In 2003, children’s author Cynthia Rylant and artist Marla Frazee published a charming collection of poems and illustrations titled God Got a Dog. The poems and their corresponding art offer a series of snapshots of God participating in ordinary human activities such as: “God got a desk job just to see what it would be like. Made Her back hurt.” “God went to beauty school…and ended up just crazy about nails so He opened His own shop.” While some might find these irreverent, to me they sing with the imagination of the incarnation. How might God show up with us today and now? What would God say to the experiences we have every day?
Rylant and Frazee are in a long line and tradition of curious and faithful people who have tried to capture their impressions and ideas of God through images and stories. Whether Emily Dickinson imagining God hand feeding birds, or the vision of God as a tower, refuge, and rock in Psalm 31, people have long struggled to put ideas and words to God who is beyond our words and imaginations. All our names for God, all our metaphors and visions want to capture and bring God near, and none of them ever could.
The 14th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, recognized this tension and explored it within his writings. On the one hand, he wrote that any image is a barrier to truth. When we attribute a name or picture to God, we are necessarily eclipsing the fullest picture of who God is. It is faithful and good to call God “Father” in the example of Jesus, and when we do, we miss the wholly other and different way that God and Jesus related. God is like a father, and God is unlike any father we have. Our well-meant words can be the source of much misunderstanding.
But on the other hand, Meister Eckhart also said that every creature is a word of God. God cannot be reduced or understood as any one word or image, and everything can be seen as an expression of the inexpressible God. That means that in all of life we have the opportunity to see glimpses, small and incomplete pictures that will reveal some of God to us. Of course, we have to hold these words and pictures of God loosely and humbly, recognizing that they aren’t complete. But they are gifts available to us, all around for the noticing.
If we open our hearts and keep our imaginations curious, we might find images of God anywhere. Do you have a name or image of God from the scriptures or from life that has especially spoken to you? Have you caught sight of all that is holy and love in some small and ordinary places? There might be a sighting in a beauty shop or a conversation with a coworker, a tree or a creek, a child or a poem. Every creature is a word of God, so may we pause and listen for those words.