God in Nature - Paragraphs 9 and 10
Roberts continues on with the many ways God in Nature reveals itself. We’ve looked at her discussion on Omnipresence and the various religions she felt were founded on this revelation. This time we move to an idea she calls God Immanent in Nature. Here’s is our text:
God Immanent in Nature
“Closely aligned to Omnipresence but still a step beyond, is God’s mysterious presence in or within nature itself. Where Omnipresence was global and never focused on the particular. This is where the object of visual focus fades into the divine or the divine emerges from it, overshadows it - however the case may be. Thus where God’s Omnipresence is global, aloof and impersonal, God Immanent or within nature is particular and personal. It is personal because this epiphany is a deliberate showing or manifestation of God to us. It is as if God wanted us to know He sees us. So from this revelation we learn God is not only “in” nature, but wants us to know It, know Its personal presence.
This revelation will have various descriptions not only due to the particular visual focus - be it the sea, cloud, tree, flower, or whatever - but because it can range from subtle to brilliant. It could even stand one’s hair on end. Its common denominator, however, is that it is formless, nonsensory, totally outside oneself. Its “personal” aspect is neither close nor intimate, but more in the order of someone suddenly being pointed out in a crowd by the Almighty - that momentarily stuns the brain. Afterward we don’t know if we should be flattered or afraid, afraid of “what” God really is. (There is something about every revelation that alerts us to the utter disparity between God and man. It makes no difference how close God is or how God may inundate us with overwhelming love, always the disparity is obvious.)”
I really both appreciate and admire how discriminating Roberts can be, which is evident in her discernment between Omnipresence and God Immanent. For myself, who is generally a generalist, I would tend to lump these two revelations together, but I believe the discrimination is important because it reveals the many facets of Love, or what we are calling God. It’s also important because these two revelations are different gifts that can be bestowed to us if we are willing to attend to the moment.
In today’s text the idea of discernment or discrimination is what strikes me most, apart from her last statement about the “disparity between God and man.” But let’s stay with discrimination for a moment. I’m honestly trying to sense into the difference between these two modes of knowing God; Omnipresence and Immanence. The key for me is the clue she leaves between the impersonal and personal. While familiar with both aspects I can sense for myself a preference for the personal. The God Immanent has a subtle softness and welcoming tone to it.
Another way I might say this is that it, immanence, has a quality of communication that is loving, warm, and inviting. I’ve encountered a number of these “immanent” communications where my mind has no idea of what is happening but there is a definite communication between myself and say a mountain, or dancing grains of wheat, or even a person. The tenderness and beauty is what leads me to think of it as very personal, as if Love is saying here I am. There is also a reciprocity present where my response is one of a natural flow of gratitude for the conversation.
As for the impersonal side of things, when I come upon the silent void with its inky blackness a certain fear arises in me. How does one communicate, dance, or be with nothing? Even though it is clear this nothing is something there is a certain aspect of myself that becomes suspicious. At this moment I’m exceedingly grateful for Roberts’ discrimination because I tend to be sloppy in this area and it is very insightful for me to know and understand my preference, and that there is a difference between these aspects of God.
The other interesting piece of this text is her understanding that the “disparity is obvious.” When I read this I immediately thought of the Cloud of Unknowing and Bourgeault’s take on an idea called sorrow of being as found in her book The Heart of Centering Prayer. There’s a chapter in her book titled “Sorrow of Being”, and she translates the text from the Cloud as follows”
“For as often as he seeks to have a true knowing and feeling of God in purity of spirit…he realizes that he cannot, for he finds always that his knowing and feeling are occupied and filled with a foul, stinking lump of himself that must be hated and despised and forsaken if he is to be God’s perfect disciple…and whenever he sees this he goes practically made for sorrow.”
While the gifts of God are greatly bestowed on us, and despite God inundating “us with overwhelming love,” there remains, until such time that it be removed, an understanding of ourself that strikes us as foul or disparate. Bourgeault has more to say on this subject of sorrow, but for our purposes here I think it suffices to say that Roberts too may be alluding to such a “lump” that illuminates the disparity between God and man. Something that alerts us to the dissimilarity from which we usually live.
What this text invites me into is a continued journey towards clarity. For those of you who know the Enneagram you know that the Enneagram Nine can be diffuse and even foggy, not only in their thinking but in their expression of life. As a Nine, this is true for me, and I have practiced bringing more presence, thus more clarity, to conversations, events, and life so that I can actually discern what is happening and respond appropriately. It is a process, like learning a whole new skill set, but one that is very exciting when I remember to do it.
The various practices are the vehicles that build the capacity for presence in the midst of everyday life. I try to practice when life is going smoothly as it makes it easier to access the practice and thus the capacity for awareness and discernment even when I hit a speed bump. Some days are better than others, but with continued practice the second nature of just being here and being aware is becoming more second nature. There is also more willingness to express the delicate nuisances that are present in life. Here’s to another day of practice, and lest I forget here’s to exploring the fear around the impersonal that we discovered earlier. Always much to ponder and work on, but always worth the effort.
