Three years old is a bit premature for a first existential crisis. My family was visiting Yaya and Grandpa, my wife’s parents, when my daughter spotted a picture of my wife from middle school. There was Danielle, sandwiched in between her two brothers, all of whom looked noticeably younger. They were really only children.

“Where was I?” said Eden.

This wasn’t going to end well.  Jean Piaget wrote that children in this ‘preoperational stage’ of life are so egocentric that they have a difficult time perceiving a world that doesn’t contain them. Seems to me that some of us never quite make it out of that stage. I knew this and I still smiled as I walked right into the trap.

Well, you weren’t born yet,” one of us responded. I’m not sure whether it was my wife or me. It doesn’t matter. I do remember the way Eden’s head so slightly dropped and how the little wrinkles formed around her eyes as she squinted in confusion. Someone once asked Augustine the same question about God: “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” Augustine replied, “He was preparing hell for people who pry into mysteries.” That’s as good an answer as any, but unfortunately it’s inappropriate for my three-year old daughter.

My wife, who was grasping at straws, said, “Well, you were with the stars.”

Look, it’s instinctive to try and protect kids from the harsher realities of life for as long as possible. We know it’s not right, but it’s not terribly wrong. Aren’t we all just star dust, anyway? Not really. It’s cliche and sentimental, but she’s a three-year old who can’t read. It didn't work. Unfortunately, this vague answer about being with the stars didn’t appease her. Why do three year olds insist on better answers than so many adults?

She said, “I was in the dark. Alone? I don’t want to be in the dark! I don’t want to be in the dark! I don’t want to be in the dark!”

So much for the soothing lull of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’

Here’s what’s worse: a couple weeks later I caught her drawing pictures of herself in the stars. I asked her how it felt to be with the stars. She said two words: “It’s sad.” This is a terrible and heart wrenching thing for a parent to observe. It was as if she was drawing a portrait of hell—an existence that’s only dark. A life that’s only isolation.

What should we have said?
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​Most Christians have no doctrine of pre-existence. There’s no rebirth, cyclic existence, or reincarnation.  Origen of Alexandria (185—254 C.E.) gave us the most prominent Christian idea of pre-mortality. He taught that God created a limited number of rational beings (logikoi) outside of time, but they fell from their divine contemplation and took on flesh. Thus, here we are. It explains these troublesome bodies of ours.  But the church named it a heresy at the Second Council of Constantinople.

If there is any pre-existence, it’s only very relative. Augustine makes a compelling case that the past returns to existence in the present through our memories and the future, through our expectations (Confessions XI.20). We can conjure up events and relationships in our memories, so that they return to existence—albeit imperfectly. In our expectations, we create that-which-is-not-yet in the present moment. And so our expectations create existence, not in a proleptic sense, but as anticipation and hope.

I like that thought—Eden and Pax have always been with me, maybe even existing before me. Eden was settled in the hearts of my parents who must have dreamed of children and grandchildren who were birthed out of their own particular memories and expectations. Until she then became an expectation in my own heart. I thought about these kids most of my life. Sure, I never dreamed of a precocious, blonde hair, and blue eyed live-wire. But I did hope for God to call someone into existence for me—boy or girl, brown eyed or blue eyed, biologically-mine or adopted-mine.

It’s not the same, is it, as true being?

There’s a better answer than this vague sense of existence, though Eden’s too young to grasp it. It’s this: you were created. We are given a beginning, just as there was an initial beginning to all things.  It’s a miracle that there is something rather than not-something, even more miraculous that there is conscious life, and an even greater miracle that there is someone like Eden.  Or maybe it’s not. God is self-determined and resolved to be Creator.  Not out of compulsion, necessity, divine struggle, or a boundless will set to dominate. It’s only love—from the bottom to the top. God’s love couldn't be contained. Nor, could it be locked away in a warehouse. It spilled over into galaxies with stars and planets because God is God. And it keeps overflowing because no one's quite figured out how to make it stop.

Creation is the word we use to name the world and our existence. And it's important. The first thing we can say about each other is that God has created us. We are, each of us, God’s love enfleshed and put in motion. It teaches us how to be human and gives shape to our lives. It instructs us how to be in relationship with every facet of the created order—whether the oceans or mountains, beluga whales or grasshoppers, the neighbor or the enemy.  You are gift. And so are they. Never treat anyone, or be treated, as less.

