Where is God

Earth is crammed with heaven. Every bush is aflame with the fire of God, but only those who see take off their shoes. The rest just pick the berries.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

One of the issues we come across in mysticism is to do with where we find God. Classical Theism would say God is separate from creation, transcendent and beyond all things. This God, often depicted as the sky god and usually male is yet, in his remoteness, all seeing and all knowing, a view of God that leads often to guilt and shame and does not necessarily fill us with a great longing to seek to be close.

An opposite view from Classical Theism is that of Pantheism this holds that God is everything and that everything is God. This is a view that has been held in philosophy and many religions throughout the world, particularly the eastern traditions and often indigenous traditions. For the Pantheist, the divine is closer to us than our own breathing, is in and through everything and often this view denies that there is a separate God, especially one who is given an identity as a personal, anthropomorphic being.

So this is seemingly problematic for the Christian mystic then who discovers that God is indeed closer to us that our own being, who is the great lover of the soul and yet who is also transcendent and beyond knowing. To solve this conundrum we would use the term Pan-en-theism. This term refers to God who is both in (as opposed to is ) all creation and beyond; that God is both immanent and transcendent. We see both the immanence and the transcendence of God in and through scripture. In essence though the dualism is illusory and in those moments when the sweet spot of union is discovered the boundary between the transcendent and the immanent becomes decidedly fuzzy.

As we journey along the mystic way we will find our selves coming across these questions concerning who we are in relation to God and the more our contemplative prayer deepens so does our knowing; paradoxically though such knowing has no words or fancy theological terms, it is simply known in the silence of being.

Blessings, Jayne