SERMON – DUAL PATHS TO WHOLENESS
Immanence and Transcendence: Finding the Divine Here or There?
San José First Unitarian Church
July 20, 2014
Immanence.
Transcendence.
Touch the Earth, Reach the Sky
Immanence is defined by Wiktionary as: “The concept of the presence of deity in and throughout the real world; the idea that God is everywhere and in everything.”
Wikipedia says: “Transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature and power which is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all physical laws.”
The divine is of this world – Immanence.
Or the divine is beyond this world – Transcendence.
We Touch the Earth, or Reach the Sky.
While online definitions often seem to be the source of all truth and knowledge, especially in our increasingly binary and digital world, we can also look to our own faith tradition for even more insights.
For example, right here in this church, on the disks on the wall behind me representing our Six Source Traditions, you can find this split between transcendence and immanence.
The top left disk represents the “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”
The bottom right disk represents the “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.”
But let’s look even further back, to when the Unitarian’s began, back in 3rd and 4th centuries.
The Christian leadership of that time, at the First Council of Nicaea, adopted the trinity, bridging the Immanence-Transcendence duality by expanding and simultaneously recognizing God as both a Holy Spirit above and beyond – transcending - and also God as a human, Jesus Christ, God made manifest – immanent – here on earth. Our Unitarian spiritual forebears rejected that construct, retaining the oneness of a transcendent God.
Similarly, our Universalist founders rejected the predestination of a God on high determining who on Earth shall seek and find salvation - that is, who shall be permitted a connection with the divine. Instead, they argued and believed that all are worthy, that God can be manifest here on Earth - immanent - through every person, and even through good works.
The old Rev. Thomas Starr King quip distinguishing Unitarians and Universalists could arguably have its roots in this split between Transcendence and Immanence:
“Unitarians believe that God is too good to damn people, and the Universalists believe that people are too good to be damned by God.”
In reality, our merged traditions both rejected what they viewed as simplistic or dogmatic answers to what has been a significant discourse in most faith traditions - trying to explain and reconcile transcendence and immanence. Is the divine here, or there?
Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Plato argued the immanence of God, imbuing spirit in all of life and the world around us, while Aristotle believed in a transcendent God as a distant prime mover.
Asian traditions have also ranged widely, from worldly immanent-based Hindu polytheism to the unfathomable transcendent Tao. Even the main schools of Buddhism, while remaining silent on the presence of a supreme controlling deity, differentiate Buddha as either a human who attained nirvana through human efforts (Theraveda’s immanence) to Mahayana’s elevation of Buddha as a transcendent dharmakaya borne for the benefit of others, and not just a human being.
In Judaism, from the revealed to hidden dimensions, there are demonstrations of God’s immanence through worldly relations and commitments with the forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as transcendence as revealed to Moses, with differentiated names as the immanent “Our Father” and the transcendent “Our King” used repeatedly together in Jewish prayer to call God.
And Earth-based, Native and even New Age traditions have ranged from The Power of Now – could that be called Imminent Immanence – to seeking a universal and transcending life force or power which connects us all.
Author Carol Lee Flinders, well-known for her book on women mystics called Enduring Grace, wrote another book called the Values of Belonging, with a key chapter entitled “From Immanent Spirit to Transcendent God.”
In this chapter she blames our disconnection from immanence on the rise of organized agriculture and industry, necessitating the creation of a transcendent God, a new God which we cannot reach directly but only through intermediaries.
I quote, at length:
“The whole premise of hunter-gatherers’ spirituality was the conviction that all living things . . . are connected to one another. The small, recurring miracles – of moonlight and childbirth and blackberries, of rivers thunderous with snowmelt, of deer streaming across a hillside – had told them all that they’d needed to know about God.”
Our reading, Walt Whitman’s “Miracles,” shared that same awe.
To continue:
“For agriculture to flourish, this attitude would have to change. The natural world couldn’t be one’s mother. It was there to be exploited – and to drain the marshlands and redirect the waters of great rivers, they learned to drain the earth of the sacred meanings they had always found there.
“Spirit, no longer immanent, took the form and shape of a transcendent God, . . . (a) God effectively remade now in the image of man. The creation story in Genesis of Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden conveys the overwhelming sense of exile that must have accompanied this real change. From here on out, human beings could reach God only indirectly, . . . There would be no place in the new scheme of things for the idea that ordinary folks could experience God firsthand. The one God would be worshipped now as Lord, King, and Master, from a great distance, and worshipped through appointed intermediaries.”
And what would Old Turtle from our children’s story say:
“STOP!”
Rumbling loudly like thunder, but gentle, like butterfly sneezes.
So what is our path?
