[AntonayPina]

Blythspirit,

Thank you for your post. It's interesting that I'm having some of the same issues but in a weird reverse kind of way. I was raised protestant, but became kind of disillusioned with that and ended up for quite a long time in the Unitarian Universalist Church - which for anyone who doesn't know is almost a free for all of spirituality encompassing everything from non trinitarian protestantism to humanism. That was sort of a little too lacking in direction for me, and then I had some really bad experiences in life and decided God was dead.
Not long after I stumbled on Buddhism and it reflected so much how I already felt about the universe it seemed like a perfect fit.
Then an odd thing happened. As I practiced and became more at peace with my life and whatnot - I started to miss God. Weird, huh?

Back in my UU days one of the pastors gave a sermon which I will not recount anywhere near as eloquently as he did, but the basic idea of it stuck with me. He compared our relationship with God/The Ultimate Reality or whatever we want to see it as to a stained glass window, with "God" (for lack of a better word) being the sunlight and humanity being the window. Each person or culture would be a different piece of glass. Being made of different stuff the light passes through each piece differently making a different color ( or a different way or perceiving the light, or God) But then when you step back and see all those different pieces together they make a picture or a pattern that is even more beautiful and complete than that one shard of glass. Yet even that is nowhere near as beautiful and complete as the light itself, but being human we can't look at the light directly, so we have to make due with our interpretation of it through the glass...

So maybe this doesn't make me strictly a buddhist, but to my thinking anyway, it's not that there is no God it's that our limited understanding of the Ultimate as some personal god, a guy in a throne in the sky, is so inadequate. Humans can no more understand "God" or the Universe than an amoeba can look up at a human and understand what we are.

For me anyway, with Buddhism I don't have to understand. God is inconsequential to the right now. It's something that can be sorted out later - if ever and in the mean time I can focus on what I am to do in the here and now in this world to live a good life and make the world a better place - which ironically is what most people would agree any God might want from us if he did exist.