existence

God doesn't exist. Neither do you or I. Sort of.

Better said: who I imagine God to be does not exist. The same goes for the people I know. My conception of them doesn't actually exist, and my conception of myself doesn't actually exist. God is so much more complete than my conception of him, and that's part of the problem. God is not who I think he is. It's not just that my knowledge of him is incomplete, it's that some of what I know about him is false. And so with my friends, with myself, my knowledge is incomplete and in some areas is sure to be false. With people, I sometimes realize this when looking at pictures of them, that I don't have a clue who they actually are.

I'm not sure what that means, what the result of that is.

It doesn't mean that God or others are wholly unknowable, or that true relationship with God and others is impossible. What I think it means is that I should be in a place where I can allow my belief in God and knowledge of who he is to be redefined, and the same with others. I think that's a good place to be in, in less it sinks into this hopelessness that God is so big and that humans are so complex that I might as well give up on knowing anyone. Think of it as being a position of humility, or being open to the truth. It's wrong to mistake our ideas of something for the thing itself.

I was also thinking last night that this means that I really only fully exist in God, that I am only real in God because only God knows who I actually am. To me, I'm just an interpretation.

Maybe this is why touch is so meaningful, too. Touch is not an idea, it's out beyond words. Movement is out beyond words. Words have been, and probably always will be, a huge part of my life, but words still don't match reality (though they have a lot to do with how we experience reality, which is sort of like saying they're reality). Then again, touch and movement and action can all be deceptive, too, but that has to do with our interpretation of touch and movement and action (which is words). This is why it's important to experience God, too, experience gets away from ideas and words.