Marsha Sinetar’s book Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics provides some insight along the way. Surveying and interviewing every day folks on their own spiritual paths, she found half pursuing the divine within and by their own good works – which she called monks, and which I would call immanence. The other path included those called mystics, seeking beyond, transcending themselves and their world to directly connect with the divine.
Interestingly, both paths required discipline, time, openness, and ultimately arrived at the same answer: The divine is both here AND there, and it is through either path that you achieve both.
This is the same answer from the mystical practices of most faith traditions, as explored here just a few weeks ago in another service led by Joy Ellen Lipsky. Going within can take you beyond. And reaching beyond, you can find yourself.
W. T. Stace wrote, in the classic Mysticism and Philosophy:
“The two main types of (mystical) experience, the extrovertive and the introvertive, have been distinguished by different writers under various names. The essential difference between them is that the extrovertive experience looks outward through the senses, while the introvertive looks inward into the mind. Both culminate in the perception of an ultimate Unity with which the perceiver realizes his own union or even identity. . . . I am of the opinion that paradoxicality is one of the universal characteristics of all mysticism. We may . . . say that . . . in all mystical paradoxes is the idea of what has been called “the identify of opposites” or “identity in difference.”
Like the yin and yang on our chancel wall, immanence and transcendence are of and from each other.
We simultaneously Touch the Earth and Reach the Sky.
Interestingly, in my readings of late about this, I came across a Christian treatise on immanence and transcendence that used its own interlocking halves of a circle to explain them, it’s own flattened, horizontal yin yang.
Even Old Turtle said, “God is indeed deep, and much higher than high. He is swift and free as the wind, and still and solid as a great rock. She is the life of the world, always close by, yet beyond the farthest twinkling light. God is gentle and powerful, above all things and within all things.”
But this duality, this polarity, this oft-recognized binary split – it is actually one!
Isn’t that the very essence of mystery, of discovery, of awe, and even of faith?
I opened this morning’s service recounting my first coming to this church through the Transcendentalists of our shared spiritual past: Emerson, Thoreau, even our readings and songs today. And maybe now I’ve come full circle.
With their focus on nature and presence, and good works and deeds, maybe they should have been called “Immanentalists” instead, even as hard as it is to say. But we will save that for another time.
So, “Where is Heaven?”
Is it here, or there, everywhere
Or wherever we choose it to be?
“Does not Heaven begin that day
When the eager heart can say,
Surely God is in this place.
I have seen God face to face
In the loveliness of flowers,
In the service of the showers.
And God’s voice has talked to me
In the sunlit apple tree.”
Please follow the bell sound into the silence.
Transcendence.
Touch the Earth, Reach the Sky
Immanence is defined by Wiktionary as: “The concept of the presence of deity in and throughout the real world; the idea that God is everywhere and in everything.”
Wikipedia says: “Transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature and power which is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all physical laws.”
The divine is of this world – Immanence.
Or the divine is beyond this world – Transcendence.
We Touch the Earth, or Reach the Sky.
While online definitions often seem to be the source of all truth and knowledge, especially in our increasingly binary and digital world, we can also look to our own faith tradition for even more insights.
For example, right here in this church, on the disks on the wall behind me representing our Six Source Traditions, you can find this split between transcendence and immanence.
The top left disk represents the “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”
The bottom right disk represents the “Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.”
But let’s look even further back, to when the Unitarian’s began, back in 3rd and 4th centuries.
The Christian leadership of that time, at the First Council of Nicaea, adopted the trinity, bridging the Immanence-Transcendence duality by expanding and simultaneously recognizing God as both a Holy Spirit above and beyond – transcending - and also God as a human, Jesus Christ, God made manifest – immanent – here on earth. Our Unitarian spiritual forebears rejected that construct, retaining the oneness of a transcendent God.
Similarly, our Universalist founders rejected the predestination of a God on high determining who on Earth shall seek and find salvation - that is, who shall be permitted a connection with the divine. Instead, they argued and believed that all are worthy, that God can be manifest here on Earth - immanent - through every person, and even through good works.
The old Rev. Thomas Starr King quip distinguishing Unitarians and Universalists could arguably have its roots in this split between Transcendence and Immanence:
“Unitarians believe that God is too good to damn people, and the Universalists believe that people are too good to be damned by God.”
In reality, our merged traditions both rejected what they viewed as simplistic or dogmatic answers to what has been a significant discourse in most faith traditions - trying to explain and reconcile transcendence and immanence. Is the divine here, or there?
Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Plato argued the immanence of God, imbuing spirit in all of life and the world around us, while Aristotle believed in a transcendent God as a distant prime mover.
Asian traditions have also ranged widely, from worldly immanent-based Hindu polytheism to the unfathomable transcendent Tao. Even the main schools of Buddhism, while remaining silent on the presence of a supreme controlling deity, differentiate Buddha as either a human who attained nirvana through human efforts (Theraveda’s immanence) to Mahayana’s elevation of Buddha as a transcendent dharmakaya borne for the benefit of others, and not just a human being.
