What if God is a fractal? What if God is a pattern that repeats itself from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, a pattern of life and love and creativity?

Human beings have always used images to help us understand the mysterious. Some images of God are like bigger versions of human beings—the Nicene Creed says “I believe in God, the father almighty.” God has often been seen as a father, a king, a ruler, a judge, or a lord.

But when our understanding of the universe grows more complex than these images, some have been tempted to give up on the idea of God. For many people, it doesn’t make any literal sense to imagine a huge king up in the sky somewhere. And if our experience of these authority figures has been difficult, their images are more likely to inspire fear and guilt rather than help us live our lives.

If I imagine God as a fractal–a self-similar pattern both infinitely large and infinitely small–it helps me to be a whole person—to bring together my reasoning and my heart and my spirit.  It helps my mind to fathom the larger Mystery, as well as to understand the link to that Mystery I feel within my heart.

I am reminded that it is not a new thing to compare God to a geometric shape. The Christian tradition has used the triangle to describe God as trinity. But while the triangle is a static, simple, and smooth figure, a fractal has multiple dimensions, and infinitely complex variations and expressions. That fits my understanding of spirituality—I believe that there are infinite variations in the ways we can experience the holy. As the Sufi poet Rumi has said, “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

There are other metaphors and images of fractal patterns that can expand our idea of God. For example, each cell of the human body contains the DNA pattern that shapes the whole body. If we use our imagination, we might say that human beings are like a single cell in the larger body of the universe and God is like the DNA within each cell, shaping it into its unique being.

Spirituality is a way of connecting our small selves to the mystery and grandeur of the larger whole of which we are a part.  If the larger whole is a fractal pattern, then in some deeply important way, we are already connected by the very pattern itself.