You can't even begin to experience God without a metaphor in mind. We all have them, whether we draw from those provided by a holy book or from our own experiences. And for many, the immanence and significance of God is best conveyed in the incarnational metaphor of God as Son, and the authoritative and righteous metaphor of God as Father.
But all metaphor breaks down at some point. People change, and with them change the means by which they relate to that divine being we so crudely call God. The changing of metaphors for God is messy business; movements divide, wars are waged, confessions are written and heresies are named. A person can describe God in a new way that is meaningful to them, only to be shut out and denounced by everyone around them. David Friedrich Strauss faced such a lonely fate.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I have been struggling with what metaphors best fit God as disclosed to me. God as Father is out. My own father was abusive and largely absent. As a result of study and reflection, God as Son does not work for me either.
But there is one powerful metaphor left to me in Christianity; God as Holy Spirit, particularly, God as female, God as lover, God as sustainer, God as the object of all passion and desire. Augustine once wrote that our hearts are restless until they rest in God, an expression of his own wandering life and corrupted desires. But I'd say that my heart and spirit both are restless until they rest in her, in her embrace, in her kiss, and in her gaze. We've spent so much time thinking of God as masculine, powerful and unshakeable, but perhaps God is also vulnerable, tender, and tremulously self-giving.
Could it be for someone like me, barring all dogma, that the Holy Spirit is the single most important person of the Trinity? No, could it be that God is the Holy Spirit alone?
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