I grew up thinking of God as an old White man, with a long white beard, wearing a flowing white robe, living above puffy white. Then the Black Power movement kicked into high gear when I was about six years old. Like a powerful mental laxative, it loosened up some of the hardened bullshit that had already caked in my young mind. One of the ideas it reformatted was my notion of God. It took a while, because there is truth in the words of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier, who said, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” Meaning, of course, that humans are most susceptible to brainwashing when we are children. It took me a long time to come to terms with that old White guy in the clouds.
The image of God as an old White man was supplemented with the image of a young, White, hippie Jesus Christ. My youth corresponded with the heyday of the hippie, and I remember falling in love with the musical Godspell when my parents took me to see it. Unknowingly, I was yearning for an approachable God, and the play brought the Gospels to life in a way I could understand. Jesus Christ Superstar was another major media event that encouraged thoughts of God as a young White male.
Except for the occasional wedding or funeral, the only church I attended as a child was an Episcopal one, with a big stained glass window behind the altar that showed a full body image of a Caucasian, long-haired Jesus wearing a simple robe with a gentle lamb at his feet. In my earliest memories, a conservative White male cleric holds forth in front of the altar. As the neighborhood transitioned from mostly White to mostly Black, an Afro-wearing Black minister took his place. Alas, too late for me—during his tenure, I eventually won the ongoing argument with my mother and successfully bailed on the church, claiming it was full of hypocrites.
I’m sure it was that image of the all-powerful White man sitting in the clouds that I was rejecting when I became an atheist for a short time in my teens. Soon after, though, I became fascinated with the doctrine of Rastafari, which proclaimed the divinity of Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian monarch from 1925 to 1975. Rastas hail Marcus Garvey as a modern-day John the Baptist who foretold the coming of a Black God, Emperor Selassie. This was heady stuff for a young Black man who had grown up with ideas and images of only White gods.
Growing up spiritually curious in urban America, I couldn’t escape the Nation of Islam’s declaration that another Black (or, at least, a mysterious Middle Eastern looking) man, W. D. Fard, was God and Elijah Muhammad was his messenger. Digging a little deeper into that vein, I found Father Divine, the Five Percenters, Noble Drew Ali, and a whole assortment of Black men claiming divinity. Some of these guys had built large movements supporting their divinity. Even though I declined the Kool-Aid from any of these professed messiahs, my youthful thinking expanded to consider that Black men too could be Gods.
These African-lineage Godmen, as well as more sedate Black theologians, usurped the monopoly of the old White male God and the hippie Christ in my mind. Lots of people in my community proclaimed the “hair like wool” described in the Gospels as belonging to Jesus could only belong to a Black man. Folks in this camp said Jesus was Black or brown and that White racists had perverted the truth to make him a blond-haired, blue-eyed White. Considering the other foolishness I saw Whites do in order to oppress Blacks, this supreme deceit seemed within the realm of possibility.
For years, I had a picture on my wall of a brown-skinned, dreadlocked Jesus to counteract some of the negative, race-based theology I was raised on. Around this time I was blessed with a deep meditation during which I realized that God was essentially energy and was everywhere, albeit more concentrated in some places than others. I became less fixated on the physical image of God and even began to understand why orthodox Muslims refrain from portraying any human representation of the divine.
It would not be overstating the experience to say it was a dividing line in my life. I’ve spent the better part of three decades trying to incorporate the energy and love that I glimpsed as God’s true nature in my everyday life. It’s not always easy, but it is always rewarding—at least in hindsight. Initially, I tried a macro approach and tried to save the world. I joined the All African Revolutionary Party, a radical political organization trying to bring socialism to Africa. Eventually that method seemed too slow to honor the divine energy I had tapped into during the meditation. So I joined the Guardian Angels Safety Patrol and tried to stop violent crime in my city. Soon, that seemed too reactionary a tactic to pay homage to the divine energy I knew in my better moments was inside everyone and everything.
Then I fell in love. Really in love. With a beautiful woman I was blessed to marry. I’ll spare you all the details of that brain-numbing, heart-expanding series of events. If you’ve been there, you know. If you haven’t, you wouldn’t believe me. It dawned on me that our relationship was somewhere I could practice incorporating this awareness of the divine on a regular basis. It was clear to me that the energy called “God” animated every living thing, yet I often got so angry with my dearest—animated by God, whom I loved—that it was sick and sad, confusing and amusing. Around this time, I also settled on a career where I was privileged to work with people, helping them fine-tune their relationships as another strategy to honor my meditative experience.
I studied yoga, thinking it would help me ground this mystical awareness in my own nervous system. Through this practice, I was introduced to the pantheon of Hindu deities. It was not a contradiction for me to understand that Hindus were actually monotheists. It was apparent that all the various Hindu incarnations of God represented that same underlying energy I had recognized in my deep meditation years earlier. And I liked the fact that unlike the tradition I grew up in, in Hinduism there were female representations of God as well. Lakshmi, Kali, Saraswati and others had achieved the highest level of consciousness while in female bodies.
It took me a while to realize how significant this was. Very naturally, I started noticing female representations of God in other traditions; Earth Goddesses, Quan Yin, and Mother Mary all attracted my attention. At the same time I started noticing the lack of feminine energy in some religious systems. I was struck that the Christian Trinity includes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it dawned on me that the glaring lack of the Divine Feminine in that triumvirate was akin to the dominant-culture hocus-pocus of depicting God only as a White male. I began to think of the Holy Spirit as female to create some gender balance. The Heavenly Father, the Divine Mother, and the Holy Son just made more sense. Of course, that got me thinking of the Divine Daughter, and this too was good.
In this way, my conception of God and my conception of women expanded. In a White racist, male chauvinist society it’s essential that the most powerful, pervasive image of God is that of a White male. I don’t think the Creator of our magnificent universe need be confined to one human body, but to the extent that God is idealized in a body it’s crucial to the White men who try and control the planet that this body is both White and male.
For me, it was liberating to see God inhabiting all people and all of nature. A deep hurt in my psyche was healed when I gave myself permission to see God as African, Indian, Chinese, or any other ethnic identity. Understanding that God is also beyond the body. Another wound I was hardly aware of healed when I chose to see God as not only male, but also female, as well as having transcended human gender characteristics. As a man who respects and believes in women, this was an important paradigm shift. I had already abandoned my more blatant sexist thinking, but the revelation that there were feminine models of the Supreme caused me honor women more not out of my magnanimity, but because of theirs.
It’s an ongoing practice and I often slip. The challenge is not simply undoing sexist or racist thinking, it’s dismantling egocentric thought. I can easily think the world revolves around me, all my ideas are best and it’s in everyone’s best interest to exalt me. Sexism and racism are special forms of grandiosity that reinforce the egocentric thinking of privileged groups by promoting an erroneous cultural norm that says the world should revolve around men and Whites. Deep reflection is the best cure I know for this dangerous form of mind game.
Today, if I consider that old White man in the clouds and reflect on my revelations about divinity, race and gender, I see him smile and another part of my psyche heals.
