Theism is not God. It is a human definition of God that assumes that God is a being, perhaps the "Supreme Being," supernatural in power, dwelling outside the world (usually thought of as above the sky), who periodically invades the world in miraculous ways to answer human prayers or to effect the divine will.

Suppose God is not defined as "a being," but is simply experienced as a power, a presence. Then describing that experience is quite different from claiming to know who or what God is. Then the question is, "Are we delusional or is this experience real?" I think God is real and I believe we are in the process of defining our God experience in a new way that will replace the dying theistic definition of the past.

I think of the God experience as the power of life, love and being flowing through the universe and coming to consciousness in human self-awareness alone. I therefore feel that by living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I can be I can make the God experience visible. I also believe that it is my Christian vocation to build a world where all people have a better chance to live, love and to be. It is when I do these two things, I believe, that I am engaging in the essence of worship. - John Shelby Spong

I keep finding Bishop Spong helpful in thinking about what it is I believe. At this point, I really don't have discussions with others about this. I mainly reflect on what happens in church and what I read. I haven't read any books lately so these occasional emails from Bishop Spong usually give me something to think about.

We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion.-- Pico Iyer, "The Eloquent Sounds of Silence", Time, January 1993
My spouse and I became aware of Pico Iyer when we went to see Amy Tan at a local university. The program consisted of Pico Iyer sitting on stage with Amy Tan having a discussion. The emphasis was on him drawing her out with good questions; it was quite pleasant and interesting.
Now we have started to notice his name mentioned or quotes by him. I thought this quote from Dictionary.com Word for the Day was a great use of word that can also mean "eating too much." I was pleasantly surprized when I realized it was quoting Pico Iyer. I can't remember all the other instances but we have become quite taken with him.
I don't remember who was was quoting him in this passage that I sent to my daughter who was planning to go to Europe for summer school for a month.

In his seminal essay, "Why We Travel," Pico Iyer writes, "All good trips are about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder." Travel stretches us so that our mental clothes don't fit anymore; it reminds us over and over that the anchoring assumptions of our youth lose their hold in the global sea. Travel to strange places can make us strangers to ourselves, but it can also introduce us to all the exhilarating possibilities of a new self in a new world.

Postscript: I recently heard about his book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and found out there was this interview on one of my favorite shows, Fresh Air from WHYY, on March 26, 2008.