We have not done the work necessary to make God relevant for our time.

                 There is this sense of a broader time that slams into me at the ocean. As my feet press into the warm sand, I step outside the strict human view we train ourselves to adopt in our awkward attempts to convince ourselves we have come so far. The imprint of my feet in the sand suggests that we have not really changed from this most basic human form, though. Each footprint is a symbol of what we have been, our tracks etched with such an aching, vulnerable signature.

                 We step out into that primal world of sea and sand and are momentarily stripped of the symbols of our place in what we think of as modern time.  I am drawn by the infinite stretch of sand and the waves. We refer to them as waves, but an ominous stillness lies just beneath the hiss of wind and the rumble of sea. Stillness is there, a depth of something beyond us that we resist. In our distraction, we avoid the subtle lure of what lies just beneath the surface.

                Sometimes I stand there, allowing it to tumble up from deep within me. And there is the mesmerizing rhythm of water sliding in as it reaches the shore, easing along, inching further up and onto sand as the tide presses in. And yes, I am tugged by something so strong, gripped by this dizzying sense that in this environment I have come nearer than ever to a secret, though I am not certain that is the best word—secret. But if it is not an actual secret, then it is in the vicinity of something that is hidden from us.

As I stand there, the wild energy of the sun spills down through the atmosphere igniting, interacting, crashing into the world of what could be a primordial sea. It might as well be, because the ocean is one part of the world we cannot tame or stamp with our idea of what it means to be in our time. The beaches and the ceaseless, eternal rhythms of the sea are essentially unchanged from how they were thousands of years ago, and even millions, for all I can tell. That tug is strong within me.

            And this is near what I mean when I suggest that we have not understood much of what there is in the world that intersects our own. It intersects the world we see, the one we have insisted upon and so carefully settled and finessed, studied and believed.

            A good part of what I mean when I say we have not done the work to make God relevant for our time lies here. We have not done the work because we have in our insolence pretended that God does not exist, or—if by some measure he does--he is irrelevant. Certainly we do not believe that using potentials we associate with the vague, disturbing spiritual world we mistrust—we would not seriously consider developing these tools as an aid to Science, using them to broaden our reach toward discovering facets of the world and existence that are hidden.

            And thus we lie here contentedly, filled with self-congratulation and adulation for who and what we believe we are and are becoming—especially our burgeoning Science and our technology. As for me, though, I suggest that our beloved Science applied alone can offer only glimpses of what is. There is much that eludes the rigid objectivity of scientific method. We are therefore blind to much that is, and unless we can somehow be jolted from this spiritual malaise, we are unlikely to ever understand even the most miniscule glimpses into who we are or what we are becoming.
           So yes, indeed, I am suggesting the unthinkable—that we pursue an objective study of our spiritual potential and of this entity we are presently so mistrustful of. We should pursue these as a branch of Science. We cannot divorce ourselves from these elements and hope to understand who we are or what we are becoming. And we cannot fully comprehend the Universe.

           And speaking of this presence, which we call God, what do I mean when I insist that we haven’t done the work necessary to make God relevant for our time? Isn’t God relevant and unchanging in whatever moment in history the human species is in? Does God’s relevance depend upon us somehow working hard to make him real for our time?

            Of course not. God is unchanging and eternal regardless of how distant we may be from him. But if we in our impudence yawn in the presence of this entity, this presence that is always there, we ourselves are blind to the lion’s share of what is and we become stagnant. I am, then, referring to us and to our blindness to so much of what is right here in every moment of every day. And yes, it does take aggressive, hungry work in each generation to come nearer to all that is there and in doing so to find ourselves—who we really are and what we were created to become.

            The Holy Bible is an incredible record of human involvement with God, beginning in the book of Genesis. But at best, we have been inconsistent, stubborn. That’s what I would call it. We have been like toddlers, stubborn children with lower lip protruding like the lower lip of a displeased two-year old. And here we are in what we count as the twenty-first century, and we feel a glowing satisfaction with our accomplishments.

            I would never suggest that we should not be satisfied. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that we have managed to lose sight of what is the most incredible adventure and possibility. And that is what is wrong. There was a time not so long ago where the great musicians, artists, thinkers, writers, and builders created works of genius in the pursuit of what they felt in regard to God. We have lost our sense of it, concluding that what may have inspired works of genius then was a sad incompetence. After all, these were days before modern Science revealed the true nature of the Universe and suggested an infinity of what is yet to be understood.

           A large part of the work we must do to make God relevant in our own time involves rediscovering the implications, the inescapable pull and draw of this presence. Just as some of the brilliant thinkers and artists of the past did, we must pursue this aggressively. We must rediscover that only through this can we hope to even begin to understand the true facets of the Universe and our place within it, strange as such a proposal must seem.

           From the perspective of our modern culture, so desperate to disassociate itself from an identity which seeks God, even if imperfectly, such a proposal must seem outrageous. Even so, it is here where our great challenge lies, lurking like a tiger, scenting the air, impatient for us to awaken from this stupor and rejoin the pursuit of this incredible potential implanted within us and of an entity that has pursued us since we opened our eyes and first glimpsed this strange, fantastic world presented to us to grow in and to live.