Kelsi Vanada

Dear Friends, 

As a poet, I’m often thinking about how language is incredibly powerful, but also flawed and inadequate. 

Take Psalm 139: 1-9, appointed for today, for example—one of the most memorable and comforting passages in the entire Psalter. It talks about how near God is to us: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar” (v. 1). “You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me” (v. 4). Just beautiful! 

And yet: the Psalmist is a human being, using human language for God. Does God have hands? Does God think in the way we do, or know in the way we do? It stands to reason that we would anthropomorphize God, of course, and even the Psalmist acknowledges his inadequacy: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it” (v. 5). 

God wrapping God’s loving arms around us is a time-honored and deeply meaningful image, and I’m not saying we should throw it out. I can hold onto these ways of thinking about God, at the same time as I am drawn to the people who nudge me toward ever-greater openness about who God is, giving me a different mental picture or stretching my received way of conceiving of God.  

I’m thinking of Saint Julian of Norwich, who called God both our Father and Mother. Or Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite writers, who used “El” (“God” or “deity” in Hebrew) rather than a gendered pronoun for God. Or Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, who describes faith as “cellular.” 

When I read; “Where can I go then from your Spirit? where can I flee from your presence?” (v. 6), I can try picturing not another human being next to me, but rather something…cellular: God in my every cell, God as the stuff that holds all my cells together. As close as my breath. Closer to me than I am to myself. 

In Christ, 

—Kelsi