Spiritual Seed: The Image of God

thinking about who God is & January's Spiritual Seed

“Who is God?” I asked my dad once when I was fourteen (most fourteen years olds at that time had deep thoughts about marrying Justin Bieber, I had deep thoughts about theology… lol).

My dad answered me the best that he could — printing me pages of conference talks and scriptures. I remember reading them and getting more confused.

“I know there is Jesus, and there is Heavenly Father… but who is God? Which one? What is God?” I asked these questions over and over, never satisfied…

At a multi-stake girl’s camp that summer, I eventually took those questions out into the mountains.

I remember sitting out in a field. Yellow grasses reached towards the blue sky. Rocks and soil felt solid underneath me. Trees stretched out in praise.

I asked my question again to God. “Who are you?” I asked (and asked and asked in different ways and using different words, in case He didn’t understand me the first time),

And then I sat

and waited.

I didn’t see God that day — but, in hindsight, maybe I did. I felt the wind across my cheeks and watched the breeze flap flap flap the thin pages of scripture in my lap. And somehow, inexplicably, that was enough for me then.

Later, back at camp, I tried to explain to others the wind rustling the leaves in the trees and the way it sent shivers up my arms while simultaneously making my heart warm, but it didn’t come out quite right in plain words.

I wrote on Sunday about wanting to embody a “playful devotion” for 2025. This applies to showing up to my creative work and doing the dishes and laundry, but it also applies to my relationship with Church and God.

For my first 26 years of life, I clung tightly to my image of God in my youth with iron fists. To bring playfulness and imagination to my view of God felt scary and worse, sacrilegious. For some reason, Mormons are really proud to claim that God has a body of flesh and blood. I think it’s because it makes God feel more relatable, more real. Kind of like the tabloids boasting in the check-out aisle of a supermarket — Celebrities are just like US!

Growing up, my view of God was a male being with a literal body (the official doctrine of Mormonism). As I learned about feminine and masculine energies, it started morphing into a view of Divine Parents watching over us. Now, my view of God is aligned more closely with the Trinity (which I never expected!!! Isn’t it funny?) I’m not saying I’m right — I’m just imagining the possibilities, mulling the ideas over like a stone in my hands, seeing how it feels.

As I’ve let myself loosen my grip and turn on my imagination, it’s been fun. I imagine a love story between the Father and the Mother, and I imagine the thrones and principalities to look like the metal folding chairs found in churches. It’s just for fun. It’s just imagining! There are days when everything seems to shimmer in holiness. It just seems to all be connected—invisible strings everywhere tugging and pulling and guiding and straining—like a big web of interconnectedness.

When I am tapped into that interconnectedness, I can feel that pull to God. Into Love. (I think I am a Mystic??)

Maybe you’re at a place where you don’t feel that pull to God at all. That’s okay. Or maybe you’re in that tender space of being angry at God, so so angry, or perhaps you’ve landed into not believing God exists at all. It’s all okay. Really. I do think, no matter your view of God, the prompt I give you today will still be beneficial to you. As you read, you can replace ‘God’ for “Universe” or “Life” or “Reality” or whatever feels more true to you. There is something to be said about honoring Life itself as holy.

Today’s Spiritual Seed is aimed to help you deepen your relation with the Spirit, and step into playful devotion with God.

And from now on, Spiritual Seeds and other more personal deep dives will be offered for paid subscribers. This is new for me! But I finally feel like I have a good direction for what I’d like to create and offer my paid subscribers. This isn’t to create a barrier, just a way to cultivate a more thoughtful corner of the internet and to support me in dedicating more energy and time to these more time-intensive posts.

If you’re happy staying as a free subscriber, I am happy too! I am planning to do ~2 free posts a month, and ~2 paid posts a month (of course, this is all subject to change, bear with me). My free posts will be my illustrated essays and deconstruction/reconstruction essays. My paid posts will be the spiritual seeds and more candid and intimate essays about my faith journey that I’d feel more comfortable sharing to a more dedicated readership. Either way — as a paid subscriber or free subscriber — seriously, your support is what keeps me going. I’ve been touched to have this be a more constant part of my life now. Thank you for being here. <3

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And now, onto January’s Spiritual Seed…

“Does God exist?” a host of The Liturgists podcast asked spiritual teachers from different faith traditions. They all, interestingly, said basically the same thing: “that question doesn’t make sense to me anymore.”

One of them said, “I find it more helpful instead of asking ‘What is God?’ To consider the question ‘What is God not?’”

