Invisible Friend

September 16, 2016

As an only child I had an imaginary friend that I played with. We got along fine. Didn’t some philosopher say, “If there wasn’t a real friend, you’d have to invent one”? I don’t remember how old I was when I stopped playing with my “friend.” I had also been taught from a young age to talk with an invisible friend named “God.” Those conversations were called “prayer.” Our whole family talked with our invisible friend. At church we sang songs about him. We praised him. We confessed our wrongdoing to him. We were taught to do what he wanted us to do.

 I’m still in love with this invisible Friend. I still talk to him, though I now believe that he is not really a male. Sometimes I call him my Mother; or the Spirit; or the Loving Energy of the universe; or the Heart pulsing at the center of everything. There are days when I think he is an “imaginary” friend; not real. Made up. But I’ve been his friend so long that he is part of my life. I know there are people who would make fun of me if they knew that I still had an imaginary friend. (“Imaginary” meaning one I have to image in my mind.) But I also live with imaginary electrons and imaginary photons and lots of other imaginary stuff that I can’t see.

 “But,” someone will say, “electrons, etc., can be known by their effect.” Right. And my imaginary Friend is also known by his effect. He has given me self-respect, the ability to accept myself, the motivation to love all people, a desire for justice in the world, a feeling of meaning to my life, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of hope. And not only for me, but for billions of people all around the world. I know—I know. 

Someone will say that I don’t need my invisible Friend for those effects; I can have all of that without living with the illusion of someone who doesn’t exist. Maybe. Except that I wouldn’t know where to turn for a sense of meaning and purpose and hope. And I might decide that the whole justice and love ethic is simply an illusion too. So, you can have your own imaginary source for the longing for justice and peace and wholeness; and I’ll have mine. I tend to believe that without God any authentic ethic or meaningful hope is an illusion. 

In some early Greek manuscripts of the Book of Revelation, the number 666 is actually 616.

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