CREATIVE NONFICTION 17home, and she showed me around—
the cafeteria, the sunroom with plant
stands and floral padded wicker chairs,
the chapel with statues of Mary and
Jesus flanking the altar. “Go up and
say hello,” she said. The chapel was
small, with nowhere to hide, and my
attempt to change the subject did not
work. “Go on and touch them,” she
said. “Show them that you’re here, and
you care.”
Well, I was there and did care, but
setting my hands against the plaster
robes embarrassed me somehow, made
me feel exposed and inauthentic.
Which is precisely how I feel when I
attempt to use the word God.
This is not a big problem in and of
itself. We have freedom when it comes
to language. If we don’t like a word,
we don’t usually have to use it. Writers
can be persnickety about such matters
and keep running tallies of objection-
able words in their heads. For years, I
simply lumped the word God in with
cerulean and staccato and moved on.
The trouble began a year ago when
I returned to Catholicism. I was as
surprised as anyone else to find myself
surrounded by stained glass and the
Stations of the Cross. I’d left in my
mid-twenties, no longer able to square
the Church’s teachings on everything
from limited roles for women to birth
control with my own experiences and
values. Why had I come back? Intel-
lectually and politically, the action
made no sense. I tried to untangle the
question in writing, which is the best
way I know to do my untangling. But
how to fully delve into the matter
when I could not bring myself to use
the word God?
II.Devout Jews do not utter the God of
Israel’s name. They say the Holy One or
HaShem (literally, The Name). Adonai
(Lord) is almost always substituted in
prayer. Even in writing, The Name
must be handled with care. Hyphens
are inserted (G-d), or they use the
tetragrammaton (the four Hebrew
letters transliterated as YHWH, which
many Christians pronounce Yahweh).
Even among some Catholics, there’s
an awareness of the limitations of
language where God is concerned.
St. Anselm said: God is that, the
greater than which cannot be conceived.
St. Augustine said: God is not what
you imagine or what you think you under-
stand. If you understand, you have failed.
The theologian Karl Rahner did not
like to use the word God. He preferred
to use Absolute Mystery instead, saying:
God’s silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by
the Word without words, by Him who is
above all names...III.It’s possible my problem is sociologi-
cal. I grew up among people who did
not reveal their tenderness. We went
to Mass, yes. We fell in love and ex-
ercised the soft tissue of our hearts as
best as we could, but to leave ourselves
so open as to enthusiastically believe?
That was madness.
But that doesn’t entirely explain
it. I have, despite it all, developed a
proclivity toward softness. I’ve learned
to say words like honey and sweetness,
to like them, and to mean them.
The larger problem is that, though
I was only a child, I never expected
words to be even exchanges for truth.
That the world was wondrous, I could
almost let myself believe, but religious
language seemed to trap wonder in
cardboard boxes. I still remember the
day I quizzed people after Mass about
the virgin birth, the way they clung
to the story no matter how I battered
them with questions. How disap-
pointed I was to discover we’d spokenwords with the same shape and sound,
but understood so little of each other.
How alone I suddenly felt. It was bad
enough to be a kid from the family
that got food baskets every Christmas,
but now it seemed I was alone in
adoring the Blessed Mother whether
or not she’d ever given herself over to
a man.
My misgivings did not keep me
from church. I went eagerly and as
often as I could. I loved what I found
there, even if I could not name it, so I
learned to make do. For as far back as I
can remember, when anyone said God,
I simply added an o in my head and
made the word God into good.
God is good, someone will sometimes
say at church, and it’s the one time I
nod and smile and do not feel false.IV.But the word Good is not related to
the word God. They have entirely
different roots. Good comes from Old
English (gōd), is cousin to gather and- gether, and derives from the Proto-
Germanic (gōdaz) and the Proto
Indo-European (ghedh), which mean
to unite, be associated, to suit, or to fit.
No one agrees on the origin of the
word God. Used as both a proper
noun for the supreme being and more
generally to designate a deity-at-large.
Various theories have the Old English
word rooted in the Proto-Indo-
European words for to invoke, or to pour
(as in libations or earth), or the one to
whom we make sacrifice.
God is perhaps uttered most as a
secular exclamation. God damn it, a
father shouts as his truck slides into
a frozen ditch. My god, the lover
murmurs as she bites the inside of
her lip. God, no, the wife sobs as the
surgeon emerges with a haunted look
on his face. OMG, the student says,
and we all LOL.