Conversation
a short mediation by Bruce Herman
“God is talkative, and our communion with him is conversational. Instead of concealing himself in silence or declaring himself from a distance, God speaks the world into existence and strikes up conversation with his creation.”
Adam Neder — from Theology as a Way of Life
Apart from the masculine pronouns, which may seem antiquated given that we now affirm God as both feminine and masculine and neither, Adam Neder makes a simple but profound observation that points toward ultimate reality: the cosmos is set up to move us (and everything) toward communion—the ultimate form of conversation between persons. Personhood and consciousness are not a side-effect or accidental outcome of evolution. Personhood and the communion of persons is the driving purpose behind everything.
Whatever you “believe” about God or God’s existence, consider this: why is there any love or caring at all in a “nature red in tooth and claw” where only the fit survive? Why is there anything like conversation or its ultimate form, intimate communion, in an accidental, chaotic, cruel universe where there is only “big fish eats little fish”?
The reason we imagine (in our sci-fi horror movies) aliens as insect-like and amoral is because our greatest fear is that there is no God—no embodiment of love and caring—in the cosmos. But why should we ever imagine a world where there is in fact a loving God—father and mother of all? Why do we long for this—a god of love? Because that longing and hope is inscribed, embedded in our very core. And not because we had mothers and fathers and we wish they were still providing for us long after we’ve hatched and flown the nest.
The reason we had fathers and mothers at all is because at the heart of reality is the Creator’s love—moving us despite all our poor choices toward that ultimate reality of love. We were made by a Maker to be makers—and our hearts are restless until we make something…something beautiful. But why do we care about beauty, about other people, about right and wrong, about truth? Because under and over, beside us and behind us, in front of us there is love.
Even when our world is shaking and seems to be collapsing, the echo of that Love is everywhere heard: in the firefighters in California; in the nurses and doctors fighting Covid; in the neighbors helping neighbors in flood and wind riven communities; in the classroom teacher who year after year gives herself/himself in selfless devotion despite terrible pay and an increasingly demanding clientele.
Whatever you “believe” about God, consider this: God is not distant or neutral or a “force”. God is the bedrock of personhood and communication and is best pictured not as a bearded man on a cloud above the fray, but as a suffering servant who radically identifies with the poor and the sick, with the marginal and the lost—with us broken people who still hope for love—reaching out for communion, for intimacy and trust, despite all the disappointments and depravity around us.
Kyrie Eleison
painting by Vincent van Gogh