Talking with My Daughter About God: A Seeker’s Tale

Once upon a time, I spent 53 weeks in an RV, looking for God in America. Venturing 26,000 miles through 41 states, I spoke with hundreds of people about their connection with whatever transcendent force they recognized. I wasn’t after how they defined God, but how they experienced God, and how those experiences colored their lives.

Along the way, there was no single Aha! moment. Daily, however, I experienced revelations in direct proportion to my receptivity. The more I relinquished what I thought I knew, the more evident God became.

I spent ten days early on and ten more several months later at Nine Gates Mystery School studying with teachers from nine different wisdom traditions. My wife, Susanne (a past graduate), summarized the program this way: “Mystery School offers concise, coherent training for those who want to become more conscious, compassionate human beings.”

That resonated. As did this assurance on the school’s website: “Mystery School cannot give you God or some universal absolute. It does not promise Nirvana or even transformation. It will not tell you what to believe. Rather, it will provoke and excite into awakening your deepest truth… not as something out there, but rather as near as your own heart.”

I was struck by how the teachers carried themselves: with grace, coherence, and reverence for the Divinity manifest in creation. As Sufi master Shabda Khan put it, “Wherever you look, there is God.” And “God,” suggested Hindu Baba Harihar Ramji, “is the One Presence that takes different forms, depending on the needs of the seeker.” I liked that.

“There’s a very thin wall,” Babaji added, “between our humanness and our divineness. Your presence is the presence of God. If you are truly present, you’ll find God in everything.”

Questioned about the similarity between his teachings and those of the Christian mystic who preceded him, Babaji laughed. “It doesn’t matter which spiritual path you choose,” he said, chuckling. “They all lead to the same place! Pick one well and dig deep!”

“Of course,” program founder Gay Luce impishly reminded us, “To lead a spiritual life doesn’t mean you’re always in the light!” To which the school’s spiritual director, Deborah Jones, solemnly added, “Spiritual work itself is a slow death to what I think I am. It's a letting go, an emptying into what precedes my ideas about God … about reality. I acquire new sight—and insight."

I took that as another way of saying that God—like beauty—is in the eye of the beholder.

At the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, I met a Red Willow craftswoman named Jeri, who shared this: “We don’t talk about God as a person. God is Spirit. And we see God in everything—the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, the plants, the animals, the water. When we pray, we pray to the Spirit in all life. And we become caretakers of all things.”

Susanne was with me a few nights later in Santa Fe, where we encountered two women who thought we were lost. When one of them asked what we were looking for, Susanne humorously retorted, “He’s looking for God.”

Eyeing me with both amusement and pity, the woman said, “That’s ridiculous!” Then, as a concerned mother might comfort a confused child, she placed a hand on my heart and proclaimed, “God is right here!”

Her earnest gesture reminded me of a gospel passage in which Jesus explains why the kingdom of God can’t be seen. “The kingdom of God,” he cryptically asserts, “is within you.” (Luke 17:21).

I heard these notions repeatedly: God as “Spirit,” revealed through creation, and God as “presence,” evident within. God in nature and God in people. While that rang true, what began to crystallize was a sense that we’re enveloped by the Divine. That we’re so inherently part of God, and God so infused in us, we miss the obvious—like fish unable to see the ocean in which they’re swimming.

It’s fine that people experience God differently—if at all. The question isn’t whether God is evident, but whether we’re able to acknowledge something we can’t fully fathom. Something that’s not outside of us, but rather something we’re inside of.

For me, the path to God welcomes ambiguity. It requires both humility and uncertainty. It asks me to pay attention—prioritizing my senses over my mind.

When I travel with a heart that’s open to mystery, Divinity is evident everywhere. I can’t help but find God. But it’s not so much a pursuit as an allowing—an opening to Divine Presence right here, right now. Not outside of me, but encompassing me.

Years later, I’m still piecing the puzzle together. But here’s a conclusion: God—by any and every name—deserves to be de-mystified. Divinity is accessible to everyone. God is a visceral experience, not an intellectual one. The connection is uniquely personal; it can’t be ordained or mediated by another.

From an etymological standpoint, “God” is one of many words people use to describe a great mystery—a reality beyond comprehension. No philosopher or theologian can prove that God is or isn’t. Arguing over the existence and nature of something that defies knowing is futile—a form of mental gymnastics, undertaken at considerable cost to our spirits, which don’t deserve the abuse.

When I asked a Boston man how he experienced God, he responded with his own rhetorical question: “I wonder how God experiences me?”

I’m not sure how God experiences me. But I could, like my Mystery School teachers, walk more consciously and be kinder and gentler. Surely, that would be a fitting tribute to my travels.

In the end, God is either everywhere or nowhere. If God is everywhere, everything is sacred. If God is nowhere, why should we have less reverence for any living thing?

Ultimately, we’ll return to the place from which we came—where, hopefully, we’ll get some answers! Meanwhile, I continue to find love the most persuasive evidence of Divinity. In that sense, all that really matters is how well we care for ourselves, each other, and our world.

“We’re only here for a minute,” wrote Brian Doyle in One Long River of Song. “We’re here for a little window. And to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story.”

If there is a God, we are its reflections. Our purpose isn’t to validate God’s presence—but to cultivate our presence to the sacred all around us.

Just stay open, I continue to urge my daughter. Enjoy your little window. Catch more shards of light and laughter and grace. You’ve heard my story. Now tell me yours. I’m eager to hear it.

Experience a journey into wholeness with Nine Gates Mystery School.

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