Background for "Hide and Seek with God"

Game playing is not only fun for children, it is one of the ways they learn all sorts of things. Adults continue to practice skills and find enjoyment in games, also. Especially popular are games in which something is hidden and the goal is to find it. From peek-a-boo to mystery weekends, it is clear that our love of searching for something hidden is more than just a game. Our normal curiosity about things and life's way of always providing something new for us to figure out, combine to make the metaphor of hide and seek inherently meaningful to us.

At times, it can seem as though the purpose of our being here on earth is for us to search for answers to the hidden mysteries of life. It can seem as though a divine power created a world full of paradoxes and then put us here, without explanation, leaving us to try to figure it all out. Another way of explaining this feeling that life is something of a game is expressed by Alan Watts in his book entitled The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. In this book, Watts works with the following Hindu concepts: that all is ultimately Brahman or God; that our lack of understanding this is because of the magic of maya; and that figuring it out is lila, a playful game. He likens the game to Hide and Seek in which God, who is all, hides by pretending to be all the various things in the world including each one of us. However, Watts says, "when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self, the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever."

Religions, other than Hinduism, in varying ways, also have a sense of God as hidden. In Islam one of the ninety nine names of God is The Hidden; but for Muslims, God is totally other and ultimately unknowable. Christian belief presumes that God, though originally concealed, finally becomes known through God's own revelation. In general, the emphasis is on God's revealing rather than on human discovery. Paul, however does write in Acts 17: 26, "From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and [God] allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for [God] and find [God] though indeed [God] is not far from each one of us. For 'In [God] we live and move and have our being;' ..."

Where one might find God differs from religion to religion; in fact, answers to this question may well be a part of what differentiates one religion from another. Jews might say they find God in historical actions of freedom and justice; Christians might say God is revealed in the love found in the life and person of Jesus; and Muslims might say they find the one God in the words of the Quran. In Alan Watts' story and~ in the story in this curriculum God is found in everything that is: earth and sky; light and dark; people's caring actions; within ourselves; and even in the not knowing. For if God is a symbol for ultimate reality, values, and mystery,one's unknowing can be considered one's ultimate reality.

This metaphor in which God hides and humans search is supported by the UU Principle which urges us to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We search in all of our Sources: our own experience, the `words and deeds of prophetic women and men,wisdom from the world religions, Jewish and Christian teachings, and humanist teachings.