I’ve been mulling over that one for a while.

Even amongst some of the most well-known spiritual teachers, the God question can create a pause. We may all have our different beliefs about what God is and what God is not. And while the specifics of God’s body or non-body or humanness or non-humanness seem futile, I do think who we believe God to be is the foundation on which base our beliefs. This applies to atheists just as much as it applies to Orthodox Jews.

Who we view God to be will leak and permeate into other areas of our life, even if we do not realize it.

It’s why there are really scary people who do really scary things, and claim God is behind it all!

And it’s why there are really good people who do really good things, and claim God is behind it all!

So when I’ve found myself wondering, “Does theology actually matter?” I always come back to the conclusion that it both deeply matters and deeply does not matter. It deeply matters in the transformative sense of our human spirit, and it deeply does not matter in the sense that, as an acquaintance said to me once, “I think God will save us in spite of our theology, not because of it.”

And, as I’m finding often, God seems to work within paradoxes (like I wrote about here!). So I try to maintain a curious and playful spirit when considering the deep-mattering and the deep-not-mattering.

Which brings me to… Mary Oliver’s poetry.

Mary Oliver is a wildly famous late-American poet who seemed to see God everywhere. I watched an interview with her once, where she said her process in writing poetry was simply taking a little notebook and walking around the woods. You see that process so clearly in her writing — full of beautiful natural imagery of trees and wildlife and streams. She often seems to see the world around her as a reflection of the spiritual world. In Oliver’s most famous poem, she writes “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention”.

And so, if we are to learn more about the Image of God, I suppose we will need to learn to pray in the way that Mary Oliver does — that is, to pay attention.

This “paying attention” is also seen in this excerpt from At the River Clarion (2009), where Mary Oliver ponders who exactly God is.

“I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this. 
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a 
	water splashed stone
And all afternoon I listened to the voices 
	of the river talking. 
…
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me
	What they were saying. 
Said the river: I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered
	the moss beneath the water. 
…
“If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics.
He’s the forest, He’s the desert.
He’s the ice caps, that are dying.
He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts. 

He’s Van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert
	Motherwell.
He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing
	their weapons.
He’s every one of us, potentially.
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician,
	the poet.
And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?

Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and
	each of you too, or at least
		of his intention and his hope.
Which is a delight beyond measure.
I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea.
	I only know that the river kept singing. 
It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the river’s own
	constant joy”

That last line really spoke to me this morning — what a startling idea that the river’s own constant joy is what is bearing God’s image. Mary Oliver’s writing about River Clarion reminds me of my fourteen-year-old self feeling the soft breeze against my cheeks and hearing the rustle of yellow grasses and somehow believing in God again.

Take yourself on a Noticing Walk (or if you’re scared of the cold, like me, take yourself to a Noticing Cafe). Bring a little notebook with you, and write down 10-15 things you notice. These things should be concrete, not abstract.

Examples of concrete:

- the barista’s crooked smile

- snow clinging to delicate tree branches

- sunshine making patterns of light and dark on the speckled carpet

Examples of abstract:

- warm feeling in my heart

- the fragility of life

- comfort and peace

We are going after the concrete things for this exercise. The goal is to focus on sensory experiences, vivid images, and tangible objects. You can be detailed and creative in your descriptions, or to the point. Either one works. It’s best to think about all five senses — what are you seeing/hearing/touching/tasting/smelling?

After you’ve written down your 10-15 concrete noticings, choose 3-5 ones that stand out to you the most, and then add “I am” in front of them.

• I am the barista’s crooked smile.

• I am the snow clinging to delicate tree branches.

• I am the sunshine making patterns of light and dark on the speckled carpet.

When Moses asked God his name in Exodus, God said “I am that I am.” Consider what your noticings reveal to you about God and/or about yourself. What does it mean for God to be the snow clinging to the branches? This may serve as a basis for you to begin a poem, an essay, a painting, or even a recipe. Try, in some way, to move your noticing forward into creation. That can look like anything — from a journal entry to a new dance move.

The idea is to take a noticing, see God in it, and bring it forward into creation.

“It is the creative potential itself in human beings that is the image of God” - Mary Daly

I’d love to know if you did this exercise, or if any “I am” statements surprised or excited or confused you. Please do share!

Our first Spiritual Seed has been planted! I’d love to know what you think and if you think you’ll give this seed a planting.

Thank you for being here.