Apophatic Limericks about the Unknowing and Ineffable

These are dangerous times we live in. The two fastest growing religions on the planet are atheism and rabid fundamentalism. Meanwhile, mental illness has risen to epidemic levels, becoming the number one threat to world health. Never in the history of humanity has our species been in more desperate need of meaning.

Atheism and fundamentalism are just perfect examples of how the meaning of “God” has been reduced to a worthless cliche. If you accept the juvenile definition of God from a child’s fairy tale, then you might as well take every word of holy scripture to be incontrovertible fact. At the same time, if you can’t see anything beyond the fairy tale image of the Bearded Man in the sky, then you are just as likely to reject the whole notion out of hand.

But it’s not the idea of God that I can’t believe in. It’s only the definition of God. As long as you define God as the all-knowing, all-benevolent, personal father figure, then you can mark me an atheist. And yes, for a long while I thought that was the bold, free-thinking, nonconformist road to liberation.

But that’s just so boring, two dimensional, and frankly, unoriginal. So I’ve disembarked the bandwagon of New Atheism and struggled day and night to develop a new definition of God, one with which I can cease to call myself a non-believer.

In the end, I have embraced the apophatic theology, whereby God is not defined by who He is, but by what it is Not. And that is basically everything. Rather, God is that which cannot be defined, that which cannot be imagined, that which exceeds all categories of human understanding. If you can name it, it’s not God. Or in the words of Lao Tzu, the Old Master of Chinese Taoism, “The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

So, do I believe in God? In the way that I “define” God, yes. But do I believe that God exists? No. You and I and this table exist. But God does something else entirely. And with that, I’d like to offer these limericks about the unknowable and the unnamable.

With and Without
Foresaketh the craving for clear comprehension
The true and the false keep a delicate tension
Savor the cryptic
Obtuse and elliptic
And spare me the trappings of misapprehension

Apophatic Pastries
When they talk about God I refer to the donut
A center that’s empty and no one can own it
No self and no will
Just a vessel to fill
Yet this hole gives a form to the unit, now don’t it?

The Bridge to Know Where
The eyelids are down but the candle is glowing
Consider the zephyr that never stops blowing
A weightless foundation
With no explanation
A message unheard from the cloud of unknowing

Open Wide
Return from the limbo where nothing’s accessible
The half-hearted uncertain space of the vestibule
Depart from the mean
To embrace the extreme
And arrive at twilight of all things ineffable

Growing and Knowing
When you empty your mind you can feel it expanding
Over the clouds where the angels are landing
Beyond the confusion
Of noise and illusion
And into the peace that exceeds understanding

Apophatic Assertions
I refuse to be labeled an atheist
For saying there’s a deity who doesn’t exist
Through knowing and seeing
His realm transcends being
To name what He’s not I could write a long list

Via Negativa
Inside us is everything plus something more
Shedding that something’s the challenging chore
      An act of subtraction
      From earthly attachment
Connects you to all and allows you to soar

Further Reading

In the beginning was the worm

The night before Christmas, revisited

Grateful Limericks for the Soul