I have talked about discovering God in the self, in painful self-exploration. While this is the royal rout to the discovery of God, in the context of ordinary human experience, it is not the only path.

God's Self-Disclosure

There is a sense in which God cannot be discovered by us. This does not mean that we will not find her if we look for her. It does mean, however, that the discovery will take the form of a revelation. If we earnestly seek God, she will reveal or discover herself to us. Our question, in the light of this insight, needs to be reworded. We should be asking, If God waits to reveal herself to us, how should we prepare, or position ourselves so that she is able to disclose herself to us?

A Range of Conditions

We will encounter God provided we fulfil several criteria.

1. We need to be genuinely seeking and we need to be open.
2. We need to be prepared to discover God in the most unlikely places.
3. We need to be free of any intention to hide some part of ourselves from God.
4. We need to be willing to commit our immediate security to that which we encounter.

Familiar Pathways

Given these pre-conditions, there is no limit to the range of circumstances that will reveal God to us. There are, however, certain well-trodden paths. I will highlight several of these. I suspect you will be familiar with some, but unfamiliar with others. These pathways are open to all people, irrespective of whether or not they are Christian, or even overly religious.

Christian Disciplines

Before concluding this chapter, I will briefly highlight specifically Christian ways in which we can place ourselves in the presence of God, in the sense of recognizing and celebrating a presence that stands revealed prior to any interest being shown on our part. It is this Presence that encourages, initiates and rewards our questing. [11]

The fact that specifically Christian ways of nurturing ourselves on God will be discussed summarily, is no measure of their importance. The reason why I will give greater attention to universal, or sheerly human ways of approaching God, is that they are usually overlooked in manuals of devotion. Yet they contribute to the vitality of Christian worship and nurture. In the absence of the deep knowing that they bring, religious disciplines are liable to degenerate into forms devoid of substance.

Nature

Several years ago I was with a group of ministers from Western Victoria, who were on retreat in the Grampians, a mountain range between Ararat and Horsham. One morning, before the others had awoken, I left the home where we were staying and began to climb the mountain on whose side it nestled. The dew was thick on the ground and the sun, edging over the horizon, laid shafts of light on the sparse carpet of green covering the ground between the giant eucalypts. As I continued climbing, the occasional bush orchid coquettishly beckoned my attention and invited me to squat and enjoy its beauty.

Clambering up the mountain began to take its toll. I was looking for a place to rest, when my eye caught sight of a fallen log. I eased my tired body onto the supportive bulk of this ancient timber. As I did so, I heard in the distance a gentle thump, thump, thump, which became louder as it approached. Anticipating a visitor, I stilled myself, quietening my breathing. At that moment, a large red kangaroo came bounding past me, several feet away.

The bush that morning, awakening from the evening's silent activity, was alive with presence. I could have cut a slice of silence.

I feel most alive, and most in touch with God, when I open myself to nature's eloquent solitude.

The sea is no less powerful than the rain-forest in uniting me with a primeval energy that throbs in sympathy with the rhythm of my inner being. As I walk along the beach, with the wet sand oozing between my toes, and the sound of pounding waves in my ears, I am nourished by a powerful presence.

I can understand why Jesus, encumbered by the weight of others' anxieties, and weak from the outflow of healing energy and the need to be sufficiently attuned to a moment-by-moment guidance, sought out the mountains and the seashore. In solitude, he could quietly take into himself, like air drawn into his lungs, the palpable cosmic energy, that was, to him, the presence of the God he addressed as Abba. Wordsworth caught the essence of this experience, when, in Above Tintern Abbey, he wrote of a presence that disturbed him with the joy of elevated thoughts.¹ [12]

There are a number of reasons why we feel close to God in the world of nature. Were we indigenous Australians or Native Americans, living out our days in the context of an ancient culture, reasons would be superfluous. However, because most of us are not in this situation, an explanation is necessary.

Parabolic Language

Nature speaks of God in parables. Unfortunately we have lost the ability to think parabolically, to catch the metaphorical cadences in the song nature sings to us about life. Jesus thought in parables. He lifted insights from his field of vision. His was the receptive creativity of the poet, the competence of the midwife skilled at birthing gestating metaphors.

If we are open and receptive, nature will not remain silent. Several years ago, when I was recovering from burnout, I spent time in Sherbrooke Forrest, in the Dandenongs, east of Melbourne. In the beginning, I scarcely had the energy to place one foot in front of the other. My progress was slow as I explored the many walking paths threading the Forest. The fact that I was energy-less, and travelling slowly, caused me to attend to the rock formations, the soil textures, grasses, towering gums and giant ferns that made up this rain-Forest.

One of the magnificent eucalypts, with strands of bark hanging from its noble trunk, reminded me, that, to grow tall, much that has been important to us from the past needs to be stripped away. On another walk, I was fascinated by a smaller tree that remained upright, though it was solid, heavy with foliage and at a ridiculous forty-five degree angle to the ground. It should have fallen over. I was reflecting on this strange quirk of nature, when I noticed that beneath the base of the trunk, hidden by ground-cover, was the stump of what must have been a giant of the forest. The younger tree could swagger at this inebriated angle, without crashing to the ground, because it was supported by the root-system of what had once been a majestic tree. This parable needed no wordy explanation. In my walks in the forest, I became so open to the parabolic chatter of the flora that I soon had a notebook filled with the deepest wisdom.

Peer Pressure

Another reason we feel close to God, is that nature sheerly is what nature was intended to be. As Thomas Merton suggested, a tree gives glory to God by being a tree, by being what it was intended to be.² He concluded that its inscape was its sanctity.³ Because we have been graced with the gift of freedom, which takes time and skill for us to learn to exercise healthily, we are often so pre-occupied with doing, that we rarely take the time to be. This is not to deny that being and doing are connected. However, most of us have [13] lost the ability to sheerly be. In our insecurity, we try to control our world by doing, by seeking to master it.

