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. :)

 

 

The Brief, Living Moment

 

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.

Except. If the way in which we bless life--and whomever or whatever we understand as having bestowed this great gift on us--is to live it fully, to thrust forward and blossom and do it to our utmost, then these mushrooms have added their blessing to the world. In the brief, living moment they were fully alive. What a way to receive the gift! And--without intending it, perhaps--what a way to bless everything with your aliveness.

 

Listen to the podcast.

Spacious and Happy

 

I've just started reading Being Prayer: Transforming Consciousness, by Mary Rees (Nutshell Publications, 2006), and it is wonderful! I particularly love this quote:

"Through awareness, release, letting go, and through attention to experience, we come to self-knowledge, discovering that we are not what we thought ourselves to be. We are less substantial, but also less limited, much fuller and richer. We are innately capable of being spacious and expansive, wise and compassionate, joyful and happy." (p 4)

May you have a spacious, wise, compassionate, and joyful day!

 

To See the World in a Raindrop

 

Good morning, everyone! I just created my first Spooning Away at Infinity podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here.

 

Listen to the podcast.

 

Here is the full text of To See the World in a Raindrop.

Have a great day! :)

 

All of the Above

 

I just posted a new presentation on Scribd.com that's all about the common life of spirit we all share. I created the presentation to share at a lunchtime talk on inclusive spirituality for Hancock Regional Hospital, and we had a great discussion about traditions and relating to each other no matter what our spiritual tradition might be.

Here's the presentation as it appears on Scribd.com. I hope you enjoy it and would love to hear what you think!
All of the Above

Change, change, change

 

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.

The sun rises and the sun sets. It rained today, and it will be sunny tomorrow. Flowers are growing everywhere.

Everywhere.

Even places no one told them to grow.

Even places not planned by human planners. Not watered with watering cans. No Miracle Gro. Just miracle.

Spring is blossoming quickly into summer--another summer, and yet completely new. The wind is constantly fresh, wherever you are in the world. There is no old breeze, no breeze you recognize. It's all new to us. We're figuring it out as we go. And that's okay--we have each other. :)

Rolling the Stone Away

I hope wherever you are in the world and whatever tradition you claim as your own, you had a beautiful day filled with life and love yesterday. I attended my Quaker meeting in the morning and our pastor (my meeting is semi-programmed) spoke about the immediacy of the presence of God in our midst...how the resurrection is really about Life not in the past but Now. A wonderful message.

I left envisioning that moment in the story when Mary goes to the tomb and the rock has been rolled away. The one she's looking for is no longer there. I was thinking, "what have I entombed in my life that isn't there anymore?" Perhaps saving love for a special someone. Maybe holding back from telling the whole story. Maybe keeping a rein on my own creativity. Perhaps clinging to old stories that no longer fit.

What have you entombed in your life as "that's the way it is" or "welcome to my life"? Perhaps if you really look, you'll see the rock has been rolled away and all that energy is free now, out in the world blessing others, flying to the points on the globe where it can do the most good.

Epiphanies

In honor of the 58th anniversary of Thomas Merton's epiphany (shown below), the Merton Institute of Contemplative Living invited people to share their own epiphany moments. The result is a set of PDF files with more than 100 entries. The stories are uplifting and hopeful--if you have a moment, check it out.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race ... there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all of the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed...

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1996

Daily blossom of mindfulness

Hi everyone, I hope you're having a good March! I created the PDF available at the following link after reading a beautiful online interview with Thich Nhat Hahn. I thought it would be wonderful to print the reflection and put it where I will read it each morning as I'm preparing for my day. What more do we need? A grateful and graceful life full of compassionate action. Beautiful. :)

Download Mindfulness Makes Life Beautiful and Meaningful

Thinking of friends in Santiago...

Promises for you...

He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

...and...

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

-- Psalm 91:4 and 91:11-12

Spiritual direction(s)

It is interesting how life continues to shape us (as we shape life) and bring happy new possibilities and opportunities for growth. Not long ago a friend who is also a family therapist recommended a dear client to me for spiritual direction, and that sweet event planted a seed that is blossoming into a spiritual direction practice. This is a natural outgrowth of my time in seminary (with an MDiv in pastoral care and counseling), my years as an on-call chaplain for two Indianapolis hospitals, and the observing and living and writing I do here on this blog (as well as on my Narrative blog and Scribd publications).

• Here is my practice statement
  
• Here is my privacy policy

Fascinating, growing, wonderful things...blossoming in love. What is your heart whispering to you today? Take a minute to listen quietly...I'll bet whatever it is, it points you in the direction of Joy. :)

I *heart* Albert Einstein

Whether you interpret this quote through a Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, naturalist, environmentalist, genealogical, historical, or quantum physics lens, it whispers come out and play...

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” --Albert Einstein

Manifesting what we hope for

I've been thinking a lot lately (really, always) about our ability to create. A number of years ago, I heard someone say, "If you want to see what your own thought looks like, look around." This was a profound statement for me. Look at my relationships; look at my house; look at my work; look at my dreams. What did my thoughts look like? What was currently manifesting in my life? If it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for in my heart, did I have some blocks to break through in that area?

That idea has stayed with me all these years and I can look around today and see and know that I do in fact have great shaping power on my own life. I'm not saying there are no other influences, but perhaps the volume on those other influences can be turned down (or off) depending on how well I am able to lovingly manage and direct my creative thought. I can see how my own beliefs about certain things have created barriers (that could and can be dissolved) to some aspects of wholeness I am still opening to.

I've watched movies like The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? and I love the creative power they represent and the ideas they hold out to us--that perhaps the ability to create loving, harmonious, beautiful lives is truly within us. My own developing thoughts and beliefs need to put all that creative potential in the context of divine relationship--I want what I create in my life to be the expression of God; creations in line with truth, beauty, goodness, wholeness, kindness, and peace.

To get a clearer picture of both my intention to create and the result (I often skate right on by the result and move to the next thing, which keeps me feeling like I never reach any destination), I created this simple form yesterday to help me identify (1) the idea I want to manifest; (2) whether the environment is supportive for that idea right now or not; and (3) what actions I need to take to make it happen. Seems simple, right?

The big aha for me was in realizing that creating something doesn't just involve an idea and effort--it also needs a supportive environment, which I haven't always had for the things I wanted to create. I'd have the idea and dive right into the effort, working and working and working at something, without noticing that the right supports weren't present to support the idea's growth. Maybe others weren't cooperating. Perhaps I didn't really have the time. It could have been any number of things. But I recognize that my own pattern is to throw myself head-long into projects and then work really hard--maybe even harder--if the environment doesn't have the support I need to reach the goal.

Well, no more. This form helps me assess the supportiveness of the environment, as well as crystalize the idea, plan my action, and then name and celebrate the result. Let's see what happens! Here's the form in case you want to try something similar, too. If you use the form and find that it's helpful (or not, really), post a comment or write to me and let me know--I'd love to hear about your experience, too.

Happy Friday!