What kind of god?

I think a lot about God. Seems I can't help myself.

A four-year Theology degree is the only post-secondary education I have.

You may or may not be religious, or consider yourself a spiritual person. I think I'm destined to be both because I can't shake this God thing.

He seeps through my songs and wakes me in the night.

She haunts my wilderness walks and pulls my eye towards the mirrored hull of a docked yacht (there's a whole poem here but that's for another email).

They are the object of my thanks and the target of my blame.

I don't have a firm handle on God, but there's plenty of things in life like that. Maybe most true things. Like love. Like death. Like hope.

I don't have a clear picture but I'm always adjusting the antenna, reaching for signal in the noise.

A friend of mine recommended I read Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad is Untrue and it has offered so many moments of beauty.

Yesterday, the narrator posed a question I've been chewing on since.

Would you rather have a god who listens, or a god who speaks?

What a question!

I've been thinking about my answer. Perhaps I'll share it next week but it fascinates me that my wife's answer is totally different from mine. So, now I want to hear your answer.

Sit with the question a minute. Even if you don't believe there could be such a being, think of the string of questions this question creates. The inevitable but why that follows your own answer.

Then, if you feel comfortable sharing, please hit reply and tell me your answer. Tell me what, if anything, this question does for you.

I was thinking about all of this – the kind of gods we might want – before I read Nayeri's book. Two artists I follow are releasing records with remarkably similar titles this fall - Nick Cave's Wild God and Mallory Chipman's Songs to a Wild God I've been interested in what they mean by that title. Each artist has, I think, a different take informed by a different life experience.

Which has me wondering, as another artist famously put it, "who made who?"

When I think of God, am I crafting something I want to be true, or am I connecting with something beyond my own truth?

These questions used to feel off-limits to me, but in recent years I've felt more free to ask them.

Perhaps each question is a sounding, bringing back some piece of what's out there in the depths.

So here again is today's sounding;

A god who listens or a god who speaks. Which would you rather?