Who is the Lord, that I should know him? Unamuno, Life 8.21
For
Unamuno, God is what appears when we notice the universe aware of us,
as we become aware of ourselves. The mystery of my ongoing communion
with something deeper and greater than what I know or control
perfectly. A principle of continuity that shows me, and welds me to,
my own inner abyss, the microcosm of the ancients, and our mighty
universe, a macrocosm whose borders are too many and too remote for
me to draw in any definitive compass.
El
Dios de que tenemos hambre es el Dios a que oramos, el Dios del pater
noster, de la oración dominical; el Dios a quien pedimos,
ante todo y sobre todo, démonos o no de esto cuenta, que nos infunda
fe, fe en Él mismo, que haga que creamos en Él, que se haga Él en
nosotros, el Dios a quien pedimos que sea santificado su nombre y que
se haga su voluntad —su voluntad, no su razón—, así en la
tierra como en el cielo; mas sintiendo que su voluntad no puede ser
sino la esencia de nuestra voluntad, el deseo de persistir
eternamente.
Y
tal es el Dios del amor, sin que sirva el que nos pregunten como sea,
sino que cada cual consulte a su corazón y deje a su fantasía que
se lo pinte en las lontananzas del Universo, mirándole por sus
millones de ojos, que son los luceros del cielo de la noche. Ese en
que crees, lector, ese es tu Dios, el que ha vivido contigo en ti, y
nació contigo y fué niño cuando eras tú niño, y fué haciéndose
hombre según tú te hacías hombre y que se te disipa cuando te
disipas, y que es tu principio de continuidad en la vida espiritual,
porque es el principio de solidaridad entre los hombres todos y en
cada hombre, y de los hombres con el Universo y que es como tú,
persona. Y si crees en Dios, Dios cree en ti, y creyendo en ti te
crea de continuo. Porque tú no eres en el fondo sino la idea que de
ti tiene Dios; pero una idea viva, como de Dios vivo y consciente de
sí, como de Dios Conciencia, y fuera de lo que eres en la sociedad
no eres nada.
The
God for whom we hunger is the God to whom we pray: the God of the
Pater noster, our prayer on each Sunday. This is the God we
beseech to give us faith, whether we know it or not: faith in him,
who causes us to believe in him; faith that he makes himself in us.
He is the God whose name we beg to hallow, whose will we would see
done—his will, not his reason, mind!—in earth as in heaven. But
we feel his will to be nothing but the most essential part of our
own, the desire to abide forever.
Such
is the God of love, too much for any catechumen to define or
comprehensively describe. Instead, each of us must consult his own
heart, allowing his imagination to depict the Lord in the farflung
corners of the universe, where we witness him by the light of his
thousands of eyes, the stars of the night sky. This is what you
believe in, dear reader, your own God: the one who has lived with you
and in you. He was born with you and shared your childhood. As you
became a man, so did he. When you are unmade, he too comes apart. He
is the principle of continuity in all spiritual life, the foundation
of the solidarity that binds all men together and each man to
himself, uniting us all intact to the universe. Like you, he is a
person. If you believe in God, God believes in you, and believing in
you, he creates you constantly. For in your inner abyss, you are just
the idea that God has of you: an idea that is alive, arising from a
God that lives and is self-conscious, a divine Awareness. Outside of
that relationship, beyond all society, you are nothing.