So when I was young I went on my personal pilgrimage to all the religions I could get my hands on. I love the human experience of the divine. Elephant gods who move obstacles ? Mantras and inner peace? What’s not to love? I wrote about that here .

The result of all that was freeing my sense of God from the iconography of Catholicism and western Christianity which so often is based the medieval feudal society – a place for everyone and everyone in their place. Just look at the paintings of the time –  organigrams with God at the top and poor people at the bottom. Kings and lords nicely fitting in the middle. Of course, who paid artists back in the day? Kings and lords generally. He who pays the piper, calls the tune. But with paint.

I digress.

So I had a sense of God who I gabbled at and all was well with the world. Until it wasn’t. And then God stopped being a preference and became a need. Like water.

Life had made me too proud and stubbornly independent. But I came to understand that being broken is okay. Nothing to be ashamed of.  Imperfection is not damnation. Far from it. And it’s not just the scars of an interior psychological armageddon that need healing. All my imperfections, my sins, can be healed. And I can start again. Forgiven. And it is God, through Jesus, who makes this possible. The central message of Jesus is forgiveness and love through mercy.

But not from a stern, faced suffering figure who scares children.  Not a  sin manager with an abacus. Not a marble-faced God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Ghost. We get it from God the Friend.

I call Him/Her Bob. Bob almighty – my bestie.