My Beautiful God

People have dissed or derided polytheistic faiths in favor of monotheism without making an important distinction sadly.
Namely both monotheism and polytheism at its worst has a tendency to rebuild God in Man's image.
Do not worship idols is a commandment in the Bible exhorting us to worship the Creator and not the creation.
What if people, You and me, limited by our sensory organs can only visualize the aspect of divine in the human, can worship the Creator through his creation?
I often have to say it, when we Hindus, worship a clay idol of Durga, it's courage and strength clothed in feminine form we're worshipping, and not a female figure straddling a lion.
We are worshipping the essence of feminine in the divine. The power and potency  symbolized and not the symbol.
And when monotheism worships God in the image of a bearded father figure, or his Son, are they really doing anything different?
It is not man made in God's image, (or why would an entire gender remain unrepresented?), but what they're actually visualizing is God in Man's image.
Worship Creation, if it leads to worship the Creator, to appreciate and praise him, even better.
The abstract emerges eventually from the concrete.
The unseen from the seen.
And yes, God is bound to remain on another plane of abstraction, beyond human comprehension, to be God.
I see God, within and without.
In our hearts and minds, in nature and in the intricacy of science.
God being ubiquitous and omnipotent is bound to be everywhere and in everything.
So why the rules and restrictions, regarding worship?
Worship is but an expression of gratitude.
I can praise God,  for creating mighty mountains, bountiful rivers and plentiful harvests on mother Earth, or I may see God in them and be blessed for it.
Nothing is a sin except to try and regulate the finest expression that the human heart is capable of by saying "Thou shalt not...", without backing it up with reason.
Faith and obedience is extolled over training the mind to reason analyze and formulate one's belief. That to me is the path of despair.
" Scepticism is essential", says the 14th Dalai Lama, I thank him for it.
To train the mind to think,  is to liberate it.
To doubt is a duty.
To question is to embark on the true quest to knowledge.
To know is to value and appreciate true worth.
To discover and distinguish is to elevate humanity.
And do away with differences of opinion and discourses, and discover unity.
 
What else is religion for?

(c) Amrita Valan 2016