Panentheism

Viriditas

2009-01-13T15:11:00.001Z

I’ve been reading about the life and teachings of Hildegard and have been intrigued by her concept of viriditas – the greening life force which emanates from God. We tend to think that our lifeforce -whatever it is that shines from our eyes and which leaves our bodies cold and inanimate in death- is something which is totally our own individually owned thing. It’s ours until we die and it passes on, disappears or reincarnates depending on your viewpoint. The thinking behind viriditas is that, not only does our lifeforce come from God and return to God, it remains part of God throughout our lives.

This is a very panentheistic concept and leads to some exciting (to me anyway!) further thoughts:
- We are a constituent element of God;
- We are in God every moment of every day;
- We are in relationship with all other life-forces through the one viriditas. Not only are all people part of a shared force but so are all living things;
- We are not individual, we exist in a community of interconnectedness.

In John 14 v10 Jesus says “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me” – normally taken as a special claim by Jesus. But what if it isn’t a special claim? What if Jesus is talking about the concept of viriditas? And what if this opens a new way to seeing Jesus’s message: as being centred on the interconnectedness of all things. The kingdom of God is not a place or a destination, it’s where life happens; where viriditas flows.

Blog Action Day: Warriors of the Rainbow

2007-10-15T17:40:00.000+01:00

Blog Action Day: Today is the first annual Blog Action Day, the day bloggers unite to help raise awareness for the environment. Here is The Panentheist's contribution:

Greenpeace, the environmental activist group of which I became a member way back in 1983, named its first anti-whaling ship The Rainbow Warrior. The name came about from a prophesy recorded by the Cree Indian people which, according to Greenpeace ‘foresaw a time when the white man's materialistic ways would strip the earth of its resources, but just before it was too late the Great Spirit of the Indians would return to resurrect the braves and teach the white man reverence for the earth. They would become known as the Warriors of the Rainbow.’

From a panentheistic point of view, the Great Spirit is another attempt by a particular culture to describe and name ‘God’ and is as valid as any other attempt.

The first part of the Cree prophesy certainly seems to be coming true; although the white man has been joined by others of many colours in the stripping and rape of the earth.

Panentheism by its nature endues people with an inherent respect, love and reverence for the earth and for nature. Our environment is holy ground and to see it abused is something that can only be viewed with abhorrence. When the Warriors of the Rainbow rise to reclaim the earth from the despoilers, the panentheists will be in the vanguard.

A Gnostic Thought

2007-10-15T17:33:00.000+01:00

An Act of Gnosis

We know Thee,
Thou eternal thought:
immovable, unchangeable, unlimited and unconditioned;
remaining unchanged in essential essence
while forever thinking the mystery of the universe.
Manifesting three extensions of cosmic power:
creation, preservation and destruction -
Thou, Lord of all.

From: The Gnostic Catechism
by Stephan A. Hoeller and Tau Stephanus I

God-speak...

2007-10-09T10:04:00.000+01:00

One of the keys to understanding panentheism is, in my opinion, to appreciate the limitations of language and to resist the temptation to equate the symbols that we use in theological speech, communications and thought with something that is real and actual.

I believe that ‘God’ does reveal god-self (a better term, borrowed from a friend of mine, to express the gender-less nature of ‘God’ than using him/her/itself) but that this is experienced as an indescribable presence / feeling. As soon as we put words to this we lose the wholeness and completeness and subtlety of the experience.

That is not to say that discussing God is wrong; but it is very limited and all our God-words must be expressed in the humble knowledge and understanding of this.

Maybe when attempting to describe ‘God’ we are like a person trying to describe what the colour ‘purple’ means to someone who has been blind from birth. Purple can only be experienced; it cannot be described without reference to a simile; but the simile can only get over a limited amount of subjective information: it cannot explain the depth and richness and the reality of what ‘purple’ really is.

God Love

2007-10-02T08:22:00.001+01:00

GospelCom.net is heavily promoting the ‘Fathers Love Letter’ – essentially a love letter from God composed of various verses taken from through-out the Bible. (See
http://www.fathersloveletter.com/flltextenglish.html ). While this may be touching in a cheesy sort of way, does it really portray what it means when we say that ‘God is love?’ I would say that it doesn’t and that by focussing on one aspect of love – a father’s love for his child – it actually diminishes rather than builds our view-point.

Whatever we say about ‘God’ is a human conception, based on an incomplete understanding and built using the symbols and expressions that we understand from within our humanity. However, we should never equate our understanding of God with what God is really like. We need to humbly accept our limitations; knowing that what we perceive of God is really only a Plato's Cave shadow image, at best; and completely and utterly wrong at worst.

So when we come to talking about ‘God’s love’ we need to try and move beyond our human experience and expectations of what love is and move to a different level.

I believe that rather than speaking of God’s love; we should speak of God Love. Love is what God is. Period. God doesn't love (an action), God IS Love (a force / a power). I don't believe that we can say that 'God' loves us; but that we are bathed, surrounded, in God Love. God Love is not a gift or something to be earned/ taken away; it is an ever-present reality. It is not something that is directional, in the way that a father directs his love on to a child, it is something that as soon as we become aware of how to open ourselves up to it, it is there ready to experience; ready to change us; ready to be poured out by us.

