What do I believe? That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times over the years. I’m not sure anyone really cares aside from some well meaning, worried for my soul concern at least.

And that’s okay. I appreciate that. I really do. But I ask myself this question on a regular basis. I do this because my views on everything change. It’s like walking around a house buried in a hill. On one side, the side I’ve always seen, the side I was taught to look at, it’s just a hill. Sure there’s a funny little pipe sticking out of the hill that faint white smoke comes out of, but that’s always been there and I have faith that all hills have this feature even though I’ve seen some that don’t, but we don’t talk about that. But one day I walk around to the other side and I see a door and windows and a cozy little porch and a welcome mat and I start to think, maybe I’ve never really examined this hill properly, maybe it’s more complicated than I originally thought.

And that’s how I feel about God, maybe the conversation, the idea and God is a little more complicated than I originally thought.

I grew up in a Christian home, as I’m sure many of you did. We may have been a little more devoted than some, not fanatics by any means, but we were in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, usually Tuesday night for Bible study or choir practice, and Wednesday nights pretty much every week without exception. I grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible, and honestly, it’s still my favorite version, and I’ve read a few. There is one belief, one line of thinking, one path, one true God. That’s how I was raised.

I’m not here to argue that. It’s entirely possible that’s right. What I know for myself, however, is that I always had questions about that. The Bible talks about the old gods as well, and I wanted to know more about them. So I asked questions, and those questions were not always entertained, so I started reading, and as I read, my thoughts began to change.

I’ve had wild emotional swings over the years. Swings fueled by loss, grief, addiction, and depression, and some days, maybe I was just hungry. All of those things have led to outbursts of “There is no God” from me. However, in those moments, I’ve felt the doubt in my heart.

I’ve never had enough faith to believe this all came from nothing. That is a leap my heart and mind cannot fully make. I remember reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Hawking argued that a self-contained, boundaryless universe would have no beginning and therefore no need for a creator. The math may bear him out. And still, it feels unlikely that it all just happened.

So I circle back.

If there is a God, and I suppose there is, what does that look like?

I’ve settled on God as a job title, a title for a job I cannot comprehend. Aniconism, no physical likeness, and En Kheqer, unsearchable, something that cannot be fully measured, searched out, or grasped by human senses. This is how the Hebrews described God. In all my reading, I’ve never found anything that felt more honest, more humble.

Isn’t humble where we should start on this subject.

It’s certainly where we will end if we’re honest. That’s been my experience. Not vainly to say, “Look at me, I’m so humble,” but an honest admission of, “Who am I to explain something that created all of this, and created me?” That’s not for show. It’s just the truth.

So what do I know about this house buried in the hillside? I’ve not had a chance to peek inside, and I’ve only recently become aware that it even exists. I’m not sure it’s aware that I exist.

I know with a fairly high degree of certainty that it’s not out to punish me. I’m not sure it’s really interested in me. Not on a personal level. That feels pretty arrogant to think. I’m one insignificant person on a pale blue dot in a very unextraordinary section of a vast and possibly endless universe. And if the math is right, this is just the universe we know about, there may be an endless amount of them. So no, I’m not sure that kind of personal attention is in the realm of reasonable for me to even consider. I’ve recently pondered Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (KJV)

The word void has stood out to me, primarily because I’ve been reading about the KBC void that we live in, and it made me wonder. Is there a connection? What does unadulterated power and creation look like? What does it leave behind?

Maybe it left me this house.

Not the one I’m sitting in, writing this musing. The one I’m flying through the cosmos on. The one that supplies my food and oxygen, in an environment uniquely suited for human life. The one that, despite the incomprehensible speed at which it’s traveling, stays the perfect distance from its star to keep us all alive. Maybe I’ve been in the house buried on the hill all along.

There is a Hindu creation story, or at least Alan Watts’ telling of one, that says when God created everything, he split himself up into an infinite number of pieces and made those pieces human and gave them all amnesia under the guise of a game. The game was for each piece to remember that it, in fact, was part of a larger whole. That there was no they at all. Einstein is mis-attributed as having said, “What if the great illusion of mankind is that there’s more than one of us here?” He circled around this idea, but never this exact quote that I can find, but the idea is beautiful, whoever said it.

We could look at and dissect these ideas for days, and honestly, I would enjoy that. To quote Tolkien, not all who wander are lost. I am not lost. I’m just a seeker and always have been. I believe that’s how I was created, how I was designed. My creator left me this house, to be a good steward over, to help others on this journey. It’s why my mind wonders. It’s how I find fellow travelers, fellow seekers. It’s why I know I’m not alone.