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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Mental images of God
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I find that when I'm praying or reading or just thinking of God, I generally have some sort of faint visual image of God lurking in the corners of my mind. I don't mean something I deliberately constructed, just a random impression. Do you folks have anything like this? And are yours as weird as mine are?
I mean, when I'm thinking of Jesus, I have a vague impression of white and yellow light (and some warmth) which is more or less human-sized. But I can't get a visual on the face--which may be because I'm largely faceblind in ordinary life too.
As for the Father, er ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) . I have this bizarre image of a chartreuse cliff rising to infinity (and falling to it, for that matter). It's somewhere off to the left of me. Don't know if that relates to my synesthesia--it may do, at least as far as color goes.
As for the Spirit ... um. I'm gonna see what y'all write before I venture on that one. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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BessLane
Shipmate
# 15176
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Posted
My mental imge of God is that of a hammock, specifically the kind made of knotted rope.
When I was young, my grandmother had a big rope hammock strung between her house and a huge old willow tree that grew out of her breakwall. When i was sad, or scared or lonely, I would lie in that hammock with my head at the tree end and stare up into the tree and just kind of drift away, feeling safe and secure and loved. Nothing bad could happen to me in that hammock. It's the same feeling I later came to asociate with prayer and closeness to God. So there you have it, my mental image of God is of a slightly frayed, weathered hammock, smelling slightly of mildew, sunshine and willow leaves...
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It's all on me and I won't tell it.
formerly BessHiggs
Posts: 1388 | From: Yorkville, TN | Registered: Sep 2009
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Galilit
Shipmate
# 16470
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Posted
A river - can't see the source, can't see the estuary or mouth at the sea - just this infinite flow that sometimes I look at and sometimes I am floating in it (not frighteningly fast or anything, just supported and travelling on).
It is watery grey colour with little waves and a pebbly bed (multi-hued about egg-sized and smooth and they are sort of greys and browns mostly)
But I have very detailed and human image of Our Mother - She is slender and slight and has a fine-boned face but She is strong and unstoppable.
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She who does Her Son's will in all things can rely on me to do Hers.
Posts: 624 | From: a Galilee far, far away | Registered: Jun 2011
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Fineline
Shipmate
# 12143
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Posted
In my mind, God is bigger than Jesus, and Jesus is more specific, because of his humanity. He has a more specific outline.
When I was five, I found it too confusing to talk to people I couldn't see. Then I found two big empty cardboard boxes under my bed. One was bigger than the other. They were both bigger than me. I therefore decided the bigger one was God, and the smaller one was Jesus. It made sense to me because I saw God and Jesus in terms of size. I used to take them out from under my bed and chat to them each evening until my mother discovered what I was doing and told me in horror that this was idolatry and took the boxes away from me. Which was a shame - I found it harder to talk to God and Jesus after that.
I need something visual when I pray. When I was 15 I discovered I could write my prayers, so I've done that ever since. I have the words to look at then. It's like writing to penpals.
I also have face-blindness, so I don't imagine faces. I tend to look at people's hands, so I do imagine hands - God has bigger ones than Jesus in my mind. It really is all about size! I don't visually imagine the Holy Spirit - I see him as God without body, so not taking up space.
I know that none of this is theological in the slightest. But it's my mental image of God and Jesus.
Posts: 2375 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2006
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
So, I shared this on a Hell thread that had gone philosophical:
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
I don't know what heresy I might have been spouting, but I once burbled in my high school confirmation class that I thought God was never-changing and ever-changing-and I used the ocean as a metaphor. The ocean is always the ocean, but it is also always moving, striking the shore, changing the beach, pulling stuff back into itself,claiming life, generating it--always changing. The Pastor just looked at me like, maybe Cromwell had the right idea about heretics, and went on as if I had said nothing.
And IngoB responded with this:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
There's gotta be a name for it. Every time I think I have evolved some great new idea, it turns out some joker scribbled it down on some scroll sometime in the year 294 or something.
Sounds like Palamism to me (unchanging ocean - essence, waves of activity - energies), hence medieval and not necessarily a heresy for RCs, whereas strict orthodoxy for the Orthodox.
But perhaps you would enjoy some Sufi poetry along those lines: here. (IMHO, Sufism is the best Islam has to offer, in particular concerning literary output.)
