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God is a Verb

January 23, 2012 by David Anderson 1 Comment

In matters of faith, nouns rule. People talk about what they believe in, and you get a limp procession of nouns: peace, justice, love, the Bible, heaven, salvation. All powerful things, but not in the nominative form. To get at the power inherent in those things we have to find the verb. We’ve got to do it. 

I like the zest of Terry Tempest Williams, a naturalist and author, who jolts faith to life: 

“This is my living faith, and active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.”

Filed Under: Daily Practice, Faith in Action, Prayer/Meditation

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Comments

  1. Michael says

    January 23, 2012 at 2:08 pm

    Good words David. Yes God is a verb. And in her list Williams gives both transitives and intransitives. It’s good to know that one of the most powerful verbs has no object: I am. Somtimes the best verb is the being verb.

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