Part Seven

From a speech delivered by Preacher Haywood on 10/16/2002 in College Station, Texas:

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And people say to me, why don't you call God "God"?

The trouble with the word "God" is that it evokes this image of a white-bearded, white-robed man sitting on a cloud somewhere. When I say "God" people instantly think of an Other, and that is not at all what I am refering to.

So I say "the Divine." The Divine is omnipresent and indivisible. It is not some Other to which we can direct our prayers. It is right here.

What I just said -- the Divine is omnipresent and indivisible -- that's pretty much the only thing I have to tell you. Are you disappointed? Look, how much did you pay for your ticket? Because I'll gladly refund your money.

So the idea of an omnipresent and indivisible Divine is obvious and unoriginal and one of those things that's easy to say but hard to know. It is not something that can be literally proven and ours is a culture dedicated to literal proofs. But you have to feel it. When you feel its truth, you will understand just how... inappropriate and irrelevant an attempt at logical proof would be.

So the next obvious question is, how do you get to feel it? If logic and reason won't uncover this for you, what will?

Go to church. Go to your mosque. Go to your synagogue. Sit zazen. There are a lot of well-trod paths that will lead you to at-one-ment, that paralyzing, terrifying, ecstatic moment of union with the Divine. You don't have to be here listening to me. People have been walking these other paths to the Divine for centuries. Shoo! Leave! I'm redundant!

But none of those paths worked for me. They weren't WRONG paths. They are good paths. Most of those paths were designed for Iron Age Middle-Eastern goatherders. The fact that they have translated so well to 21st century America is a testament to just how right and true and timeless those messages and paths are. But they didn't work for me. Maybe because I've never herded a goat; maybe because I've never been to the Levant; maybe I'm just an idiot. But they didn't work for me.

This is what works for me: "Let every act be an act of worship."

Hence the name.

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