I believe that the vast, positive, largely inexpressable capacities that we each have --- capacity to love, to help, to understand, to share, to sing, to give, to be generous -- add up in the aggregate to much more than the sum of our combined parts, even though that sum would be incalculably great. Into that aggregate also flows the universal will to survive, which is observable in every little blade of grass, every dot-sized fruit fly, every life form including planets and seaweed and earthworms and ants and people and all - all of those "Will-Survive"s add up to a great loud, deep, massive chorus of "WILL SURVIVE." In my world-view, that great chorus has the attributes of a being. And I can talk to it. It is like floating down a massive river, which WILL find a way to go downstream no matter how large a dam it runs into, and I can talk to the current, and sometimes it responds to me. When this understanding took form in my heart, I realized that the term "God" would work as a metaphor for what I meant, but at first I would always start out with a half-hour disclaimer about "what I don't mean, not the old bearded guy..." Now I don't waste my time trying to explain it. It doesn't matter, really. I figure the term God is always a metaphor, because anyone over the age of 12 or so knows it isn't the old bearded guy on the cloud, it isn't just a Judeo-Christian form of Zeus. We are all inter-connected, and the nature and substance of what connects us is this mysterious thing, to which I talk, and to which I attempt to listen.