First time IngoB posted something that brought tears of joy to my eyes, Thank you, brother.
[ 18. February 2014, 18:56: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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StevHep
Shipmate
# 17198
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Posted
I think that the ocean is quite a frequent image. George Fox the Quaker had this vision quote:
I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings….
Journal
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My Blog Catholic Scot
http://catholicscot.blogspot.co.uk/
@stevhep on Twitter
Posts: 241 | From: Exeter | Registered: Jul 2012
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
That's beautiful - thank you, IngoB and Kelly. It resonates with me, too, although I more often see God as a vast cloud, all-encompassing, swirling. This is more my impression of the Spirit though, rather than Father or Son.
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
Then I found two big empty cardboard boxes under my bed. One was bigger than the other. They were both bigger than me. I therefore decided the bigger one was God, and the smaller one was Jesus. It made sense to me because I saw God and Jesus in terms of size. I used to take them out from under my bed and chat to them each evening
That's f*cking brilliant, Fineline. Thanks. I'd be so proud if my kids told me that.
Fathers, in my mind, are people who need to tell you that you're a c*nt at every opportunity; if they don't, their own broken ego will truly fall apart. But even a really big cardboard box can't be so very threatening. Indeed, it is full of mystery. Inviting. And smelling of something really characteristic of itself...seriously, you've given me something there. Thanks.
ETA - and Jesus is Jesus - a God-man who is recorded in the gospels. Thank God for the incarnation.
And the Holy Spirit is female. Why should women get a free ride on loving someone male in the Godhead, while a straight male Christian flounders? Youngish, wise, and (you'll be relieved to hear) it is by mutual request very, very strictly platonic... ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
[ 18. February 2014, 20:26: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
Fathers, in my mind, are people who need to tell you that you're a c*nt at every opportunity; if they don't, their own broken ego will truly fall apart.
I have the same problem.
The whole resurrection of my ocean analogy has really been a gift. Today I was driving down the coast and I could not stop looking at the ocean. It occurred to me that I couldn't decide if the ocean had a more feminine aspect or a more masculine aspect, and it further occurred to me that this indecision was just right.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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The Phantom Flan Flinger
Shipmate
# 8891
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
When I was five, I found it too confusing to talk to people I couldn't see. Then I found two big empty cardboard boxes under my bed. One was bigger than the other. They were both bigger than me. I therefore decided the bigger one was God, and the smaller one was Jesus. It made sense to me because I saw God and Jesus in terms of size. I used to take them out from under my bed and chat to them each evening until my mother discovered what I was doing and told me in horror that this was idolatry and took the boxes away from me.
I suppose it could be considered a form of idolatry, but if it helps you to pray, then where's the harm?
Oh, and Kelly, hope you don't mind if I use your ocean metaphor for my own prayers / devotions?
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http://www.faith-hope-and-confusion.com/
Posts: 1020 | From: Leicester, England | Registered: Dec 2004
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Not at all!
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I get Demis Roussos in a white kaftan (see universum cover), Robert Powell in a nightshirt and Marty Hopkirk from Randall & Hopkirk (deceased) in a white suit. I think all that drawing in Sunday school broke me...
Posts: 1262 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Drifting Star
Drifting against the wind
# 12799
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Posted
Another one here who loves the sea analogy. It just seems to keep on giving!
We have a great view of the sea, which is a few miles away. On a good day there is lots of it, deeply coloured and beautiful. On a bad day it is completely invisible. It's still there though - the sea hasn't done anything to make itself disappear. Most days are somewhere between the two - it comes and goes, it's clearer and then vaguer.
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The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Heraclitus
Posts: 3126 | From: A thin place. | Registered: Jul 2007
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Flan Flinger said:
quote:
I suppose it [cardboard boxes] could be considered a form of idolatry
I got into Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd a while back; since we're talking about images of God, I think a tangent about idolatry is not altogether irrelevant.
