Immanence and Presence
Yesterday I was reading through a conversation some colleagues were having on a listserv about all kinds of life-beginning questions...like, if there was a big bang, what existed before it? Anything? And how can a being who is immanent and transcendent relate to humans in any kind of explainable, understandable way?
One person suggested that you can't try to engage the question and then play the "mystery" card (although I think you can if you want to). My own feeling is that God, the Universe, the divine, Life, Love, whatever you want to call this force that lifts your heart and makes your fingernails grow, is encountered, understood, felt, sensed, engaged only in the Now.
I cannot talk with God (as I might choose to call this force) in the past or the future. There's nothing I can do to escape the confines (or, I might say, the arising) of this moment and be in another timeframe in order to make contact. It happens only here and now, and I think that's where the immanence becomes presence--right here, right now. When I am present with awe, gratitude, a sense of beauty, hope, and love, I am in contact with what I feel as a universal, loving energy--a vital force (and personal, too) that lifts, loves, grows, connects, embraces.
The immanence that enables this loving force to be anywhere and everywhere is certainly not my doing, but it does bring that transcendent, immanent force into my realm of existence, my here-and-now, where I can feel, experience, and relate to it. This moment brings the immanent right here, face to face, shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath with me. I can make contact. :)
So how do we know the clerk at the 7-11 isn't immanence showing up as presence? Or that the guy who just cut you off in traffic is God in disguise? Or that the baby you're holding in your arms is a perfect and beautiful idea of God?
Maybe we're all, as the poet said, bits of stardust and we recognize each other's immanence by the twinkle in our eyes when we smile. :)
Yesterday I took this photo of mushrooms growing in my flower bed (we've had a lot of rain). Beautiful, aren't they? The mushrooms look almost like crystal, delicate, so alive. The photo was taken at 7:30 AM, and when I took Pearl outside at 9:30 AM, the mushrooms had begun to shrivel. By afternoon they were no more than little sticks that looked like dried grass. Overnight I wondered whether the mushrooms would come back this morning--will they grow again, puff up with life? But no--today still the little stickish remains of the mushrooms lay flat on the ground. They were a little fatter, as though some life was still responding to the dew and the rising sun. But there was no spectacular blossoming as there had been the day before. The mushrooms arose one day, did what mushrooms do, and that was that. Kind of sad, really.
Good morning, everyone! I just created my first
I've just had a birthday. We recently got a new puppy, Pearl. :) Cameron's summer has begun. Christopher graduated from college. People come and go. Jobs go away, and new jobs come. People join your class, they leave, and they return.






