Between Footsteps and Flame

A Mystical Reflection on God for my mother

In this reflection, we follow the quiet path between what’s passed and what’s possible—a tender meditation offered in honor of a mother’s light.

Written on my mother’s birthday, this meditation traces the divine across scripture, myth, and memory. It’s a letter of reverence—for her and for the mystery that walks with us.

Between Footsteps and Flame:

For my mother—who taught me to ask sacred questions.

Te tɛŋŋ? Namɔ Nyaŋɛmɔ?

Who is God? Is He a man, or is He a spirit?

This is not a new question. It is an old fire that still burns in the bones of the world.

In the book of Genesis, God walks. Adam hears His footsteps in the cool of the garden. He calls out to Moses from a bush. He wrestles with Jacob through the night. These are not metaphors. These are movements. Sacred choreography. The Divine embodied.

But elsewhere, God becomes vapor. Wind. Voice. In Exodus, when Moses asks to see God's face, the answer is a divine eclipse: "You cannot see My face and live." God hides Moses in a cleft of rock, allowing only the passing afterglow to be seen.

And still, the Vedas whisper of Brahman—the all-pervading Spirit, the source of Atman (soul), where the drop is never apart from the ocean. In Hindu cosmology, the divine appears in many forms, yet is always One. Karma is the invisible current, not of punishment, but of participation—in an endlessly unfolding tapestry of cause and effect.

In Greek myth, there is Semele, the mortal who asked to see Zeus in his true form. Her request was granted. She was consumed. The divine, unfiltered, was too much.

So who is God? Man or spirit? Form or flame?

Maybe the better question is perhaps: What does the divine wear so we do not burn?

We are told in Psalms: "What is man, that you are mindful of him? You have made him a little lower than Elohim, and crowned him with glory and honor." Here, humanity is not beneath the divine, but brushing up against it. Cloaked in its image.

Colossians later says: "In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." The mystery condensed into form. Footsteps and flame.

And still the question burns.

My mother asks not as a philosopher, but as a daughter of legacy. Her ancestors knew a God who walked in sandals, who spoke in thunder, who lived in the spaces between ancestors and unborn generations. She resists a God too vast to touch, too spirit to be near. She longs for presence. Proximity.

But what if God is both?

What if Spirit took on form not once, but always? Not to limit, but to love? Not to diminish, but to dwell?

The angels in scripture walk, speak, eat. They are men with messages. They are spirit clothed in comprehension. And perhaps God, too, wears such robes for our sake. As Christ. As cloud. As friend.

So I offer this not as a scholar, but as a son. Not as one who knows, but as one who listens.

God is the fire that speaks and the wind that follows. God is man enough to walk beside us, and spirit enough to hold the whole of us.

Maybe God is what remains when all our names fall away.

Misumɔɔ bo awo.