Podcast: Download (2.1MB)

Subscribe: More

If I were asked to confess my faith or my beliefs out loud, and I were scrambling for some place to begin, I would start in the desert, in the lonesome valley, and say that first of all and ultimately we are alone. No god abides with us, caring, watching, mindful of our going out and coming in. The only certainty is chance connections, both chosen and involuntary, that matter most of all and ultimately help and heal and hold us.

We are alone yet intricately bound, inextricably connected to soil and stream and forest, to sun and corn and melting snow. We are alone yet bound by stories we cannot get out of to ancestors and descendants we will never meet. And all these natural conditions, these bonds we did not forge ourselves and yet cannot deny, are the strands of a theology, the seeds of faith, the beginning of re-ligion, of binding all things.

When I say God—and sometimes I do, because sometimes there is no other metaphor, no other symbol, no other poetry, no other offering—when I say God I mean that place of meeting, that place where solitudes join. The space between my hand and that dogwood, the space where the tiny feet of the ant brush the dry dirt beneath her, the space between Mercury and Venus, between electrons, which we unblinkingly believe in without seeing. God is the space in between, the bridge between solitudes, the ground where we meet, you and I, or any two, by grace.

If I were asked I’d say that all of us, together, are alone, and the emptiness between us is waiting to be filled.

From Rev. Victoria Safford’s meditation manual Walking Toward Morning, published by Skinner House in 2003. This book is available from the UUA Bookstore or 800-215-9076.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Rev. Victoria Safford

Lead Minister at White Bear UU Church, Mahtomedi, MN

The Reverend Victoria Safford was called to White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in 1999, following a ten-year ministry at Northampton, Massachusetts, where she was ordained, and four years as a community organizer with the American Friends Service Committee.A native of New York State, she is a graduate of Vassar College and Yale Divinity School.She is the author of Walking Toward Morning and With and Without Candlelight, both from Skinner House Books, and her essays have been anthologized in many collections. She lives in Mahtomedi, Minnesota with her partner, Ross.

Latest posts by Rev. Victoria Safford (see all)

• Use Your Inside Voice - December 1, 2020
• The Soul of the Whole - June 1, 2017
• Bound in Covenant (Excerpt) - March 1, 2017