We look back on the patterns in our life and see the way God has played with us, always taking us to a larger place of faith.

We see the winters that turned into spring growth, loss that made way for a new kind of, gain, steep hills that gave us a better view, crucifixions that turned into resurrections.

These patterns were all about spiritual growth.

We realise with wonder and gratitude, that the soul comes into incarnation to grow, and the Sacred Presence is our teacher.

Sometimes, though, we can feel the loss so severe, we wonder if we will survive.

I reflect on times of loss when I've wanted to blame someone or something, and being unable to do that, have wished I could believe in a spirit of evil.

However, belief in a spirit of evil made God too small for me.

I felt helpless.

Looking back, I see the pain of loss as divine play at work.

It was God's way of emptying me in order to make room for something new. I now call it the giving of the left hand of God.

To put it another way, I believe we're continuously guided in faith, to a larger place. And some of that guidance we would rather not have.

What else does age teach me?

The importance of forgiveness.

Every negative judgement is a burden I have to carry, and that slows me down.

We also learn not to worship words. Words are created by humans to contain order.

The word God is no more God than the word sea is the ocean. As St Augustine of Hippo points out it is the effect of that simple three-letter word that conveys vast meaning going beyond words

Sr Augustine wrote: "What happened in your heart when you heard "God"? What happened in my heart when I was saying "God."

"Something great and supreme occurred in our mind. It soars utterly above and beyond every changeable, carnal and merely natural creature…"

"So what is that thing in your heart when you are fixing your mind on some substance that is living, everlasting, infinite, almighty, everywhere, whole and entire, nowhere confined?

When you fix your mind on all this, there is a word about God in your heart.

Try St Augustine's method of prayer. It works. The word "God" can be a gateway to something so great it cannot be described.

I like to do the same with words from the Mass that can become blunt with repetition or get made into idols.

Free these words with prayer!

As St Augustine suggests, we let responses freely fill our mind, and then take those words to feeling in the heart.

That's when we experience divine play and the presence of the Mystery we call "God."

Perhaps the greatest spiritual gift of age is the sense of Oneness. We lose judgemental thinking and divisions disappear. We know that the Creator is everywhere and in everything and will never be separate from us.

We are at home in those beautiful words from Psalm 139.

Where can I escape from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, You are there.

If I descent into Sheol, You are there.

If I take wing at dawn and come to rest

on the Western horizon,

even there Your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me close.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

John Main says, "Language may not be able to lead us into the ultimate communion but it is the atmosphere in which we first draw breath of consciousness."

I have spent more than fifty years acquiring language - a spiritual language, that is, not my native tongue - and suddenly it all seems a facade. It is empty, superfluous, 'white noise'. Don't get me wrong. I find the etymology, the lexicon of religion and spirituality fascinating.

For most of my life, I have listened to those more theologically literate, more erudite, with higher levels of education. I have hungrily devoured their definitions; their explanations; their theology. I have read voraciously. I am deeply indebted, and very grateful, to all who shared with me.

But I was short-changed.

What was offered, while encapsulating the Truth, presented as literal that which can only be revealed through metaphor, allegory, experience, art and silence. Ideas and practices presented as permanent, unchanging, infallible, embedded, I now see are transient, fluid, organic, responsive, reactive.

Consider the latest English translation of the Mass. I always considered the words and actions at the epiclesis and consecration as intrinsic to the transformation from bread and wine to Body and Blood. Those who love the Latin translation of the Mass probably thought the same. But the words keep changing. So the language becomes almost inconsequential, irrelevant. Whatever words we recite; whatever actions we make - it is that which is revealed that is important.

For me, now, that revelation is that God took human form. God is revealed in the actions and attitudes of human beings. God is creative and creator and is revealed in creation. God loves unconditionally and abundantly. I am known. I am loved. I am not alone. And this empowers and inspires me.

Scripture is rich in metaphor, myth, allegory, poetry. We learn about metaphor in English classes at school - but not a whiff is discussed in Religious Education. None of the names we give the divine are literal. God is not an eagle or a nursing mother or our father. These are metaphors to describe the indescribable - a divine presence so 'other' and so 'in-dwelling' that language can only hint at it.

I do not know if I was deliberately shaped, formed or taught in a certain way that kept me obedient, unquestioning, faithful. I do believe, however, that there is now a paradigm shift to acknowledge and name and embrace what has always been true: God is encountered and experienced in an infinite number of ways to ALL people - baptised or not; practising in an institutional church or not; religious or not. Artists, poets, storytellers, dancers, and musicians have always known this. Ecologists, feminists, and peace activists have always known this.

God can be experienced, but not entrapped in ideologies and dogmas. The language for God, and of God, has evolved. 
God can be encountered, but not explained. The language to describe God is now holistic and experiential. 
God exists outside of time and culture and language and is not constrained by these human constructs. The language reflecting God to us is the language of belonging and of relationship.

No-one has a stranglehold on God. Thank God.

And so I begin again …

Liz Pearce, mother of 3 adult children, loves story, dollmaking, writing and silence.

Scenes of destruction and human suffering in Japan have elicited worldwide support—both material and spiritual. But amid global calls for prayer and other religious responses, the most widely publicized religious response to the nation's worst disaster since the Second World War comes from within Japan itself—a series of comments made by 79-year-old Tokyo Governor, Shintaro Ishihara.

Ishihara, a prize-winning novelist, stage and screen actor, and a populist hero of the Japanese right, has gained notoriety for his willingness to court controversy, but his take on the tragedy in northeastern Japan offended even his staunchest supporters. On March 14, just three days into the crisis, Ishihara told reporters that he saw the tsunami as "divine punishment," or tenbatsu, a term usually employed in Japanese to describe a righteous and inevitable punishment of the wicked. For Ishihara, the tsunami produced by Japan's largest-ever recorded earthquake was a means of washing away the "egoism" (gayoku in Japanese) afflicting the Japanese people.

While the Tokyo Governor said that he felt sorry for the victims, he concluded that "We need a tsunami to wipe out egoism, which has rusted onto the mentality of Japanese over a long period of time."

Read the full essay: Tokyo Governor Says Tsunami is Divine Punishment—Religious Groups Ignore Him