The Divine is Everywhere

This week's quotation is by Annie Besant, the 20th century socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist and human rights activist. It reads, "Underlying everything is an eternal, infinite, unknowable, real Being."

Most of it makes sense to me, because I have felt it. For me, God, the Divine, Spirit of Life and Love, is eternal, infinite and real. But not unknowable. At least, not entirely. I believe we can only get glimpses of the Divine, but we can be aware of Her / Him / It in everything around us, in ourselves and in each other. 

Which makes me a panentheist, which is defined in Cross's The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church as "the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him [sic], but that His [sic] Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe."

So the Divine is not only beyond and eternal and infinite, but also immanent, within all things. As the Quakers would say, there is "that of God in everyone". To which I would add, "in everything".

I was first shown this as a little girl, when my father took me out into the garden and asked me to look - really look - at one flower and to appreciate the wonderfully intricate design of it. He told me (and I'm paraphrasing now) that the amazing way that everything fits together is evidence for the existence of God, because nothing so wonderful and intricate could have come into being at random.

And, unlike many of the nuggets of wisdom that parents share with their children, that one has stayed with me. I am still filled with awe and wonder at the the beauty and intricate coherence of the natural world and often stop, on my walks in the forest, to give thanks.

The understanding that this Divine presence also extends to humankind has taken longer to penetrate. But now I do honestly believe that there *is* that of God in everyone. I have also come to believe that God is Love at the centre of everything. And that the best way of worshipping Him / Her / It is to recognise that and to try to live in the world in response to it. 

Which ain't easy. It is far easier (and perhaps more instinctive) to make snap judgements about everyone we meet, rather than waiting to get to know them and then to perceive the divine Spark at work within them. None of us is perfect, but if we try to bear the everywhereness of God / the Divine in mind, we might learn to relate to the world in better, more productive ways.