Not having an unhealthy notion of God doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a particularly healthy one. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the God he was raised with was not overly stern and judgmental, but neither was he very joyous, playful, witty, or humorous. He wasn’t sexual and had a particularly vigilant and uncompromising eye in that area. Essentially, he was grey, a bit dour, and not very joyous to be around. Around him, you had to be solemn and reverent. Under such a God, you had permission to be essentially healthy, but to the extent that you took him seriously, you still walked through life less than fully robust, and your relationship with him could only be solemn and reverent. We rarely recognize what tells us about God and, equally, fail to seek out literature that outlines key aspects of knowing that which is ineffable. What kind of creator makes billions of throwaway universes? What kind of creator makes trillions upon trillions of species of life, millions of them never to be seen by the human eye? What kind of father or mother has billions of children? And what does the exuberance in the energy of young children say about our creator? What does their playfulness suggest about what must also lie inside of sacred energy? What does the energy of a young puppy tell us about what’s sacred? What do laughter, wit, and irony tell us about God? When we try to imagine the heart of reality, we might picture things this way: At the very center of everything, there sit two thrones. On one sits a King, and on the other sits a Queen, and from these two thrones issues forth all energy, all creativity, all power, all love, all nourishment, all joy, all playfulness, all humor, and all beauty. All images of God are inadequate, but this image hopefully can help us understand that God is perfect masculinity and perfect femininity, making perfect love all the time and that from this union issues forth all energy and all creation. Moreover, that energy, at its sacred root, is not just creative, intelligent, personal, and loving; it’s also joyous, colorful, witty, playful, humorous, erotic, and exuberant at its very core. To feel it is an invitation to gratitude. The challenge of our lives is to live inside that energy in a way that honors it and its origins. That means taking our shoes off before the burning bush as we respect its sacredness, even as we take from it permission to be more robust, free, joyous, humorous, playful, and especially more grateful.