Original Blessing ~ PanENtheism ~ God as All in All

In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness ... I see what people call god in all these things." (Pablo Casals)

"My Beloved is the mountains,
And lonely wooded valleys,
Strange islands,
And resounding rivers,
The whistling of love-stirring breezes,
The tranquil night
At the time of rising dawn,
Silent music,
Sounding solitude.
The supper that refreshes and deepens love." (John of the Cross)

"God is love - and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God in her." (1 Jn 4:16)

"It is in God we live and move and have our being." (Paul in Acts 17:28)

"The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw - and knew I saw - all things in God and God in all things." (Mechtild of Magdeburg)

"We are in God, and God, whome we do not see, is in us." (Julian of Norwich - you go, girl!)

"God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God." (Hildegarde of Bingen -- wonder if Hilde and Juli knew each other...?)

"Make your home in me, as I make mine in you. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears plentiful fruit." (Jesus)

"Father may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you. I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me." (Jesus, again ... and read that one again, carefully ... dare to realize what He's saying...!)

"Matter is transparent and malleable in relation to spirit." (Teilhard de Chardin)

"I laugh when I hear the fish in the water is thirsty." (Kabir)

"What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without?" (Goethe)

Jung wrote that one of the ways to lose your soul is to worship a god outside of you. The (popular and insane) notion that God is "out there somewhere" is likely the ultimate in dualism ... separating God and humanity, and minimizing a "relationship" with God to an immature state of either pleasing this distant God, or pleading with Him. This creates a subject/object relationship to God ...

But there's another way of seeing God ... Panentheism. Not pantheism. Pantheism says that everything is God and God is everything. PanENtheism says God is IN everything, and everything is IN God. There's a distinction there ... the former makes God irrelevant. The latter seems God as transcendent-Omnipresence.

As Meister Eckhart says, "We must learn to penetrate things and find God there."

As an artist, and as a writer, I recognize this, albeit on a much smaller scale ... my role is to become transparent ... a conduit for the creativity and Dabhar of God, flowing through the mediums of color, words, images ... for His life in me is the only life I have ... the only life there IS.

Panentheism is an awareness of the "amongness" of Immanuel -- God *with* us. Even as Jesus told us, in our midst, within us. This awareness draws us into inter-connectedness with all that is, with all others, even as the "otherness" fades ... we are able to celebrate group-immersion in God on one hand, and yet to enjoy the unique creativity of each amazing demonstration of the diversity of God, in each human being, on the other hand.

It can be said that Panentheism is a "mature" understanding of the Presence of God. It goes beyond seeing God as noun, or even God as verb ... Yes, God is love, and God is justice ... but even more profoundly, God is preposition ... God *with* us, God *in* us, God *of* us, and even, in dawns upon us, God *as* us...!

Shalom, Dena