God?

Last Sunday I led a workshop on "God?" for our 8th graders at church.  It's one of the peculiarities of working for a Unitarian Universalist congregation that most of our youth are atheists, and everyone is more comfortable talking about values than they are about God.

I invited our minister to join us for this workshop, and to expound on the question "why should we bother engaging with this word - "God" - at all?  He did a great job of talking the question out and encouraging the youth to explore their ideas of God more, but most of the youth seemed disinterested - for now.

I'm studying for a Liberal Theologies course right now, and found these words by Bill Schulz:

It is not particularly important to me anymore whether I or anyone else uses "God talk".  What is of supreme importance is that I live my life in a posture of gratitude - that I recognize my existence and, indeed, Being itself, as an unaccountable blessing, a gift of grace.  Sometimes, it is helpful to call the source or fact of that grace God and sometimes not.  But what is always helpful and absolutely necessary is to look kindly at the world, to be bold in pursuit of its repair, and to be comfortable in the embrace of its splendor.  I know no better term for what I seek than an encounter with the Holy.