Quran. Still, I use the word God because I believe we are talking about essentially the same thing –except not at all.

When I say God I am referring to something that does not have identity or intellect. I even hesitate to use the phrase universal consciousness because that might imply some form of intellect or consensus.

What God is to me is a state of awareness that allows we are part of something far greater than we can adequately express. It is a state of being that includes us but is in no way centered on us. Everthing –every thing- is connected. Everything is.

This understanding, that we only get glimpses of every now and then, is God. When we glimpse this we invent words like divinity, sacred, sublime. We are divine, sacred, sublime, and eternal because we are a part of this not a product of it. Carl Sagan told us “We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” Ask Neil deGrasse Tyson if he doesn’t experience the sublime in his work.

I think we have the capacity to understand this at least in an abstract way. We should be able to treat each other like the incarnations of The Greater Divine that we are. But it is much too hard to hold this in our minds and hearts. It is much easier to be swayed but the amygdala because we are still closer to that in our evolution than the awakened souls that we hope to be. It is far easier to create this Greatness to be something outside us and give it an intellect and an identity and a human physicality to identify with. At that point is an easy step to attribute to them the source of our morality, our compassion, our righteousness and our accountability. ‘They’ are divine and we are not. We invent books to tell us we are lesser things to be ruled by greater things. Heaven and Hell, the carrot and the stick: all of that is put beyond us instead our legacy in the here and now.

We are the blind men telling each other exactly what an elephant is like. God is the ones and zeros underneath the operating system that religions have overlaid with their proprietary user interfaces, logos and catchphrases. The underlying framework gets written, rewritten, stolen, re-attributed and the new versions rolled out with ad campaigns and keynote speakers. All we want is for our battery not to run out before we post those pics of cats photo-bombing our selfies.

TL;DR
We have forgotten that we are God

One of those vintage postcard memes came across my FB feed today: "Women: Wearing heels is not sexy if you walk like a newborn calf"

My first thoughts: Ouch. Who has been watching me try on heels? Are there hidden cameras in my room that I need to search out? Yeesh.

But not long after allowing myself a little self deprecation this is what it sounded like in my head:

Wait. No. Wait just one fucking minute. This, my friends, is what's wrong with us and how we are projecting what is acceptable and what is not as far as our collective self image. While it's true that someone who is having trouble walking isn't the epitome of sexiness, the sentiment of the card by its words and attitude is judgmental, arrogant and shallow. My first guess is that it was thrown together by a man but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. This kind of shit is especially infuriating when it's women tearing other women down. All for what? Appearances? Fashion? It falls right in line with what The Money says we should look, act and dress like.

Let me be clear: There is nothing wrong with wearing heels. My sisters, rock those babies like the star you are. But here's the thing: do not look down on those of us who don't quite pull off what is fashionable. We will make our own way with our without your approval and certainly in spite of your derision. The reason we wear heels may or may not be the same but when you belittle me for falling short of your perceptions of what is sexy who is the ugly one here?

Sexiness comes from confidence and trust me, when I buckle on my Icon field armor boots I am one unstoppable, sexy bitch. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.