Life-cycles

2007-09-28T15:01:00.000+01:00

There are three things, and as the former are so will be the third:
Water flowing into the sea whence it came;
The line of a circle ending where it began;
And the soul of a living being returning to God whence it emanated...
Barddas

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?" Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is."
Gospel of Thomas Saying 18

The Cosmos is not wasteful: it is full of cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal. Nothing new comes into the system. What exists has existed since the dawn of time and will never be destroyed. It would not be surprising, therefore, to discover that the same holds true with our spirit / soul. This thought is expressed in the above extracts.

The je ne sais quoi

2007-09-27T20:28:00.001+01:00

When I open my mind, I find that there is something beyond myself;
With myself;
In myself.
I am a community of consciousness;
My spirit is a stream being fed by and returning to the sea of life.
I am from, with and going to the ‘Je ne sais quoi’.

The Eternal Now

2007-09-25T11:55:00.000+01:00

One of my favourite authors is Paul Tillich. His book ‘The Eternal Now’ explores the concept of the Nunc Stans: the panentheistic ‘God’ is not only present throughout the Cosmos at any one moment; every moment of the Cosmo’s duration is present within God in one everlasting reality – the eternal NOW. The following short poem is a response to this concept.

The Nunc Stans.
Boundaryless unlimited existence.
Outside of time,
Your unblinking presence overflows the Cosmos.
Past, present and future all exist in your eternal now.

The emergent ‘God’

2007-09-24T17:38:00.000+01:00

I believe that ‘God’ is a completely natural phenomenon.

To some this will sound strange and heretical but it is the obvious conclusion of taking a panentheistic position. ‘God’ is one with the cosmos, with the natural world and universe; as such, how could God be anything other than natural? That is not to say that the world that we experience, which we see, taste, smell, hear and observe, is the only natural reality; I believe that there are many aspects to the natural universe which we have yet to experience or discover. Just as scientists are discovering that space may be multi-layered; so the time-space bubble that we inhabit may also be multi-layered. So, any surprise we may experience at the thought that God is a natural phenomenon may say more about how little our experience is of what is natural than it does about God him/her/itself.

Once we see God as a natural phenomenon new possibilities occur: the most exciting to me being that it implies that as the natural universe changes, develops and emerges; so God changes, develops and emerges. As consciousness develops; so God develops. As love expands; so God expands. I believe that when Jesus talked about the expansion of the Kingdom of Heaven, this is what he had in mind. God’s power resides in conscious minds which are focussed on love; when love increases, the Kingdom of Heaven expands.

In ‘The Prophet’ Kahil Gibran addresses the same issue, and sums it up much more clearly, when he writes: “When you love you should not say, ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.’

Truth...

2007-09-22T12:50:00.001+01:00

The Beloved:
I am truth.
I stand monolithic and absolute,
Untouched and inviolate.
Since the dawn of time, I am.

The Lover:
I stand in awe; unable to comprehend and hold even one pure truth in all its multi-faceted beauty.

The love paradox

2007-09-22T12:47:00.001+01:00

Love;
You can be an awesome and impregnable fortress,
Yet you are as delicate and easy to crush as the smallest flower.

Panentheism and Christianity

2007-09-21T12:40:00.001+01:00

Nearly all major religions have a number of adherents who interpret their spirituality from a panentheistic point of view, and Christianity is no exception. I have a background in Christian evangelicalism, and while I have moved away from evangelicalism, I still see myself as some sort of Christian, albeit a heretical one in the view of many!

The Bible cannot be said to be a panentheist’s handbook but it does provide some elements of panentheistic spirituality. One of my favourite examples of this is Psalm 139, which provides a song of praise to the God who hems us in - whose presence fills every corner of existence. It highlights a crucial difference between panentheism and pantheism – that being the potential for some sort of individual experience with God and that God has a self and has exert able power. Not all panentheists see God in this way; but the philosophy allows the possibility; and it is one that rings true for me.

What is God?

2007-09-20T15:04:00.001+01:00

One of my favourite books is ‘Barddas’ – a collection of old Welsh documents which contain something of the spirit and theology of the ancient Celtic people and their druid priests. The druids are often portrayed as worshiping multiple gods – in fact this is probably a misunderstanding. It seems that the druids had a much more subtle grasp of spirituality and embraced panentheism; understanding that ‘God’ is in all things. Different names were given to ‘God’ and something of his or her characteristics were thought to be displayed in the Celtic pantheon. However underlying this multiplicity of gods and goddesses was the understanding that these were in fact multiple faces of the unnameable and unknowable One.

In one passage in Barddas, those being initiated into Bardism or Druidism are asked a series of questions; one of which is as follows:

Q: What is God?
A: The life of all lives.

How inspiring a thought. God is nothing without the lives that make up his being; and we are nothing without the life of God which animates us.

In whom I live and breathe and have my being...

2007-09-19T11:16:00.000+01:00

Like the purest and most subtle perfume;
Your presence fills my consciousness.

Ineffable, indescribable;
You are as close as my own soul,
Yet as different and alien as the stars themselves.

In your holy embrace I live and breathe and have my being.
I call out to you and you answer in the echo of my words.

You are Incomprehensible Mystery;
Yet my soul dances with knowledge of you.

You are the one who transcends;
Incarnate in all that is;
Beholden to none.

You cannot be held by our words;
Or by the limits of the human mind.

You are within, beyond, between.
An all embracing reality, without shape or substance.
Haunting presence.
Soul of the Cosmos.