After Eden drew the pictures of the stars I told her that she wasn’t actually with them. I told her something like this: ‘God was making you, but it takes a long time to make babies.  Meemaw and Poppa had to love me and raise me. I had to grow up and go to school to meet mommy. Then, we could have you. But that whole time we were thinking about you. You were in our dreams. And in our prayers. We thought about what you would look like, the ways you would talk, and how you would grow. Now, you’re finally with us. God finally made you. God made you at the perfect time (kairos).’

And she replied, “Daddy, that’s ridiculous.”

It is ridiculous. And yet, that’s what makes her grace—a completely undeserved and beautiful gift.

​For thousands of years the Judeo-Christian tradition has relied on Psalms as a guide through the changing of times. These are our “school for prayer”  and a catechesis in learning to talk to God. Or maybe, they're also a type of clothing for our inner life. When we put on the ancient words we discover garments for a new season, a new way of being.

The Psalms are the heart of the Bible both in location and purpose; they pump blood into the Scriptures as they also enliven our worship and life together. John Calvin called them “An Anatomy of All the Parts of the Soul,” where our deepest yearnings find a voice and a new harmony. They give form to our spiritual lives and grant us permission to bring our feelings to God no matter what joy or rage lingers in our hearts. What do you say when you hold a new born baby? How about this: “you knit us together in our mother's womb. I praise you because we are fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139).  Regrets take shape and cursing is given permission. Say your worst; God has already heard it and the church has canonized it. With confessional Psalms, our hearts are aired out like an open house. ​
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Perhaps this is why families often request Psalms to be read at funerals. They are poems and songs, which means that they heal in a way that theology lectures can’t. The raw emotion counteracts the platitudes about grandma singing with a choir of angels and daddy playing golf with Moses.  Psalm 23 (‘The Lord is my Shepherd) is requested most often—a top of the Billboard Charts and time-tested word of comfort. But there’s another that is particularly common in the mountains: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Imagine reading that in a cemetery settled in the middle of a valley while death’s claustrophobia overwhelms as in Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. ​It's a desperate plea for healing to the One who promises it. 

​But the poem is also a close friend. When the seasons change, certain Psalms sit with us in the middle of the night, as did Job’s friends, and hold our hands through the pain.
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There’s something cathartic about being placed in a long tradition as we speak the same healing words as many others have before us and even more will long after we’re gone. They first belonged to David or Solomon and the post-exilic community who wrote them out of their heartache and struggle. These are the prayers Jesus prayed—the ones he may have memorized in Sabbath school or getting tucked in at night by Mary and Joseph. They were later the same words he prayed while hanging on the cross when all else scattered.  And since they are Jesus’ prayers, they are God's thanksgiving for beauty and lament for a world broken.

Jesus continues to pray these Psalms through us, his body, as we continue to pray them through him. And so the Psalms put us in harmony with one another—whether that’s within a congregation or across the globe. If a certain Psalm is not your prayer, maybe it is somebody else’s. You may not be currently find yourself in the pit of despair, but certainly someone in the world is at the end of his tether. We may not be hungry, but someone is hungry because of our apathy. What would it be like to read a cursing Psalm from the point of view of a starving child?

They gave me also gall for my food; And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
Let their table before them become a snare; And when they are in peace, [let it become] a trap.
Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see; And make their loins continually to shake.
-Psalm 69

I read these words because it’s not just my prayer, but ours. They are words to pray with someone else’s lips and in another’s grief. It's a prayer that I might repent and turn from all the selfish ways of living. One day the reverse might be true.  There could be someone—a friend, a brother or sister, a stranger—who is praying a Psalm and it’s not for her own sake, but mine, because the mouth of Jesus is continually praying for its body.

​If we are to get through the changing of seasons, we'll do it with the help of one another. 
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A Lutheran theologian Martin Marty read through the Psalms with his wife during her struggle with cancer.  The Psalms became their respite every night when she woke up to take her nausea medicine and waited to fall back asleep. One night Martin’s wife caught him skipping from Psalm 87 to 91.  Some have called Psalm 88 the one with no hope, where ‘darkness is my only companion.’ 
"Why did you skip that psalm?" his wife demanded. 
​Marty told her he wasn't sure she could take Psalm 88 that night. 
 "Go back.  Read it," she said. 
 "If I don't deal with the darkness, the others won't shine out."

