immanence – Lavish Wisdom

The book of Nature

I have always been a lover of nature and when I first came across the notion that God in fact wrote 2 books, the first being the book of nature and the second the book of scripture, it made perfect sense to me. So much of my childhood was spent in our remote cottage in the beautiful Forest of Dean which gave me an acute sense of the divine running in and through all of creation; there I discovered, in the silence and the solitude, a relationship with the immanent Presence that no words could even come close to describing. I have to confess that were I allowed to skip chapel on Sundays to stay in my beloved hidey holes in the forest I would have much preferred to do so as sometimes I found the words of the preachers (at lest those with a literal perspective) quite contrary to the God of nature whom I had grown very close to.

All these decades on I am thankful for my mothers insistence on weekly attendance at church because I realise now that this gifted me a really good grounding in the book of scripture, despite my issues with those preachers who read it in ways that I continue to disagree with.

John Keats, one of the great romantic poets, was not a religious man at all but his poetry so often reaches in to me in ways that affirm my own relationship with what I think of as the divine presence of the immanent God. Here is a favourite

O solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. ~ John Keats

The Silent Encounter

Learning to be silent is an important part of experiencing the subtle movement of God in the soul, or of listening for the ‘still small voice’ we might say (metaphorically speaking). Inner silence helps us to develop an interior ability to perceive, intuit or experience God in the depths of our being. This ability does not derive from the faculties we normally use to navigate the external world. Such faculties are more to do with the earthly aspect of ourselves rather than the deepest part of the soul which, according to Meister Eckhart, is where our ground and God’s ground is one.

Our union with God then is already a present reality within us all – there is no separation, but we are generally not awake to this in our ‘fallen’ state. Our faculties of will, intellect and senses are so geared towards the noise of the external world, grasping after that which would make us whole, we have failed to see that there is nothing missing in the first place.

Theresa of Avia would have us understand that we cannot think our way to enlightenment (union). Reason has its place of course but to enter into the bliss which is God’s ground within the soul we must learn to recollect our faculties, bringing them to stillness. From here we can begin to discover a silence that draws us into the pure presence of God where even a moment of merging with such bliss will bring us to a wholeness we never could have deemed possible. Truly a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

Erroneously we have been taught that such encounter with God is not possible on this side of the curtain which divides life from death. The mystics would tell us otherwise and advise that to taste this for ourselves we should let go of our rational, cerebral search for knowledge of God and give the intellect a rest; none of this will take us to the direct encounter. Develop a practice of inner silence and stillness and in this you will find the portal to awakening to an encounter with the God who was there all along.

Such an encounter will change you, in some ways beyond recognition and will almost certainly, in time call you to service, activism and work in the world that previously you may not even have imagined would be yours to do (contemplation and activism are two sides of the same coin) – and yes, this can be the scary part of such encounter. Yet that direct touch, no matter how brief, emboldens and carries us through whatever the path ahead might hold.

To discover more about developing the practice of inner silence please get in touch through our contact page.

Blessings, Jayne

Contemplating Nature

For me, days off are definitely days to immerse oneself in nature. Indeed my earliest ‘mystic’ experiences came to me in the stunning surroundings of remotest Forest of Dean where I have spent a good deal of my life from around the age of 4 years. All these years on I remain very connected with ‘the forest’ in my work and I am very fortunate that it is a mere stones throw from my home.

So, having learnt to be still in nature and to find myself refreshed and renewed just about anywhere that forests and streams co exist, well, such places are oases for me in my work as a busy minister.

Most devastating to me is our attitude towards nature. We misinterpret scripture which tells us that we were given dominion over creation to mean that we must subdue, control and use it for our own benefit. We have long since put paid to pre-Christian and indigenous wisdom that respected creation, understood it to be enspirited and understood that human survival depended on our good guardianship of this great gift. Sadly the developing institutional church saw such animism as a great threat and ensured that the god made in the image of the human ego was remote from nature rather than immanent and in so doing opened the portal to the abuse of creation.

As we grow in our contemplative practice so does our awareness of the immanence of God flowing through all things, this is why mystics are passionate nature lovers and activists. Consider this quote from Thomas Merton

“Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of God. Every star that man has not counted is a world of sanity and perfection. Every blade of grass is an angel singing in a shower of glory.” ~ Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable

So yes I am a lover of the divine which I sense in all nature, I am a fierce guardian and make no apologies for the relationship I share with animals and plants of all varieties.

Anyway, to return to my day off which was today; I spent most of it in this well hidden, secret oasis which I discovered when curiosity got the better of me and I simply had to explore what lay behind this secluded and seemingly forgotten gate.