Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

The core beliefs that inform how I think about God and how I try to Minister and walk in this world go like this:

• God is Present
• God is Love
• My Beloved, I Give Thanks

With these words, I hope to finish up with the final two of my pillars of faith, ‘My Beloved, I Give Thanks’.

I’m going to start with the first half of that statement, ‘My Beloved’ because it speaks to many, many things for me related to my understandings of God.  When I tell you that I try to relate to God as ‘My Beloved’, I’m using relational imagery to try to describe that divine connection. When I tell you that I understand God as ‘My Beloved’, I’m drawing on one of the most intimate of all human relationships, the one that to many is the most central and precious, our beloveds.

For me, understanding God through the lens of ‘My Beloved’ comes from knowing that I have never felt better and more right in this world than when I am in love, when I love and when I am loved.  Now, I have lived long enough in this world to have experienced relationships where I have loved and been loved in many ways.  And what I have learned is that the best relationships, the best loves, are the ones built upon principles of reciprocity, unconditional acceptance, trust, vulnerability and radical intimacy and that they endure and are faithful through all types of problems and challenges.

Understanding God through the lens of ‘My Beloved’ means that I draw on the lessons gleamed from the best sorts of love.  The best sorts of love that have radical intimacy and closeness, that share the totality of our being with another in trusting ways unique to only that relationship.  The best sorts of love where we are seen with radical intimacy and vulnerability, in our totality, in our messiness, in our strengths and in our weaknesses and still are loved.  The best sorts of love where we are known down to the core of our being, our secrets, our shame, our fears, our ugliness and still are loved.

To understand God in that way, as ‘My Beloved’, can be really challenging. It means resting in the unconditional love of a God who knows us in the deepest and most intimate ways.  It means trusting in the love of a God who sees the totality of who we are, who we have been, who we dream of being and lovingly and unconditionally embraces it all.

To understand God as ‘My Beloved’ speaks to loving not ‘in spite of’ who we have been or who we are but ‘because of’ who we have been and who we are.  To think of God as ‘My Beloved’ speaks to a relationship chosen in freedom, enduring and deepening through joy and grief.  It speaks to the power and rawness of vulnerability and the subsequent peace that comes from being truly seen and resting trustingly in God’s presence.

There is something more though that is critical to my understanding of God as ‘My Beloved’ and that is ‘need’.  To think of God as ‘My Beloved’, suggests a relationship where there is reciprocity, it suggests needing the other, needing the other to interpret the world, to process the world and to be the lens through which the world is seen.  It means needing the other when I feel weak, when life doesn’t make sense, or when I need comfort.  It means picking up the slack and doing whatever work needs to be done to help the other live out their dreams.  Beloveds need each other and respond lovingly to that need, honoring the vulnerability from which that needs comes.

And that is where the understanding of God as ‘My Beloved’ brings up an often achingly humble sense of inadequacy.  I understand my own need of God (truly) but God needing me? God needing each of us.  That’s an understanding that I often find daunting and a bit terrifying. I move through that fear of being needed by God however, by leaning into a framework of Process Theology, known as ‘Co-Creation’.

Co-Creation is the understanding that we are continually creating the world alongside God.  Co-Creation is the understanding that we are all invited to continue to create and evolve this world with God, to bend the arc towards justice, and to work towards that dream of love and flourishing for all of Creation.  Co-Creation is the understanding that we need God, and God needs us for the process of creation to continue.  Co-Creation means that we are in a relationship, an intimate and loving relationship with God, working together to create heaven here and now, working together to bring God’s dream of peace, justice, equity and love to fruition.

To understand God as ‘My Beloved’ is to stand in the presence of God’s need.  To understand God as ‘My Beloved’ is to acknowledge that we are not bystanders to the work of God in this world, instead we are needed, desperately. It means that we are the voices, the hands and the feet of the Beloved.  To understand God as ‘My Beloved’ means that we are the healers, working alongside our Beloved to bring forth a transformed world.

And that dear ones, often terrifies me and I feel woefully inadequate to meet that need.  But I am coming to wonder if the Beloved’s love exists not ‘in spite of’ my own fear of my inability to meet those needs, but ‘because of’ my inability to meet those needs.  If that is true, that is indeed quite a beautiful gift.  It is a gift of radical acceptance, warts and all, of my failures and my often timid attempts to reciprocate that love and meet God’s needs, in my life, in my relationships, in my community and in my world.

Images and understandings of God are achingly limited.  At their best they point but they cannot describe. That being said, to understand God as ‘My Beloved’ holds for me continually deepening levels of connection and challenge and it grounds me in an expansive and yet intimate understanding of God that is about relationship, vulnerability, trust, reciprocity, need and mutual unconditional love.

And so, just like with my faith pillars of’ God is Present’, and ‘God is Love’, my understanding of God as ‘My Beloved’ is something that you will hear me preach, and teach, and try to live into in my ministry and in my life.  Because I aspire to this….

My Beloved, I will try to allow you to see me.  My Beloved, I will try with all of my being to stand in your gaze and accept the gift of your love.  My Beloved, I will try with all of my being to rest in the intimacy of your knowing of me and trust in your love.  My Beloved, I will try with all of my being to work alongside you to bring peace and justice to this world, to heal and transform this world, and to bring about your dream for this world and for all of Creation.  My Beloved, I will try with all of my being… to be your Beloved.

My final faith pillar is perhaps less about what I believe than about how I try to center my life. ‘I give thanks’, for me is the spiritual practice of giving praise and thanksgiving to the one who is present, who loves, who knows, who sees, who calls and who blesses.  I try real hard to center my life in gratitude, to pray and to live ‘thank you’, and to be conscious about that which is before me, right in that moment, that is blessing.  I try real hard to acknowledge and recognize the blessings that I receive in this world that are not of my doing and instead recognize the Beloved at work.

When I center my spirituality in gratitude and thanksgiving, I find that I am more aware, I am more at peace, I am more centered, I am more resilient and I am way more connected to and with My Beloved.

Amen