The beauty of the Psalms is that most of them end in praise. Even the gravest laments and raging curses somehow bend back to God's goodness and faithfulness. And that's the promise of the Psalms and the pattern for our lives. We will move from dark into light if the Psalms are any consolation. In fact, hope is just one chapter away—or even better, a comma.  Life will be redeemed, and though it will never look and feel exactly the same as a previous season, there is still the promise of reorientation.

Or maybe it's better to put it this way: there's always hope for a final season. And that's the season of resurrection.
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​‘We should do this more often because, like, people are happy,’ I overheard after our worship gathering the other week. It’s a shame that we don’t say it every week, or even most weeks, and that it’s a surprise when we walk out of worship muttering 'well, that wasn't as boring as usual.'

A couple of times a year ten of the local United Methodist Churches get together for joint worship. About half of each congregation shows up, but it’s enough to fill an entire sanctuary and leave the stragglers searching for parking. For others, it's a free Sunday off. I get it, because it’s tempting to wake up and smell that coffee and then remain in pajamas. Life is busy. You can get more done if you stay home. I’ve heard that voice before, too. The leaves will get raked, groceries bought, and you’ll still have time to catch the Panthers game.

And yet I have a lingering sense that half of our congregations missed out on something:
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A celebration.

I happen to know that there are a few key ingredients for a good party: the first step is to think about who’s there, what they’re bringing, and the particular season for celebration. We call worship liturgy, or ‘the work of the people,’ because it’s something we join together to create in the Spirit in ‘full, active, and conscious participation.’  Like a potluck, the festival changes depending on who has created what or what has been brought to be tasted. The style of party—whether you have organs or guitars or hymns or Hillsong—won't matter as much as what gifts, attitudes, or needs are brought into the body. All of it is incorporated into a theme, or a season and focus, that gives shape to the time and more generally, our lives together.

Go ahead—plan the party, get the details hammered out, and then the people will take it and create an experience that you could have never foreseen or planned.

There’s a Spirit involved in our worship that can’t be predicted, but moves with the energy of our common life together. God isn’t coercive; God fills sanctuaries and hearts as we acknowledge the presence and make room. We show up with thanksgiving and the Spirit gives us a heart of celebration. But these parties aren’t only about being happy, either. We may arrive grieving a loss and the Spirit will come to us as Counselor. We only need come expecting to see God and each other, and God and each other we will find. Which is why this much is certain: if worship is another obligation or box to check off on our to-do list, then it will become a rote and dreadful thing to persevere. Visitors can sense this. The room is deflated, or what Marcus Borg calls ‘flat-tire’ worship, because all of the Spirit has been pushed out of the room. No one wants to go to a party that’s always a duty to fulfill. ​

​​As a child and youth, I knew that there was a place to find God. God was in the passing of the peace, the well preached sermon, and bread and wine prepared for the malnourished. Unfortunately, the whole experience could be ruined with a couple of bad hymns. But give me a good dose of Mac Powell or Chris Tomlin and we’ll have  church. What was clear was that there was a gap between God and the world and so we needed set apart spaces and hours for regular habits to conjure Emmanuel, or God with us. Worship was almost like a ouija board; God was present, but only because someone was manipulating the conditions. 

This changed over time as I began to sense God’s presence equally outside of manicured experiences and in surprising places such as the stranger, the silence of an abandoned chapel, or the hollow moments that promise to be void of light. I shouldn’t be surprised; these are, after all, places God asks to be found. 

Shortly after I took my first pastoral appointment I walked into a room to visit a woman who’s life was slipping away. Her rhythm of breathing escalated, just short bursts grabbing whatever air she could hold. Then, it slowed and her mouth hung open.  We pushed a wet sponge in her mouth to keep it from drying out. And Jesus was with us, hanging on the cross as a sponge of wine was hoisted up to his mouth.  It turns out that the God-forsaken places—the cancerous cells and the crucifixions and the hearts of the mourners—are also saturated with God’s presence. And the pain is taken into the life of the Triune God, as Jesus cries from the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” so that all might be redeemed.