In Judaism, from the revealed to hidden dimensions, there are demonstrations of God’s immanence through worldly relations and commitments with the forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as transcendence as revealed to Moses, with differentiated names as the immanent “Our Father” and the transcendent “Our King” used repeatedly together in Jewish prayer to call God.
And Earth-based, Native and even New Age traditions have ranged from The Power of Now – could that be called Imminent Immanence – to seeking a universal and transcending life force or power which connects us all.
Author Carol Lee Flinders, well-known for her book on women mystics called Enduring Grace, wrote another book called the Values of Belonging, with a key chapter entitled “From Immanent Spirit to Transcendent God.”
In this chapter she blames our disconnection from immanence on the rise of organized agriculture and industry, necessitating the creation of a transcendent God, a new God which we cannot reach directly but only through intermediaries.
I quote, at length:
“The whole premise of hunter-gatherers’ spirituality was the conviction that all living things . . . are connected to one another. The small, recurring miracles – of moonlight and childbirth and blackberries, of rivers thunderous with snowmelt, of deer streaming across a hillside – had told them all that they’d needed to know about God.”
Our reading, Walt Whitman’s “Miracles,” shared that same awe.
To continue:
“For agriculture to flourish, this attitude would have to change. The natural world couldn’t be one’s mother. It was there to be exploited – and to drain the marshlands and redirect the waters of great rivers, they learned to drain the earth of the sacred meanings they had always found there.
“Spirit, no longer immanent, took the form and shape of a transcendent God, . . . (a) God effectively remade now in the image of man. The creation story in Genesis of Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden conveys the overwhelming sense of exile that must have accompanied this real change. From here on out, human beings could reach God only indirectly, . . . There would be no place in the new scheme of things for the idea that ordinary folks could experience God firsthand. The one God would be worshipped now as Lord, King, and Master, from a great distance, and worshipped through appointed intermediaries.”
And what would Old Turtle from our children’s story say:
“STOP!”
Rumbling loudly like thunder, but gentle, like butterfly sneezes.
So what is our path?
Marsha Sinetar’s book Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics provides some insight along the way. Surveying and interviewing every day folks on their own spiritual paths, she found half pursuing the divine within and by their own good works – which she called monks, and which I would call immanence. The other path included those called mystics, seeking beyond, transcending themselves and their world to directly connect with the divine.
Interestingly, both paths required discipline, time, openness, and ultimately arrived at the same answer: The divine is both here AND there, and it is through either path that you achieve both.
This is the same answer from the mystical practices of most faith traditions, as explored here just a few weeks ago in another service led by Joy Ellen Lipsky. Going within can take you beyond. And reaching beyond, you can find yourself.
W. T. Stace wrote, in the classic Mysticism and Philosophy:
“The two main types of (mystical) experience, the extrovertive and the introvertive, have been distinguished by different writers under various names. The essential difference between them is that the extrovertive experience looks outward through the senses, while the introvertive looks inward into the mind. Both culminate in the perception of an ultimate Unity with which the perceiver realizes his own union or even identity. . . . I am of the opinion that paradoxicality is one of the universal characteristics of all mysticism. We may . . . say that . . . in all mystical paradoxes is the idea of what has been called “the identify of opposites” or “identity in difference.”
Like the yin and yang on our chancel wall, immanence and transcendence are of and from each other.
We simultaneously Touch the Earth and Reach the Sky.
Interestingly, in my readings of late about this, I came across a Christian treatise on immanence and transcendence that used its own interlocking halves of a circle to explain them, it’s own flattened, horizontal yin yang.
Even Old Turtle said, “God is indeed deep, and much higher than high. He is swift and free as the wind, and still and solid as a great rock. She is the life of the world, always close by, yet beyond the farthest twinkling light. God is gentle and powerful, above all things and within all things.”
But this duality, this polarity, this oft-recognized binary split – it is actually one!
Isn’t that the very essence of mystery, of discovery, of awe, and even of faith?
I opened this morning’s service recounting my first coming to this church through the Transcendentalists of our shared spiritual past: Emerson, Thoreau, even our readings and songs today. And maybe now I’ve come full circle.
With their focus on nature and presence, and good works and deeds, maybe they should have been called “Immanentalists” instead, even as hard as it is to say. But we will save that for another time.
So, “Where is Heaven?”
Is it here, or there, everywhere
Or wherever we choose it to be?
“Does not Heaven begin that day
When the eager heart can say,
Surely God is in this place.
I have seen God face to face
In the loveliness of flowers,
In the service of the showers.
And God’s voice has talked to me
In the sunlit apple tree.”
Please follow the bell sound into the silence.