The God I Believe In

Every Unitarian will have a slightly different view of who or what God is, if they believe in Him/Her/It at all. So what follows is necessarily my own viewpoint.

As a child, the primary school I attended observed the cycle of the Christian year, and held an assembly every morning, so I learned all the lovely C of E hymns. I also had a very nice children's Bible, so I knew many of the stories from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

Did I have a relationship with God in those days? Well, I took His existence for granted, and accepted the stories I read fairly uncritically. It wasn't something I thought about much.

After running into issues with Christianity in my teens, and having discovered Unitarianism, the God I came to believe in was loving, and omnipotent, but strangely powerless. I believe with Mother Teresa that we are God's hands in the world, and that He/She/It can only work through us, I'm not sure that I believe in God in my head, but I trust that He/She/It exists, and believe with the Quakers that there is "that of God in everyone", and that each of us is "unique, precious, a child of God." And that therefore it is up to us to treat every human being with compassion and respect.

A couple of years ago, I had a close encounter with God, while walking the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral. I had walked labyrinths before, mindfully, and had found it an uplifting experience. The experience I had at Chartres was of another quality altogether.

When I first entered the labyrinth, I realised that the people in front of me were moving really slowly, stopping every few paces to pray or meditate. My initial urge was to overtake them and carry on, but my guardian angel nudged me at the right moment, and I decided to go with the flow and see what happened.

Slowly, my mindset changed, and I began to pray; firstly the Metabhavna, the prayer of loving kindness, but then, to my surprise, the Lord's Prayer, over and over again, in whole or in part, throwing the prayer up to the heavens, in the sure knowledge that *Someone* was listening. It was the closest I had ever come to a direct experience of God, and I don't think I will ever forget it. It took me 90 minutes to get to the centre of the labyrinth, and I just wasn't conscious of the passage of time.

Since then, through an increased awareness of the sacred in my everyday life, I have come to recognise that God is everywhere: in the world, and in me. And that is good.