Deconstructing God

Miriam Therese MacGillis

Over the last thirty years, without any forethought, I have been deconstructing my images of God. My early mind and imagination were shaped in pre–Vatican II Catholicism and my images of God were ancient, clear, strong and beloved. Deconstructing God has been humbling.

Sandra Schneider has aptly described my sacred images of the Trinity as “two men and a bird.” The central stained glass window in my parish church depicted a warm, elderly, white-haired man, a younger Jesus with a scepter and a beautiful dove above them. Interestingly enough, the two men are placing a crown on the head of Mary kneeling before them.

The image is indelible in my mind. This clarity and assurance about the nature of God gave form, assurance, meaning, and beauty to my life. I think this image also shaped my family, friends, schoolmates and the world of American Catholicism.

During Vatican II, without anyone realizing it, we began taking apart, dismantling, and examining all those images for what is beyond image. I know I have moved through this process. It has been very difficult. There were no guides. I just kept slowly dismantling my images of God. As a result, I do not have specific images. So now I have to try to imagine ways to approach the Ineffable Mystery, the Unknowable, the Holy One.

One of the images I have worked with is a pinpoint. The universe started with a very small area the size of a pea – according to Einstein. I picture that as a black dot in the middle of a white field. I can only sense what is behind the white field and the black dot. There is no way to know the Unknowable. I am content with that. I don’t need anything more. The reason I have faith in this Mystery is that, on this side of the black dot, the universe is the testament to it. In other words, what I have come to understand as the universe, the Earth and all its relationships is miracle enough for me to trust what is behind the black dot. I do not need to know any more. That has opened a door of faith for me that is different from my earlier life.

In the past, my faith was based on the history of the Hebrew people, the life of Jesus and the historical church. This is how I perceived truth. My tradition of truth was the“inspired” story of the people, events, and circumstances recorded in the story of humanity after the Fall from grace. It is the story of hundreds of thousands of human beings living their lives while believing in a Divine being who guided their personal and collective destiny.

This is the legacy I have been given. Now I understand this story as the laying down of an inner spiritual legacy developed through lives of thousands of human beings who shaped their lives out of this story and created the insights, values and spiritual qualities as part of an ongoing developmental process of consciousness.

This is my Catholic legacy. It is the repository on which I stand in the present moment, using its energy to keep myself going. This faith tradition has become a single seamless fabric behind my understanding of the universe, a gift upon which my consciousness can continue to expand. So it is a connection, an endowment, a legacy.

In my darker moments I fear that what is happening to our planet is so bad, so far gone that we won’t recover. When I feel my grief and anger, when I let myself experience the pain of the world, it is this faith that sustains me. It enables me to keep going, to die to my small self and resurrect a new aspect of my deeper self. Crisis becomes a condition for opening me up. If I could not be faithful to my life’s call through these dark times, I would abandon the whole thing. When I get tired or frustrated or overwhelmed by the feelings that it is too late, or that I ought to get on with another life and abandon this crazy path, it is my faith that keeps me going.

There is nothing else to do. It is a sense of a calling, of unfolding the meaning of one’s life.

My relationship with the Mystery is in my prayer. I just imagine the field with the black dot and I’m in front of it. I say to it, “I believe, work through me, use me.” I do believe the yearning of my heart is heard and accepted. I cannot be in this gorgeous universe and assume that it is random. This is not a possibility for me. I want to align myself with the good, with its purpose, rather than seek some sort of intervention or confirmation. Life is enough. This moment is enough. Sunlight, birdsong is enough.