The Sacred That Cannot Be Contained

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”

—Rumi

For me, the prison wasn't made of iron bars or locked gates. It was made of certainty, rules, and expectations—well-meaning, perhaps, but confining all the same. I was raised inside a religious framework that gave me answers, belonging, and structure. But it also came with unspoken walls: this is how God works, these are the correct beliefs, this is the only path.

About ten years ago, I stepped away from the institution of church. I left to find air, to listen, to seek. To find comfort that started eluding me in the church machine. What I found outside the boundaries of tradition was not emptiness or chaos, but a deeper, vaster Presence—one I could not name or contain. I read widely, wandered through texts from Christian mystics, Sufi poets, Daoist teachings. I sat in silence, let go of answers, and found a God far bigger than the religion I was raised in.

This God didn’t fit into the categories I’d been taught. This God didn’t need defending. This God couldn’t be claimed by one group, one doctrine, or one ritual.

This God was like light—everywhere, and yet impossible to hold in your hand.

And I began to see something I hadn’t noticed before: that bigness can feel threatening to those who want to keep God manageable.

It’s understandable. A tame God is easier to teach, easier to control, easier to organize communities around. When someone starts speaking of divine encounters outside the tradition—outside the walls, outside the “right” beliefs—it unsettles the entire system.

But once you’ve tasted freedom, once you've glimpsed the vastness, it's hard to go back into the small room and pretend it's the whole house.

Why a Big God Can Feel Like a Problem

It might seem strange at first—why would anyone be afraid of a God who is bigger, freer, more expansive than we imagined? Shouldn’t that be good news?

But for many religious communities, this kind of vastness is not just unfamiliar—it’s unsettling. And not because people are weak or small-minded, but because religion often carries more than just theology—it carries identity, security, and belonging. When someone begins to speak of God in new or uncontainable ways, it doesn’t just raise a theological question; it can feel like an existential threat.

So rather than judging this defensiveness, I want to understand it. Here are some reasons why a big God might feel like too much for systems built around clarity, cohesion, and control:

1. A Big God Challenges the Framework

Religious traditions often form around clear ideas about who God is, how God acts, and what people must do in response. That clarity brings comfort.

When someone says, “God met me in a way outside of this structure,” it introduces uncertainty. If God works outside the framework, then the framework may not be as complete as we thought. And that’s scary—because for many, faith isn’t just trust in God; it’s trust in the system that explains God.

It’s not always God that people are defending. Sometimes it’s the map they’ve clung to for years.

2. A Big God Can Feel Too Free

The Divine I’ve encountered in the quiet and in the questions is wild. Not chaotic, but free. Free to speak in any tradition. Free to move through a poem, a breath, a sunrise. Free to bypass hierarchy and speak directly to the heart.

But if God is that free, then no one can claim exclusive access. And for traditions built around gatekeeping sacred experience, this is deeply destabilizing.

A God who blows where the Spirit wills can’t be managed, marketed, or domesticated.

3. A Big God Disrupts Group Identity

Religious groups often serve not just spiritual, but social functions. Belief becomes a marker of belonging. Uniformity creates cohesion.

So when someone begins to walk a different path—or see God through a different lens—it can feel like a rejection, even if it’s not. It’s not just You believe something different, but Are you still one of us?

This is especially tender in families or tight-knit faith communities, where shared beliefs are woven into the bonds of love.

When spirituality is tied to belonging, difference can feel like exile.

4. A Big God Can Awaken Buried Longings

Sometimes what threatens people most is not that you’re wrong—but that you might be right.

• Maybe they, too, have sensed something more.

• Maybe they’ve had moments of divine mystery that didn’t fit the doctrine.

• Maybe they’ve locked those moments away to stay “safe.”

Your freedom, your questions, your peace—it might stir something they’ve tried to silence. And that’s holy—but it’s not always welcome.

The God you speak of might not be offensive. He might simply be familiar in a way they’ve been taught to forget.

Holding Space for All of It

I don’t say any of this to criticize religious traditions. In many ways, they’ve held the sacred flame for generations. But when traditions turn into enclosures, when they fear the very Spirit they were built to honor, they can end up protecting form at the expense of Presence.

And yet—I believe something redemptive is possible. A way of honoring the treasures of tradition while still making space for the God who refuses to be tamed.

The Mystery Too Vast for Words

If God is truly infinite—beyond space, beyond time, beyond comprehension—then of course our language will fall short. Our doctrines, rituals, and metaphors are just that: metaphors. Beautiful, meaningful, even sacred—but not the thing itself.

God is not a man in the sky, nor a concept to be defined. God is the Source, the Ground, the Fire, the Song beneath all things. And when we try to trap that Mystery in formulas or systems, we end up shrinking what was never meant to be grasped.

This is why I’ve come to believe that God is best known through metaphor.

