On God, or whatever.

I don't believe in Bible God.

There, I've said it. I don't believe that there is a personal, conscious god who grants wishes commensurate with the fervor of my genuflecting.

I admit the Universe does seem to conspire in my favor when I do the next right thing, and sometimes in a weird way.  I still believe the Universe is mere energy devoid of consciousness.

But I think maybe that's only part of it.

See, here's the thing. I sank into adolescent depression after my parents split, and I muddled through. I battled an undiagnosed eating disorder for decades, and I lurched from one diet to another, and I muddled through. I got married, got drunk a lot, got sober, graduated from college, somehow got through law school, practiced law for a few years. had a daughter, moved to the Navajo Nation, got divorced, discovered I was gay, got to be a law professor for a while, got a gig as a lobbyist and somehow successfully faked that for a few years, got a master's degree, entered and exited two destructive relationships, lost everything, rebuilt my credit, moved to Santa Fe not knowing anyone, ran a state court library, bought a house and a car, had a sleeve gastrectomy and lost 100 pounds, lost my job, and found another job across the country where I could reboot my career.

And so at age 61 I rented an apartment sight unseen, packed my car with two dogs and a cat and all the sundry stuff I could jam inside and on top, drove 1,900 miles by myself, carried everything up a bitch of a dark flight of stairs, and set up housekeeping, sort of, in a town completely foreign to me in the land of Oz. And I'm still sober.

That's a lot for anyone.  For me it's a freaking miracle. I mean, how did I manage all of that?

I did it with help. A whole lot of help. A shitload of help! Financial help. Logistical help. Truck-loading help. Cleaning help. Lots and lots of emotional and spiritual help. Help across the years, from many people, to whom I am very, very grateful.

But that's not God.

Meanwhile, we live in an ordered, unsentient universe constructed from the mystery and beauty of mathematics. Also not God.

I've always considered these two entities -- the help I've gotten over the years, and the matter and energy in the universe -- as unrelated. There are the people who help me, and then there's mathematics, and while both are exquisite, neither is supernatural.

The separateness is what I'm rethinking. Maybe they aren't so separate.

There is a lot about the universe we just don't understand. Light can be either a wave or a particle. A cat can be both alive and dead. A quantum particle in one part of the universe can act on another particle a billion light years away.

The Big Book says that god is either everything, or it is nothing. I disagree. I think it can be everything and nothing. Energy alone is essentially nothing. It's simply a force that holds atoms together. God is a noun, without much meaning or relevance, at least to me.

But maybe when that energy merges with the consciousness of the people in my life, God becomes a verb. It envelopes me, becoming everything. Maybe, somehow, the combination allows a collective consciousness to work actively in my life to help me get through each day.

To put it another way, maybe God is the Singularity without the computers.

Okay, so I'm willing to entertain the idea that when the universe and people combine, they somehow synthesize something new and conscious and even helpful. A kind of alchemy.  I suppose if it works, what do I care if it's true?

All my life I've felt like i was in a small boat in a hostile sea, and all my energy went toward just hanging on for dear life with one hand while I desperately tried to row against the waves with the other. Maybe instead my boat was being towed all along, and my oars were never of any use anyway.

Singularity. Huh. That could work.

But whatever it is, God or not-God, I am so grateful to all the people - all of you - who have been towing my little boat steadily along. Words simply can't suffice.