Dooy. breaks up existence into a bunch of orthogonal dimensions he calls the 'aspects' or 'modes'. So, for instance, there are basic ones like 'number' [how many of it] progressing through the 'physical' [is it hard, soft, rough, hot?], the 'biological' [is it alive?], up into the aesthetic [do we find it beautiful?], the 'judicial' [who owns it?], the 'economic' [what resources were consumed in its production or maintenance?], the 'social' [how does it impact on the interaction of people] and so on. There are about 14 or 15 of them. This kind of deconstruction is a bit like breaking colour into red-green-blue components, breaking spatial location into Cartesian or polar coordinates, breaking taste into sweet-sour-bitter-salt-umami dimensions, or breaking up sound or pictures in a Fourier decomposition. I was an engineer, so I like this kind of thing.
At the top of the tree lies the 'pistic' aspect - that which is to do with faith. As a Christian, Dooy. believes that all else is subordinate to this. Crucially, idolatry occurs when we worship (place ultimate worth; derive our ultimate values) something within the created order, not living in the pistic aspect.
So, we may attempt for instance to derive moral authority from the social aspect (as many currently try to do by describing morality as an emergent property of social creatures). We may go further and attempt to make one aspect the origin of all the others - for instance in radical materialism, which takes only the existence of matter (the physical aspect) and demands that all else flows from this base, or origin.
This is idolatry; it's when we make a part of the created order responsible for the rest of the order's existence. This makes as much sense as saying that red is the key colour, from which blue and green are derived; or that sweet is the origin of all taste, from which all the others are formed; or saying that if one knows the x location of an object, the y and z may somehow be derived.
A decomposition into orthogonal (unrelated) components is expressly designed to make this impossible - it's the whole idea. Therefore, idolatrous world views always eat themselves.
I found this very helpful. I doubt youthful Fineline wanted to derive ultimate value from a cardboard box or two, so I don't think it was idolatrous at all. Not many people in the West worship 'an idol' (a statue) as in the stories in the OT any more. But idolatry is all over the place, necessarily, since in the absence of God, we can't help but fill the space with something from the created order as our first cause.
As with most of my nob-polishing weighty insights, I am left with the sense that I arrived at something basic and uncontested by a bizarre and pointlessly circuitous route. But I thought I would share it.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Heaven getting a tad waterlogged - a sign we need to move a heavy topic to Purgatory.
Masks and snorkels on.
Firenze
Heaven Host
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
mark_in_manchester
Interesting stuff. It's not a million miles from ideas which I have developed - not original of course - about the mismatch between various modalities or discourses. Thus the idea that mind is brain is a mixing of discourses, which leads to confusion, for example, that neurons are true or false.
Similarly, asking for evidence for God is another confusion of discourses.
I used to call them layers, but then realized that layers have the unfortunate habit of going down and down (like turtles), so I think 'layers' is out.
It's also a bit like Whitehead's idea of 'occasions of experience' in his book 'Process and Reality'.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Q - I'm coming at this as an engineer - a poor mathematician, and an even poorer philosopher. My mind is full of sine waves and simple math proofs of orthogonality. And this is in Purg where mathematicians and philosophers hang out. Oh dear. I'd need more guidance to make the connections you suggest.
LC - I'm really sorry, I think I shat all over your thread. I now suspect it was meant as something good to do in heaven, and I've gone and relocated it. Sorry!
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
mark_in_M/c
Stop with the negativity already.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Q -
[ 19. February 2014, 17:05: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Shit is a good thing, you can grow lotus in it.
As promised, my image of the Holy Spirit:
A big, beefy, gladiator-dressed guy who is always standing behind me and has my back. God knows where this image came from. Though I must say that the one time HS appeared (possibly) to me in a dream, it was in the shape of the little old fragile bird-bones black lady down the street who used to bawl us kids out when we really needed it. Man, she was tough. (and yes, HS was bawling me out)
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
I like it, LC. We're coming at the HS from a kind of similar place. If we go on like this, maybe they'll move this back to Heaven...
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Hilda of Whitby
Shipmate
# 7341
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Posted
When I was a child, I envisioned God as streams of light. In the intervening decades I have seen no reason to change this image.
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"Born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad."
Posts: 412 | From: Nickel City | Registered: Jun 2004
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Trin
Shipmate
# 12100
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Posted
Since I was old enough to form mental images he's looked like the blue figure that appears soon after the 50 second mark.
Thunder Cats
I've always though that anyone who grew up in Sunday School must picture God at least something like this.
(Unless at some stage in your adult life you've consciously rejected the traditional image and made something else up to replace it with.)
Posts: 442 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2006
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