On the divine

Why does God appear in only two forms across human history: as a person, or as nothing at all? Anthropomorphism or absence. Almost nobody worships something in between.

Classical Hebrew prophecy was not meant to come true. Jonah grieves because Nineveh survives. What if prophecy doesn’t predict the future, but names the moment when it can still be changed?

If attention is a form of prayer, what is being attended to when I give it to a forest? Theophany through other people is one claim. Whether nature counts is a different one, and I can’t settle it.

Paul never met Jesus. The men who did (James, Peter, John) opposed him, and his version won anyway. Either history is contingent, or that is what providence looks like from inside.

I lost my childhood faith on a single thought: that eternal life, examined, would be unbearably boring. Heaven is the one promise no one describes in any detail, and I doubt that’s an oversight. An end that never ends may be impossible to tell apart from no end worth wanting.

The same scene keeps recurring across the traditions: someone goes off alone and meets whatever was waiting there. Moses on Mount Sinai, Elijah on Mount Horeb, Jesus in the desert, Muhammad at Jabal al-Nour, the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. Either the encounter requires the solitude, or solitude is the only place we have ever been able to claim it happened.