Not because metaphor is weak, but because it's the most honest way our limited minds can approach the Infinite. Metaphor points—it doesn't possess.

God is like the sun. You can’t stare at it directly. But its light touches everything you see.

You don’t need to define the sun to feel its warmth. You don’t need to fully understand photosynthesis to grow a garden. In the same way, you don’t need to pin God down in order to experience the sacred. You only need to become present.

The God Who Is Felt

I still try to use words to describe God in my own shabby, knocked-kneed way -- for, example, this blog. But God is most real through experience. Through moments untouchable by language.

Sometimes it happens in moments so simple, they could be missed:

• A line of poetry that stops you in your tracks.

• A conversation that opens your soul like a window.

• A song that breaks something open in your chest.

• A sunrise that silences your mind and fills your eyes with light.

• A moment of grief where, strangely, you're not alone.

These moments don’t come with theological commentary or liturgical approval. They just are. And in them, something moves. Something stirs. Something beyond words, and yet more real than words.

God becomes most real not when we speak about Him, but when we’re awakened by His touch—through beauty, love, presence, awe.

This is the God I’ve come to know—not a theory, not a rulebook, not a tribal deity locked in one tradition, but a living Mystery, encountered in breath, beauty, brokenness, and becoming.

And now, I’m learning how to hold that Mystery… without needing to control it.

Returning to Sacred Form: Tradition as a Pathway, Not a Prison

It would be easy, after experiencing the vastness of God beyond institutional walls, to turn away from all form and ritual completely. For a while, I did. I thought freedom meant shedding everything that smelled of structure or religion. But over time, I began to see something gentler and wiser:

The problem wasn’t the form itself—it was how we held it.

Liturgy, tradition, spiritual practice—these are not chains when approached with open hands and an awakened heart. They can become sacred containers, shaping our attention and intention. Not to reduce God, but to help us notice God.

Just like a river needs banks to flow with direction, or a poem needs meter to give music to the mystery, the soul sometimes needs structure to make space for Divine encounter.

Ritual as Doorway

The practices of organized religion—when practiced with love, not fear—can become profound tools of transformation. Not because they contain God, but because they orient the soul toward Presence. Like lenses that bring the light into focus, they help us remember.

• Holy Communion isn’t just a symbol—it’s a physical invitation to union.

• Centering Prayer or Lectio Divina opens us not to information, but to revelation.

• Sacred chants and prayer beads still the anxious mind and create rhythm in the heart.

• The liturgical calendar guides us through death, resurrection, and the seasons of the soul, reminding us we are not alone in the spiritual rhythm of life.

These are not destinations. They are vehicles to the unspeakable.

They don’t replace the Presence.

They prepare us for it.

When Tradition Becomes Spacious Again

What if tradition wasn’t meant to hold God in place, but to hold us in place—so that when the Mystery moves, we’re still enough to perceive it?

What if liturgy was a kind of cosmic choreography—an ancient dance that, when entered with openness, aligns the body, mind, and heart toward the One who is always arriving?

What if spiritual practice could become a garden, not a gate?

A place where we plant ourselves daily.

• Where prayer is like sunlight.

• Where silence is like rain.

• And where, slowly, mysteriously, something holy begins to grow.

Back to the Heart

In the end, it’s not structure or spontaneity that brings us closer to God—it’s the heart. A heart awake to love, alive to beauty, open to transformation. The best traditions simply remind us to return to that heart again and again.

So now, I no longer see the journey as a rejection of religion. I see it as a redemption. A coming home—not to the systems that once felt suffocating, but to the soul of what they were always meant to point toward:

Not a God we can define. But a God we can encounter.

A Blessing for the Wilderness-Walkers

If you’ve been wounded by religion…

If the words of faith were used to shame you, control you, or silence your questions…

If what was meant to be sacred became a source of fear or exhaustion…

Then know this: it’s okay—and sometimes necessary—to step away.

Even Jesus went into the wilderness.

For forty days, He walked away from the crowds and the temple, away from expectations and noise, to be alone with the Spirit. He didn’t reject God. He simply made space to hear more clearly.

If that’s where you are right now—if you're in the in-between, in the silence, in the wandering—

then I offer you this blessing:

A Blessing for the Journey

May your heart stay tender, but no longer raw with pain.

May you see with clarity and depth—wisely, truly.

May silence and stillness wrap you in their calm embrace,

and give your weary soul the rest it has long deserved.

May patience walk beside you when the path is slow,

and strength steady you when the ground is uncertain.

May your ears stay attuned to the quiet voice of Presence—always speaking, even in the stillness.

And when your time in the wilderness has run its course,

may you find a community—not of conformity, but of compassion—

that welcomes you as you are and loves you into your fullness.

Because you are a child of God.

And that is enough.

That has always been enough.

Down 4 pounds.