Is there a God?

"When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.

Think, by contrast, of the decoration on an old bench -- small hearts carved in it; simple holes, cut out while it was being put together -- these can be egoless.

They are not carved according to some plan. They are carefree, carved into it, wherever there seems to be a gap. It is not the least contrived; there is no effort in the decoration; it does not seek to express the personality of the man who carved it. It is so natural, that it almost seems as though the bench itself cried out for it: and the carver simply did what was required." (from The Timeless Way of Building, by C. Alexander)

This planet we inhabit, this universe we call home, has ego-less beauty. The beauty found on the old bench, on the forest floor, on a coastline, in the blaze of a sunset. Unplanned beauty, spectacular, breath taking beauty because it comes without without a mastermind.

I cannot concieve of God as a mastermind. But I can experience God when my breath is taken away by the egoless beauty of the world. A world that came to be without a mastermind.

God is an experience; God is a verb or maybe an adjective: awe, beauty, melancholy, tears, ecstacy, greif, love, more than any of these, something my bones, my flesh, my heart experiences in the transitory beauty of life.