[This was originally written for Kehilla's Shavu'ot study session in 1992 and later adapted as a Kol Kehilla article for the High Holydays.My theology is hard to define, even for myself. If we use a traditional definition of God, some sort of entity with awareness who created the world with consciousness and design and who watches human affairs and intervenes, then by that definition I am an atheist. But if we posit God as a process, perhaps indistinguishable from the process of the universe itself, then I may be a theist and not necessarily very different from Spinoza, Maimonides or Mordechai Kaplan. What is most essential for me in all this is Yir'at HaShem, usually translated as "the fear of God," but which I translate (perhaps more accurately) as "awe of the Existent," that core experience of the enormous and mysterious power of which we are a part that is both awe-inspiring and intimidating. Each mystical tradition finds a way to place the mystic in a relationship with this core where the borders between the observer and God dissolve.
All mysticism, theism and atheism aside, the challenge in Jewish Renewal in general, and in Kehilla in particular, is not in finding a theology on which we all agree, but rather, how to stay united as a community in spite of our theological diversity, and how do we insure that this diversity be the asset that it is.]
God still doesn't know what She is. She knew even less at the beginning. In fact, since She had not yet created the process of knowing, She did not know anything at all. It would be billions of years before She could think or speak or act purposefully.
First, She wasn't, then She was. Actually that's wrong. First She was, and before then, there was no before.
She formed Her own internal universal laws of operation and She did this without any conscious design because she was incapable of conscious design. Without designing them She formed Her own internal universal laws of operation, and She was those laws, and those laws were Her operation.
She did not yet have senses so She did not sense how she expanded from a single supernal point at the speed of light. She did not expand into space, She was the expansion of space itself. She was the expanse; She was the space, She was the action, She was the Was.
God went through a lot. We've heard it all before. How She evolved from quarks into atoms, how her mass became quasars and galaxies and exploding stars and solar systems and a planet with a biosphere. Perhaps there are many such planets with biospheres, perhaps not. This particular biosphere could have evolved in billions of different ways. God was not in control of how She changed Herself. She had no way of controlling it. She wasn't trying to become anything. Change was just Her way.
On this particular planet She was manifested as a thriving and evolving organic whole. Many of her manifestations were plants and animals each of which developed sensations, awarenesses and capabilities, and each capability became another way that She became sentient. One such of these manifestations was an ape that, for whatever reasons, came to have a realization of its own existence. It could recognize itself in the mirror. It could think and recognize that it was thinking, and it could utter the most magical and impossible of utterances: "I am."
And that is how God first bit into the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Now She could look around from inside this mammal and consider "What is all this?" little realizing that "all this" was Herself as well. She saw Her manifestation as sky, as sun, as moon, as stars, as the rains, as thunder, as trees. But She didn't know that She was looking at Herself. She thought She was just this individual or just this family, or just this tribe, or just this species. She didn't yet realize that She was the vastness of all that She could and could not see with the Her limited human perception and non-human perceptions.
Every human incarnation of Herself thought of itself as a self. Each self tried to preserve and protect its small individual self. As a little self She would see other aspects of Herself as forces in nature which helped or hurt Her little self. She tried to control these forces. She gave them names. In her imagination She endowed these forces with their own selves. She called them "gods." She called the thunder "god." She called the rain "god." She called the power of love "god." She called the earth "god." She called everything but her little self "god." She worshipped and pleaded with these gods, puny manifestations of Her own grand self. She loved these gods and She hated these gods. And all Her human incarnations loved and hated each other. They often fought wars, little self against little self, and each tribal and national manifestation of Herself claimed that its god was on its side.
There are many legends, stories, theories, and myths about how She came to decide that the gods were really one god. Some say it was as her incarnation as Abraham and Sarah. Others say Moses, others say Akhnaton. It doesn't matter. She united all of the gods into one God. And She worshipped Him.
She prayed to Him that He would save Her, that He would intervene on Her behalf. She created Her God as all-powerful. She said He knew everything and that He had always been here and had always known everything. He knew all the secrets that She didn't know. He created the universe and put Her in it as a human being. She didn't realize that She was the universe. She didn't know that humanity was only one part of Her everything self.
As humanity She lived as a society on the planet. As a society She gave Herself rules to live by, and She worshipped Him for giving Her these rules. She created Her God as a god who rewarded Her when She was good, and punished Her when She was bad. At times, the bad were rewarded and the good were punished and this undermined Her belief in Him.
Sometimes She thought that there was no God. Sometimes She philosophized that God had created the world but left it imperfect, incomplete and that God had given Her the task to complete it, to perfect it. He prepared, She repaired. He had given Her a purpose in life. Her incarnations as Jewish mystics said that He had rent the fabric of existence into broken shards of some primordial unity. The mystics said that part of Himself was in exile from Himself and they called that part His divine presence, His Shechinah. They prayed and they fasted and they organized that He and His Shechinah would be reunited one day and the world would then be perfect.
But there was no He. He was only a figment of Her imagination. She was the only divine presence there was, and She is trying to understand Herself in her perfection and in Her imperfection. And perhaps one day She will - that is we all will as one - understand that it has always been Her/Us/It. And on that day Her name will be One, and She will be the Unity She has always been, well, at least since the beginning, if not before.
Post-script for the High Holydays: If we are God, and if we (and any similar life-planets to ours) are the Universe's opportunity to touch itself and know itself, then there is no one "out there" which can decree our ultimate purpose. We as the Universe must provide our own reason to be. Perhaps this purpose changes with time, and changes with the particular circumstances each of our little selves finds itself in. Even though the Universe is so very young, and though we are so inexperienced a God, perhaps we can allow ourselves the audacity to take the God's eye view and determine our purpose, make appropriate annual course adjustments, and write and seal ourselves, OurSelf, into the book of life.