God is there, but God is also here. God is everywhere and in everything if we develop eyes to see. God is in every towering mountain and the Live Oak Trees draped in Spanish moss.  God is also in apparent nothingness like the geographic area between Savannah and Atlanta, or what we call the armpit of South Georgia. And if this is true then God is just as present in the newborn baby as the intensive care unit or all of our acts of love that sustain each others' lives. We don’t have to look at the sky to find God, but look horizontally at the burning bushes— the people we meet and places we find ourselves situated.

There are times when I question this—notably when a truck comes roaring down the street, cuts me off, and proceeds to go slower than my original speed. But God is even there, though maybe buried deep under a mixture of insensitivity and ignorance. There’s no secret combination that has to be unlocked, no permission must be granted from an old white guy wearing a robe, or particular building that must be accessed. God is already present and no incantation will make it more true. It’s what Matthew Fox calls a form of spiritual democracy; we all have equal access to God. A Wesleyan might describe it with God’s prevenient grace, or God’s presence pervades every atom of the world drawing us deeper into God’s own being.

​The theological word we use for this kind of theology is panentheism, a word that carries a lot of  baggage because of its varied iterations. The word literally means, “all-in-God” but we can also say, “God-in-all.” But it might be more apt to say that God isn’t an isolated being distant from our world who sometimes pulls up a pair of jeans and laces his boots to grace us with supernatural presence. That is, if we’re one of the lucky children who gets visitation hours.

Instead, I say with Paul that God is ‘where we live and move and have our being.’

Panentheism developed out of a response to ‘pantheism’ or the insight that “God is all” or “all is God,” which easily slips into a sentimental, new-age rumination about how God is every flower, drop of rain, every chirping bird. There must be a distinction between God and the world, as God must be more than what we see and experience. And most hope in something more than nature’s cycles of ‘death and resurrection.’ God is not nature, but God is in in nature.

Panentheism is nuanced, though some say it makes no iota of a difference; it’s all heresy. But to me it speaks to the conviction that God is here and God is still, in a sense, out there—transcendent and immanent, silent and as close as the breath in your lungs. This is God who is one-and-three in a dance of love. It’s an outworking of a God who is incarnation, or literally in the meat of our world setting up a tent. “Father,” Jesus prays before he leaves the earth, “May they be one in us.”  He ascends and carries the scars born from his time on earth into the core of God’s own self. The Spirit blows into our  hearts and, as Saint Francis says, ‘hides in a piece of bread’ and a sip of wine.  When Paul tries to describe our existence as the people of God, he calls us ‘Christ’s Body’ and challenges us to remain ‘in Christ.’

If it’s true, then we’re more than merely images of God. God actually resides within us and us in God. Thomas Merton puts it like this: “And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” Now, that’s a bit generous—a candle is more fitting. Or for others, a matchstick that takes a half-dozen attempts to strike a flame. But no one is devoid of God. Not the Muslim who moved next door, the Latino who is looking for a better life, the political foe, or the addict who lies, steals, and destroys for one more hit. God’s image is planted in all of us, even if God withdraws to give us the freedom to choose to allow the flame to burn at varying degrees and temperatures.

Christianity, for me, has become chiefly about learning to see and discern the divine as I’m tasked with being a congregation’s chief optometrist. Some experiences need less interpretation. The deep oranges and pinks of a sunset that blend together like a water color speak of God’s creative beauty. The tables brimming with wine and overflowing with laughter speak of a God who is with us in eucharistic-thanksgiving-communion if we have sacramental awareness. But God is also more than puppies and blades of grass.

Richard Rohr tells this story handed down from the rabbis: a student asked the rabbi why no one saw God anymore, the rabbi answered, “Because nowadays no one is willing to stoop so low!” God is also emptied into the world’s worst hells, that there may be no place where God is absent. And if God is even there, then the church is called to be there, too. This is the God who is liberating, restoring, and filling the world with grace and presence. The particularity of this God gives us a particular hope, that at the end of all things, ‘God will be all in all.’

Until then we’re called to remain grafted to the vine, making our home in God as God makes His home in us. This is about practicing the disciplines that attune our attentions and reading the Scriptures that become our anchors. But also by God by recognizing God in the other and in the love that bridges the gaps between us.

 And of course to remember God is there, but God is here because God is Trinity—Father, Son, Spirit, who is also Creator, Incarnate, and Breath.



*In response to a series of essays I read "How I found God in Everyone and Everywhere"