The ancients knew it. Modern physics confirms it. We live in a universe suffused with energy. Many traditions and religions call it Spirit. In the Biblical creation myth, Spirit hovers over the primordial chaos, then moves on the waters to create everything we know. Later in that story, Creator God forms out of earth the non-binary ancestral two-legged being from whom all humanity descends. Creator God breathes Spirit, the breath of life into their nostrils and they became a living being. From the very beginning, Energy/Spirit, moves, creates, enlivens.
Panentheism evokes the cosmos saturated with Divine Presence – a universe overwhelmed with Spirit, inside and out, within and surrounding all of Creation – the animate and so-called inanimate, dark matter and light – an all-encompassing Energy that includes the Star people, the Rock people, mighty cedars and tiny protozoa – water, air, land, fire and ice. It includes every thing. The creatures that swim, or crawl, or walk or fly, the four-leggeds and the two-leggeds – the visible universe and all that is hidden. All are Spirit bound (or unbound). Panentheism says that God, Divine Energy, Spirit, is larger than the universe, that it includes and interpenetrates everything.
In this panentheistic understanding, Energy, Spirit is both universal and intimate. In theological language, Spirit/God is both transcendent and immanent. While transcendence implies that the Divine is outside of humanity's full experience, perception or grasp, immanence makes it knowable, perceivable, within our grasp. The Divine paradox.
For Christians, this paradox is mediated by the embrace of both the fully human divinity of Jesus, and after his physical death, to the outpouring of Spirit onto all humankind. As at the beginning – and experienced again through the prophetic voice that breathes life back into the dry bones we human are prone to become – this infusion of Spirit Energy reunites and relates us not only to the Divine, but to one another and the universe. Everything is connected.
Our intimate relationship with that Spirit Energy, that Breath of Life inhabiting the entirety of our universe creates kinship between us and everything that exists. Which is where it gets interesting, and complicated. If we are indeed kin to everything in the universe, that implies a kinship responsibility of care for one another. A responsibility to ensure that everyThing thrives. That everyOne thrives. Not just in our own back yard, but everyWhere. Not just the Things that serve me and my needs. Not just the Ones that look like me, think like me, dance like me. Not just the Where that I love and inhabit.
The 20th Century teacher and theologian Walter Brueggemann said, “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us…the formation of an alternative community with an alternative consciousness is so that the dominant community may be criticised and ultimately dismantled … Jesus … practiced the energizing of the new future given by God.” Walter Brueggemann (Growing Hope: Daily Readings, Neil Paynter, ed. Glasgow: Wild Goose Publishing, ã2006.)
That primordial Energy, that Spirit that enlivens us and our world is wild and unpredictable. It calls us to transformational community, to move beyond buildings and words, out into the world, into wholeness, interconnectedness and healing.
Through our inalienable connection to Spirit, to the Energy of every atom in our universe, the possibility of a prophetic, just and hopeful new future is entrusted to all of us. Breathe in us, breath of Love, that we may love the whole Body, all of Creation, while there is still time. (Inspired by Steve Garnaas-Holmes). www.unfoldinglight.net)
Julianne Kasmer is a minister in the United Church of Canada and retired chaplain at Our Place Society.
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking at https://www.timescolonist.com/blogs/spiritually-speaking
* This article was published in the print edition of the Times Colonist on Saturday, July 15th 2023
