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I fear God's love, but at the same time I am drawn to it. I want to know the love of the Organic God. I want to explore the boundaries and beauty of God's bigheartedness. I want God's love to saturate my being. My soul craves it.
*Margaret Feinberg. The Organic God.
I found you not, O Lord, outside, because I erred in seeking you outside who were inside.
*St. Augustine
Experiences are infinitely reinterpretable; they are open-ended, each penetrated by its unknown consequences, each a fit occasion for wonder.
*James P. Carse. The Religious Case Against Belief.
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
*Thomas Merton
* * *
A woman had two little boys driving her to the edge of despair. They were into everything, non-stop, and they were mischievous.
She decided to take them to her Pastor. The Pastor wanted to see the older boy first, while the younger one sat outside.
The older boy was frightened, for the Pastor looked so austere in his black robe on Sundays. The Minister looked at the young boy somberly. He asked, "Young man, where is God?" The boy had no idea how to reply; so, he remained silent. The Pastor repeated the question, "Young man, where is God?" The boy said nothing. The Pastor thundered a last time, "Young man, I said, 'Where is God?!'"
The boy jumped out of the chair. He ran from the room. He grabbed his little brother, and they raced from the church. The older boy shouted, "Bobby, they've lost God, and they're trying to pin it on us!"
* * *
1 As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
2 I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?
3 Day and night I have only tears for food,
while my enemies continually taunt me, saying,
“Where is this God of yours?”
4 My heart is breaking
as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
amid the sound of a great celebration!
5 Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and 6 my God!
Now I am deeply discouraged,
but I will remember you—
even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan,
from the land of Mount Mizar.
7 I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
8 But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
9 “O God my rock,” I cry,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I wander around in grief,
oppressed by my enemies?”
10 Their taunts break my bones.
They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”
11 Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God!
*Psalm 42, NLT
35Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, suffering, and hard times, or hunger and nakedness, or danger and death? ... 38I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love--not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, 39and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!
*Romans 8.35, 38-39, CEV
* * *
We never lose God, not really. God never loses us, not really. We, however, can experience, as the Psalmist, a profound sense of separation from the Divine Presence.
The sense of absence of God can be related to unrealistic expectations. I used to think a Spirit-filled church would evidence a profound sense of Divine Presence every Sunday in worship. Yes, there are ways to trump up a weekly emotional high, but that is not necessarily linked with the Presence of Love.
"Spiritual" feelings may often be nothing more than a symptom of stimulation of brain neurons. In a "feely" culture, we can easily mistake a substantial, lasting experience of the Sacred with fleeting arousal of emotions.
Worship, as well as private devotion and service, has been more meaningful to me since learning to experience the Sacred in the sense of absence of the Sacred. I have learned that the "sense of absence" itself is the locale of the Divine Fullness.
This experience of God in the sense of absence of God relates to the spiritual process "knowing by unknowing." There is an ignorance James P. Carse, in The Religious Case Against Belief, terms "higher ignorance." Related to knowledge ~ not belief ~, we know more by unknowing more.
Not-knowing is a form of knowing, and a knowledge closer to the Infinite. For the Infinite is infinitely unknowable; therefore, infinitely knowable in Pure Faith.
Likewise, a maturer faith is the faith that grasps the sense of Presence in the sense of absence. The texture of absence, when entered by loving, trusting openness, unveils the Presence that is the Isness within all emotional textures, even the sense of lack of affective sensation often denoting Presence.
Psalm 42 presents this paradox of True Faith. Note, however, how past experience shaped a present lack of sense of God-Presence.
4 My heart is breaking
as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
amid the sound of a great celebration!
He remembers the past, when he experienced the God-Presence in a particular way. That has been taken from him. This act of remembering can solidify faith in the absence of God and, also, be the impulse to renewal of the positive sense of Divine Love.
The psalm offers a third alternative in faith: the first two being, faith in separation from God and an impulse toward the renewal of a lost sense of Presence. This third move entails entering into the absence as the presence of Presence.
