To God

November 10, 2025

In the introduction of the book, The Artist’s Way, a single line in the margin sparked something inside of me.

“Why indeed must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb—the most active and dynamic of all?”

—Mary Daly, Theologian

I stopped reading and just stared at it.

Something in me stirred — recognition, resonance, maybe even relief.

I’ve believed for years that love is a verb, that it’s not something we fall into or receive passively but something we practice — daily, imperfectly, with courage and choice.

But never — not once — had I considered that God could be a verb too.

That idea flipped everything I was taught as a child upside down.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church, attended a private Christian school from kindergarten through sixth grade, and absorbed the rules before I even understood what they meant.

Be good. Be obedient. Be small.

Please God. Fear God.

Earn heaven. Avoid hell.

We were graded on how well we prayed and how quickly we could recite the books of the Bible.

Anyone who believed anything different from us was going to hell.

Every lesson was about living to please a higher authority, not living with or as any form of divine energy.

God was a noun — a man in the clouds, somewhere above and outside of me.

Forgiveness and redemption were external transactions, not internal transformations.

And I was taught that my humanness — my intuition, my desire, my body, my voice — was suspect. Something to control. Something to apologize for.

That conditioning shaped me deeply. It taught me to measure worth by compliance, to distrust my own inner knowing, to confuse fear with reverence.

But this quote — this quiet provocation — sparked something inside of me.

If God is not a noun but a verb,

then God is movement.

God is becoming.

God is the current running through creation, not the hand pointing from above.

It means the sacred isn’t static or conditional. It’s not confined to scripture or sanctuary.

It’s the pulse that moves through us when we create, forgive, live authentically, rebuild, or love.

It’s the electricity that animates integrity.

It’s the whisper that says, Make something beautiful from what tried to destroy you.

If God is a verb, then redemption isn’t granted — it’s lived.

Forgiveness isn’t requested — it’s practiced.

Prayer isn’t recited — it’s embodied.

And suddenly, everything I’ve spent the last decade learning — everything I’ve fought to reclaim — made sense.

I have spent much of my life caretaking others — being kind, generous, understanding, empathetic, nonjudgmental. All things Jesus.

But I rarely poured those things into myself.

This year has shown me that I have to.

I cannot be whole if I don’t.

And now, I’ve learned that I can still care for others — deeply, fully, freely — while also honoring myself.

That true compassion includes me too.

When I treat myself as if I am holy, chosen, divine — something shifts.

When I guard my sacred energy with clear standards, move through life with open hands and a steady spine, and refuse to shrink what is holy in me — I am God-ing.

Not as an act of ego, but as an act of participation in the sacred movement of life itself.

The little girl in me once thought holiness meant perfection.

The woman I am now knows it means presence.

To God is to participate in the ongoing unfolding of love, truth, and creation — not to worship something separate from myself, but to move in harmony with what is holy within everything.

Maybe the most divine thing we can ever do

is to honor what is sacred within us and others,

to move through this world with truth and tenderness,

and to God by the way we live, love, and lead.