its consequences are built into the God-given structure of
reality itself. Moral norms are not something we have to
stretch for, and moral consequences are not something we
have to wait for: they are right here, right now, waiting for
us to honor, or violate, the nature of self, other, world.
The attempt to live by the reality of our own nature,
which means our limits as well as our potentials, is a
profoundly moral regimen. John Middleton Murry put this
truth into words that challenge the conventional concept of
goodness to its core: "For a good man to realize that it is
better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and
narrow path compared to which his previous rectitude was
flowery license."'
The God whom I know dwells quietly in the root system
of the very nature of things. This is the God who, when
asked by Moses for a name, responded, "I Am who I Am"
(Exodus 3:14), an answer that has less to do with the moral
rules for which Moses made God famous than with
elemental "isness" and selfhood. If, as I believe, we are all
made in God's image, we could all give the same answer
when asked who we are: "I Am who I Ain." One dwells with
God by being faithful to one's nature. One crosses God by
trying to be something one is not. Reality-including one's
own-is divine, to be not defied but honored.
Lest this theologizing become too ethereal, I want to give
an example of how honoring one's created nature can
support morality in practice. I sometimes lead workshops for