Does God Exist?

My introduction to God was Methodist Sunday School. We’ve both changed a lot since then, admittedly due to my own capriciousness. As I remember God was ever present, in all things, forgiving yet wrathful, ineffable, loving and wanting me for a sunbeam. And was referred to by the objective male pronoun ‘he’, feminism being invented later. ‘He’ was a graspable concept as was up equals heaven and down equals hell, and as a five year old I didn’t encompass the vagaries of spirituality, I was more into trikes and damming streams. My wrestle with spirituality came later but religion put an end to that. Religious beliefs appeared to be man made constructs only fit for fighting over and definitely not worthy of God, which had lost its male pronoun status by then. God was becoming ineffable. So beliefs in general were the next to go. Why hold any belief if it got in the way of further curiosity? But then there was faith, a far trickier concept. Faith seems to require surrender in order to connect and perhaps be elevated by something beyond one’s understanding. This still appeals but is so open to pilfering by one’s lower instincts as to require much rigorous interrogation. So in sixty odd years I appear to have gone full circle. Now for me God is a highly romanticised name for- wait for it- Reality. Yes I’m back damming streams and riding bikes and finally realising it’s Reality that’s ever present, in all things, forgiving yet wrathful, unknowable, loving and wanting me for a sunbeam. But don’t get me wrong I still wish to know God, this is not reductionist atheistic pragmatism. Learning to know and love Reality is just as long a process as any study of theology, it is not merely opening the curtains in a morning and admiring the view. It is underpinned by a spirit and a panoply of factors and forces we are but dimply aware of. God as Reality is not open to the spurious beliefs of an imagined deity that loves me and not you, that provokes me to cause misery in his name. God as Reality will hold me to account or reward me for each of my actions. So does God exist? Well God as Reality does.