"On some days, I know instinctively that God is closer to me than my nearest neighbor. On other days, God seems distant and inscrutable, but some days God is neighborly, and close at hand. One fine morning I see a jackdaw out my window on the branch of the tree, and for a week or so I think about how God is like a bird. And sometimes I fear God, and sometimes I don't give God a passing glance, and then I feel I should think about God more.
"Sometimes, a hymn gets caught in my hair, and I sing it all week long, off and on, without ever thinking hard about what it says about God.
"Some days God feels like an abyss. Some days God feels like the father I always wanted, and some days God seems like the father I actually have. Some days I know that God is whatever gives me solace, and wherever I abide. On some days, maybe many days, I don't picture God at all.
"If you, like me, picture God in lots of different ways, or if sometimes God seems easy to speak about, and on some days you have no words for God, and sometimes you feel that there are too many words for God, so many that the abundance stumps you — if that is the case, then you are pretty much right in line with how the Bible invites us to imagine God: in some very singular ways; in dizzyingly hundreds of ways; sometimes, in no way at all.
