Sorry Nick, I didn’t reply to the first part. When I pray I’m invoking my God as I have for 50 years. But He’s changed. Because I have. He’s still immanent, but Zenilly so (Zen means meditation, contemplation; He contemplates back). Absent present. He cannot intervene. But I’m invoking Him. That works per se, as it is. It can’t not. It is a cause, it has effect. I speak to Him. That works, in itself, whether He’s real or not. My God is the ground of being and sees and feels all. He fits me like a glove. He fully understands. And there is nothing He can do about it : ) And that is liberating. And if He’s real, that’s how He is. Understanding. He’s also good in other ways, but not our ways. Not any of the ways we project on Him. He feels our pain, our confusion, our loss, locally as the glove to each hurting hand (including His own), and we say that He loves us and is kind and tender and patient and merciful and forgiving and just, but none of those human concepts are relevant; but understanding, if anything, is. He’s empathic. And will, can do nothing. But listen and nod back across the cave in the pitch dark. I have His sympathy. His apology that it has to be this way. It’s up to me to realise and work with that. To work it out with Him. It’s up to us. And that can’t not work. Nothing else will. Coherently. Ha! you say. He wants us to be Him to, for ourselves and each other. And its up to us to talk that out to Him, with Him. In each other. He DOES answer. He can’t not. In our thinking. In our response. By our thinking as we speak, walk with Him. In each other. As we see His beautiful sky face, vistas from the hilltop, along the river valley. In every passer by. He walks the mean streets with us. And He understands everything. And all will be well. His other ways of being good are that He will transcend, lift us up, restore us, fix us.
And we need professional psychological help. We need counsel. We need emotional first aid. We need to ask, seek and knock for that. And give it. Whatever we want, give. Listen. Like He does. And hear Him ask for more. We translate a certain Greek word as ‘worship’. That word is therapeuo. Therapy. Healing. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT. We have to heal ourselves. And as one afflicted with intrusive thinking, with pathological shame, that is an endless battle. He wants in on it. On our side. He is.
All will be well Nick. All IS well. It just doesn’t look or feel like it. Tell Him.