Let us refer to a classic statement from Paul, as he speaks to the learned Athenians...
22So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth [i.e., Lord of everywhere], does not live in temples made by man, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28for
"'In him we live and move and have our being';
as even some of your own poets have said,
"'For we are indeed his offspring.'"
There you have it. The nature of Divine Presence is One to be sought. God and our seeking God are complimentary. However, we are each seeking from inside God, for God is the Wholeness that makes us, as part, possible. God encompassing us, each and all, and our being within God are essential to God being God and our being ourselves. Even the sense of God or the sense of not-God is in God.
Our seeking the Infinite, by whatever name or way, is itself an expression and affirmation of the presence of the God-Presence. Therefore, God being God means God is and must be near, for separation would be denial of the infinitude and all-presence of God.
This is a reason contemplative practice is needed much today. Contemplative practice trains us in the experience of God in the felt-sense of the Absence of God. Otherwise, we bounce back-and-forth from the joy of felt-presence and the ache, or even guilt, of felt-absence. True Faith directs us to the summit beyond the dualities of "felt."
So, what to do when you experience a felt-sense of the absence of God?
1) Do not assume that you have done anything wrong to separate God from you. Feelings come, feelings go.
2) Do not stop with devotional practices. Often we are sorely tempted to give up our spiritual means of Grace in times of feeling distant from God. Devotions entails the expression of love, often in the sense of absence of love, or the lack of loving feelings.
3) Be honest about your longings for the sense of God-Near; let this ache itself take shape in prayer.
4) Enter the sense of absence, letting faith affirm God in the very texture of that sense.
What are you to do with a sense of absence in group meetings? Well, apply the same processes as above, now applied in group: do not assume the group has distanced God, engage fully in the experience of the group and its worship; create an environment of honest expression of ache for Presence; relax into the sense of absence of God.
There are times a sense of absence of Divine Presence can be the consequence of spiritual negligence or outright violation of a spiritual principle(s). Paul refers to our potential, for example, to quench the Holy Spirit: "Quench not the Spirit" (I Thess 5.19, AV).
The Revelation mentions the loss of ardent love of God by a church ...
15I know everything you have done, and you are not cold or hot. I wish you were either one or the other. 16But since you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17You claim to be rich and successful and to have everything you need. But you don't know how bad off you are. You are pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
*Revelation 3.15-17, CEV
In the loss of a sense of Presence due to neglect or spiritual violation, the remedies match the cause of loss. In the first, a reengagement of spiritual practice is essential. In the second, an honest confession and redress of the violation is called for.
* * *
1) How does craving for the nearness of God show in your life?
2) What does it mean for you to experience God in the sense of the absence of God?
3) Do you ever allow unrealistic expectations negatively to affect your sense of closeness with Christ?
4) Is it possible you distance from God due to fearing the magnitude and all-knowingness of Divine Love? Explain.
5) How might the following quote from Carse enlighten and encourage your experience of both the felt-presence and felt-absence of the Presence of God?
6) What role might loneliness play in your discovery of the Nearness and Love of God?
Experiences are infinitely reinterpretable; they are open-ended, each penetrated by its unknown consequences, each a fit occasion for wonder.
* * *
*This writer changed "his" to "God's" in the Feinberg quote.
*The Augustine and Merton quotes are from brainyquote.com .
*Charitable contributions would be appreciated to assist Brian in the continuance of his work of ministry. For contributions, contact Brian at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Brian's book of spiritual love poetry, An Ache for Union: Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major booksellers, or through the Cokesbury on-line store, at www.cokesbury.com .
*Brian K. Wilcox lives in Punta Gorda, FL, and Clearwater, FL, with his wife, step-son, and two beloved dogs. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry focused on Christians living as spiritual disciples of Jesus Christ in everyday life. He serves the Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in South Georgia. He lives a vowed, contemplative life and inspires others to experience a more intimate relationship with God-in-Christ. Brian advocates for a spiritually-focused, experiential Christianity and renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons.
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