2021.10.17 Divine Immanence

Leaves fall down and die, and so do souls. Not to be moribund about divinity here, but I am thinking about theology. How important it is to stay aware—and pray aware—like the biblical Job did, of life’s shadowy sides, and God's role in the life of a faithful servant. God didn’t attack Job. Job discovered, or uncovered, God in the hollows of his own pain— the context of near-death dying when he could see nothing but darkness. God offered no explanation but only the divine Presence—up close and personal. It was enough for Job.   

Bumper sticker wisdom informs us: “Shit happens”.  Another bumper sticker carries another wisdom: “Grace happens.” But you never see this latter one, do you? The point is that both of these are true, and God is in both the bright and the shady, both the gloomy and the happy—and everything in between, the liminal area where most of us live most of the time. 

I get seduced easily by the happy joy-bomb, the happily-ever-after parade. People want to follow such pied pipers out of town, taking the rats with them. That’s what they thought they were doing I suspect when the early Jews followed Jesus. He tried to warn them, saying wet blanket things, such as: I’ve come to serve not to be served. OR I’ve come to die, not to live happily ever after. Yet they keep on following and asking. So do I.

A rewrite of an old Methodist hymn text popped into my mind recently, in part because I have been praying with someone who is going blind and who thinks VERY little of God. “Why did He make all this great world and then let it be so ugly and full of bad people?” she asks. I make all the obvious arguments for freedom’ed love, but I too wonder. Then these words came:  

Lead me, Lord, lead me in thy righteousness

Make thy way plain, within my heart.

Love me, Lord, love me in my weariness.

Love all my fears. Take me within your heart. 

Tune, 1861:Samuel Sebastian Wesley, grandson of Charles Wesley.

Text: The Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman, 2021

Within these words, I retrieved and, dare I say, resurrected, the early theological doctrine defining the divine nature as Immanent—oh so close. We, both church and culture, in America, are dancing and dashing after the Transcendent God who we assume makes everything better by a sleight of divine magic, simple as kissing a “boo boo” all better. We have betrayed the doctrine of Immanence. We have created God in our own image.

The father of poet E.E Cummings, Edward Cummings, a cleric of vigor and punch, preached from the pulpit of South Congregational Church (Unitarian) in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1900s. He scared his listeners half to death, saying: 

“The kingdom of Heaven is no spiritual roofgarden, it’s inside you!” 

The poet and son, Edward Estlin, was devastated when his father died in a car accident in the 1930s. He paid homage to his father in the poem, entitled, “my father moved through dooms of love.” 

Dooms of love.

©Lyn G. Brakeman, 2021