God in Nature - Paragraphs 13 and 14

The One Thing Happening

It is good to be back with Roberts today as our last look at her work was more than three weeks ago. Life has been happening, in all its ordinary and extraordinary ways. There have been vacations, both personal and family, and retreats; full days, quiet days.

Yet I find that even in these punctuated full and quiet events that they are part of the rhythm of this ongoing conversation with Roberts, part of the same slow unfolding she describes for us. Perhaps that’s what I am slowly learning, and what life is teaching me, that nothing is outside the field of the sacred.

So, it feels good to return to the practice of slow listening through her words. Roberts continues her exploration of Omnipresence in today’s passage, describing what she calls “another experience worth mentioning.”

Here is today’s text:

“There is another experience worth mentioning. While not the original revelation of God-Omnipresent, it nevertheless awakens us to a Mysterious dimension of nature beyond ordinary existence. In this experience our whole being seems as if dissolved—become lightsome or buoyant—into a transcendent dimension of nature, a delightful and utterly fulfilling state of existence. The true nature of the delightful ‘Medium’ in which nature exists and seems to drift, is the Omnipresent.

Immersed in Its mystery as part and parcel of nature, there is no sense of being one with anything; in fact, whatever ‘we’ are, could be anything—it didn’t matter. What matters is the Omnipresent mystery in which all things exist, virtually a heavenly dimension of existence. (For myself, I was convinced the elements of matter existed in the marvelous dimension and that this was their everyday experience.) What we learn from this experience is that somehow nature itself exists in God. Thus not only is God Omnipresent throughout nature, but nature itself is immanent in God.”

Before diving into this description, it helps to recall how Roberts defined Omnipresence earlier:

“Because this revelation lacks the particular, it is global in nature, a non-particular presence, more in the order of an experiential knowledge than a discrete ‘experience.’ It defies being seen as an object or as residing anywhere. Our initial encounter with this Omnipresence is thus tied to the more formless elements in nature—earth, sea, and sky—rather than any particular form in nature—flower, rock, or whatever.”

Dissolving into the “One Thing”

Here, Roberts distinguishes between two kinds of omnipresence knowing. The first, more “global” revelation, is not an experience of something but an awareness, a knowing that has no object and no location. The second, which she calls “worth mentioning,” carries the sense of the self dissolving into something boundless, luminous, and mysteriously natural. We often miss these moments of self dissolution, which we might call moments of no identity, but if you pay attention they are there to be found.

Earlier, Roberts made a careful distinction between Presence and Omnipresence. Presence holds the subtle sense of a “me” encountering a “Thou,” but Omnipresence dissolves that duality altogether. What she is describing here is a continued unfolding, so much so that even nature’s particular forms are seen as existing within an undivided field.

She uses the word Medium for this field. That choice matters. Roberts isn’t describing a background presence or atmosphere we occasionally enter; she’s pointing to the very field in which everything already lives and moves. The Omnipresent isn’t something outside us, it is the reality that holds all things together.

As I reflect on today’s text the christian phrase God is One comes to mind. Over the years that phrase has been misused and distorted in ways that divide rather than unite, but perhaps its original meaning is closer to what Roberts gestures toward, that there is only one thing happening. That is not to say that I am God, but that there is only God; that the very essence of my person called “Kim,” is this same Life expressing itself uniquely in all various forms.

This knowing doesn’t erase our distinctness; rather, it reframes it. The tree, the mountain, the neighbor, each has its own role in the one unfolding mystery. Each, as Roberts says, exists in God.

Her phrasing turns our usual theology inside out. We often imagine that God somehow dwells within creation, hidden in the material world like a secret spark. Roberts reverses that. Creation itself exists in God. It is not that the divine hides in the world; it is that the world is hidden in the divine. We might even say it IS the divine.

Practicing the Presence

How does one live into this awareness that Roberts is pointing toward?

For me, it comes as moments of subtle recognition: a stillness in the midst of motion, a breath where time feels suspended, a sense that what’s looking out through my eyes and what’s looking back through creation might not be two.

I don’t go looking for these moments. They arrive unannounced, gifts of grace unachievable via goals or effort. Roberts herself cautions against grasping at such experiences, reminding us that no experience, however transcendent, is nothing but an experience of the self and not, in fact, the divine’s experience. What matters is the transformation of perception: learning to see all things as already held within God, whether the moment feels luminous or utterly ordinary.

So my part is to remain available. To live by faith understanding that even when I do not feel the Omnipresent, I am still held within it.

The practice becomes very ordinary: slowing down, breathing intentionally, showing up as I am, messy, distracted, human, and let awareness widen. Some days that means simply noticing the way light moves across the room, or the way a conversation hums with quiet aliveness beneath its words.

Each moment, if I let it, is enough for a possible seeing.

A Shared Invitation

Perhaps that is why Roberts first speaks of the formless elements, the earth, sea, and sky. They train our gaze toward the vastness that holds all form.

Mary Oliver, in her poem “Praying,” offers a kindred invitation:

“It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.”

Oliver’s words echo Roberts’ vision. Both remind us that the sacred does not require grandeur, only attention. The doorway into awareness is not somewhere else but right here, in a patch of sky or handful of moments, even this ordinary breath. Maybe the contemplative path is simply learning to live from that vastness until even the smallest thing, a weed, a stone, a glance, reveals the boundlessness of Life.

May we pause today and breathe, remembering that we already exist in God; the boundless sea within which we drift and belong. Perhaps that’s our shared practice: to live as if there is only one thing happening, to meet the ordinary as the very medium of the divine, and to trust that every moment unfolds within the quiet, luminous life of God.

May we keep learning to live from that one life, the quiet center that is always, already, holding us.

IMAGE: Cody Cloud (codycloud.com)