{"id":495,"date":"2009-06-08T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/2009\/06\/the-universe-vs-god.html"},"modified":"2009-06-08T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T13:00:00","slug":"the-universe-vs-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/06\/the-universe-vs-god.html","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Universe’ vs. ‘God’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"rose_image.jpg\"<\/span>A Fresh Living reader recently commented that she liked a post of mine<\/a> up until the part where I spoke about praying to the Universe, and not Jesus. I don’t mean to single her out too much (we love when you comment even when we don’t agree!), because I’ve received several variations on that statement since I started writing for Beliefnet three years ago. This reader says it “dilutes the power” of God <\/a>to call it Universe. <\/p>\n

There are obviously so many ways to call a rose a rose or God, God. Plenty of religious traditions even consider it too sacred–and diluting–to spell or speak the name. I often find myself saying “God–for lack of a better word” when I’m trying to describe the essence behind the mystery of existence. To me “God” is a little too evocative of a disapproving white dude. “Goddess” also feels limiting–gives me unpleasant flashbacks of living at the Womyn’s Center in college, “Divine” feels vague, “Jesus” too specific (and I’m half-Jewish), even Universe is a little mushy to me. But that’s the whole point, I suppose–describing the indescribable, specifiying the everywhere is tricky business–at least for those of us who don’t believe in God in a traditional Judeo-Christan sense (though scratch the surface of that “tradition” and you will find a zillion variations within). <\/p>\n

I mainly wanted to bring this up to start conversation–civil, respectful <\/strong>conversation (don’t make me pull this car over!) about what you call God. What word(s) feels most right to you?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Fresh Living reader recently commented that she liked a post of mine up until the part where I spoke about praying to the Universe, and not Jesus. I don’t mean to single her out too much (we love when you comment even when we don’t agree!), because I’ve received several variations on that statement since I started writing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-valerie-reiss","category-holistic-living"],"yoast_head":"\nThe 'Universe' vs. 'God' - Fresh Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/06\/the-universe-vs-god.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The 'Universe' vs. 'God' - Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Fresh Living reader recently commented that she liked a post of mine up until the part where I spoke about praying to the Universe, and not Jesus. 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She was a founding editor at Breathe magazine, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Women's Health, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Lime.com, Vegetarian Times, and ABCNEWS.com. A native New Yorker, Valerie holds an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from Beloit College in Creative Writing with a minor in Women's Studies. She also lived in Maui for a while where she drank green papaya juice and taught some creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/author\/vreiss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}