A series of in-person conversations held at Hamakom, meeting monthly, and taught by Ellen Cervantes and Valerie Edwards.

Come to the entire series or to any individual sessions you like. Handouts will be provided at each session. This course is inspired by Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s wonderful book, “God is Here: Reimagining the Divine”. You are encouraged to consider getting your own copy of the book, but it is not required for this class.

We all need a system of meaning to make sense of our lives. What all great religions share is an awareness of something both within and beyond us, a power that shapes and guides our lives. For those of us raised in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, that power is called, in English, “God”. But the basic assumption is that, when we're talking about God, we're referring to some kind of superpower entity, a Someone or a Something ‘out there’ that exerts Its influence over us.

We tend to talk about God using very human language: God knows, God acts, God loves, God judges, God gives and takes away life. So, somewhere in the back of our minds, whether we explicitly believe it or not, there is an image of God as a big ‘Guy in the Sky’ who knows everything and can do anything they want. The problem is, many of us just can't believe in a God like that. We can't, or won’t, believe in a big person who controls the world and our own lives like a puppet master. Our own lived experience tells us that we have free will, that our choices are real, and that our hearts perceive a Divine Something that doesn’t match the description of Master Puppeteer.

In this class, we will accept Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s invitation to delve into the realm of cognitive linguistics and metaphor as the first steps towards creating a new way of thinking about, experiencing, and talking about God.