Sunshine is a large yellow tabby cat. Although his father is unknown and his mother was a promiscuous stray, Sunshine was born in the guest room of my daughter’s house and is thus officially a house cat. However, despite being well fed and groomed, micro-chipped and much-loved, Sunshine runs away from home on a regular basis. Every few weeks he slips out the side door and disappears into the unknown wilds of the west side of Evansville.
The first time Sunshine went missing, my daughter, Anna, was frantic. She drove around the neighborhood looking for him and plastered photos of his big furry face all over social media. She was haunted by images of Sunshine out in the cruel world alone, emaciated, flea ridden and terrified. After several weeks she gave up the search and accepted that he had probably died an untimely and tragic death.
Imagine her surprise when Sunshine turned up on her carport several weeks later. Anna said he appeared to be a couple pounds fatter, smelled like he had been recently bathed and was in good health and high spirits. She scooped him up, lugged him into the house and vowed never to let him outside again.
Sunshine had other ideas though. No matter how many cat toys and treats he was given or how much love was showered upon him, Sunshine was miserable being indoors all day. He wanted out.
Eventually, worn down by his dejected face and mournful howls, Anna gave in and began to let him go outside for short periods during the day. The short periods grew longer and longer and began to include nights. Thus, a pattern began.
Sometimes Sunshine is gone for hours, sometimes days and sometimes weeks. But no matter how long he is gone, he always returns to resume his place in the household as if he had never left.
Eventually Anna realized that Sunshine was a chronic adventurer and most likely had a second home – or possibly multiple homes.
“I wish he could tell me about his travels,” she said to me one day as she gazed into his mysterious green eyes, “but I guess his adventures out in the world will always be his secret.”
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I was born into the Catholic faith and so, just as Sunshine is officially a house cat, I am officially a Catholic. But just as Sunshine leaves home on unsanctioned adventures, I have spent a great deal of my life as a spiritual wanderer. The Catholic Church is my home because it is where I started out in life and because most of the people I love are there. But my most profound adventures in faith have not happened within the walls of any church - they have happened in a world of unbound thought, unguarded emotions, and unscheduled events - free of all fear, guilt, shame and threats of damnation.
In the Catholic faith and in most other religions, knowledge of God is carefully rationed and given out in pieces. Nearly everything I have been taught about God has been sifted through the minds of other human beings – most of whom have been dead for centuries. For some reason, I was taught, God communicated with these prophets, Bible writers and saints of old in a special way and said everything of importance he had to say. My purpose in life was to accept what these other people had thought about God and to believe what they had believed. They were the ones who had all the sacred adventures. I was just supposed to read about them.
Many of us have been taught to worship a God of tradition; a God who is stuck back there somewhere, appearing on mountains we can never climb and wandering in deserts we can never visit. I have been learning about this God of Catholic and Christian tradition all my life and have been teaching about him for decades, but I have yet to actually meet him. I have, however, had some profound and exhilarating encounters with God that have not happened within the confines of any religion.
Most of us who are in religious traditions know and love God within the comforts and the boundaries of our own tradition. We know a house God. This God may have as many homes as there are religions, but when we step outside our own religious tradition, we don’t recognize this God at all. And yet, if we have the desire and the courage, it is possible for all of us to encounter God in the spaces between and beyond religions - and when we do, we will find ourselves leaping over the beliefs that divide us like children skipping over sidewalk cracks.
When I have dared to step outside the boundaries of dogma and doctrine, I have discovered a God unbound by any of them – a God who is here now. This is a God who must be encountered whole and all at once because although one can ration knowledge of God, there is no way to ration experience of God. And even if we try to harness our experience of God, we will find we cannot control God. We have to go where God takes us - and we have to be brave because there are no crazy, dark or scary corners of life where God will not go and there are no people God refuses to engage with. God is in cahoots with her, whom I despise, and with him whom I don’t understand and with them, whom I fear. This God has no regard for hierarchies, patriarchies or any other archies and no preference for appearance, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, language, culture, race or creed. God does not break manmade rules and laws so much as loves a way around them. There is no prison that can keep God out and no church that can keep God in.
In the wild spaces between and beyond all religions, God pours love recklessly over everyone and everything God encounters. This love is sometimes mellow, sometimes playful, sometimes fierce, but always free - like sunshine.
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Rose Breivogel
March 04, 2021
Love your explanation of love thru sunshine and how God can be found in every phase of our being. I really your blogs. Keep them coming. I was really sorry when you discontinued your presentations in church several years ago.