However, when we are open to the richness of our physical environment, we are influenced by the peer pressure of an eco-system that has no choice but to be what it was intended to be. Any deflection from this purposefulness is due to our interference, our rapacity. I suspect that the reason Henry David Thoreau was introduced to a new wisdom, after spending 18 months in isolation at Walden Pond, was that the energy of this isolated environment worked upon his spirit to encourage him to settle into a state of being.

A Constitutive Energy

The fact that we are able to discern the presence of God so powerfully in nature is due mostly to the fact that divine Consciousness constitutes the sentient reality of that world. The Letter to the Colossians argues that all reality inheres in a universal, constitutive, Christic Consciousness.⁴ Hebrews similarly asserts that the whole universe is held together by the word of the Cosmic Christ.⁵

It is little wonder that we feel affinity with elements of nature.

I lived for a time in the lower reaches of the Dandenong ranges. My home was situated on three-quarters of an acre. Besides a broad range of fruit trees, a giant Morton Bay fig, a liquid amber and assorted annuals, there were half a dozen gums on the property, one of them a flowering gum, which, in season, burst into a gorgeous canopy of red.

One day, while watering flowers in the vicinity of one of the gums, I noticed that another eucalypt, whose leaves had been brown for some months, due to an insect infestation, had recovered and was shaking a full head of green leaves at the wind. I spoke to it, congratulating it on its courage, its tenacity and its recovery. My attention returned to the nearby gum, whose tender grey bark had begun to split. I dropped the hose on the ground and walked over to it, gently embracing it with both arms. Hugging the tree, I assured it, that, in complementing the other tree, I was not overlooking the pain that it was enduring, or its courage.

I have often felt an affinity for trees and other aspects of the natural environment. In contemplative moments, I have felt a tree, or some other organic element, to be an extension of my reality, or, more profoundly, I have felt that the tree and I were aspects of a greater reality that held us in existence. We were both part of this constitutive reality. While I had always related this way to flora and fauna, I had not encountered many people who talked about this sort of experience. However, I was excited to discover that Raimundo Panikkar, in Myth, Faith and Hermeneutic, described this phenomenon as the ultimate human experience.⁶ Subsequently, I also discovered that Meister Eckhart, exploring this affinity, had perceptively [14] commented that this experience of unitive awareness was a participation in God's constitutive awareness, in God's creative knowing.⁷ There is a sense in which God's seeing of us, his creative Consciousness, originates and sustains us, so that our embodied perceptions of reality, where we truly see what is there to be seen, are part of his constitutive seeing.

Jesus

It is little wonder that Jesus sought out the solitude of the mountains and the sea. He was refreshing himself in a felt Presence. While there were occasions when he prayed verbally, the essence of prayer, for him, was not a flapping of his gums,⁸ but a conscious relaxing into a state of being, a reconnecting with his centre and with the divinity that constituted his centre. Prayer, for Jesus, was a matter of collecting divine nectar from the environment. This experience had previously been alluded to in Psalm 19, which speaks of the heavens declaring the glory of God and of a voiceless presence threaded through our days and nights, our experiences of life in all its ordinariness.⁹

The discerning of God in the world of nature does not come easy to many in our masculine, driven, competitive world, because it requires a passive attentiveness, a contemplative stance and some acquaintance with one's centre.

The Inward Journey

It is more likely that God will be discerned in the natural world that sustains us, and delights our senses, if she is first recognized and responded to within ourselves.

I have already argued that the discovery of self and discovery of God are intimately related. They are the one discovery. In searching for the inner self we encounter God. When we conscientiously seek God we are confronted with aspects of the self that we have denied. This connection was alluded to by Julian of Norwich, who commented that, in coming to know ourselves, we will be introduced to an exhilarating knowledge of the Lord God.¹⁰

What I have been arguing is that, in discovering ourselves in a progressive knowing, we will also encounter God, for God is the constitutive reality of the body/self, as well as its maturational vitality, the source of its self-healing and the embodiment, within us, of its final goal.

Human Need

Besides encountering God in nature and in self-discovery, we also encounter her in our contacts with those in need. When we share ourselves, or our substance, with the needy, we encounter God. They are her special concern. In compassionately encountering human need, we encounter God. [15] The Christ in those moved to generosity encounters the Christ in those who are broken.

Incarnation

It is also true that there are people who so incarnate divine love that being in their presence for any length of time leaves us feeling self-accepted, cared for, hopeful, forgiven and increasingly self-aware. The lives of these people, despite their weaknesses, angularities and times of desolation, are marked by a healing energy.

There is a sense in which we all, at different times, incarnate this love. This incarnation, which results from God's constitutive presence in the depths of our subjectivity, is not a personal accomplishment, but rather the result of our coming to the end of ourselves and relaxing into the flow of divine grace. Those who are most empty of self, those least pre-occupied with unrequited ego needs, and, therefore, those who most powerfully incarnate the divine presence, refresh and challenge us. Brother Lawrence, Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, the kitchen saint, had this effect on people. Though he was clumsy and of little practical assistance in the kitchen, he was sought out by countless pilgrims, who travelled hundreds of miles to spend time with him. Francis of Assisi similarly impacted those who came in contact with him. I have encountered a number of people who have effected me in this way, ministers and lay people. They have refreshed me and I am privileged to have known them. Jesus of Nazareth was the most powerful incarnation of this divine love. He was besieged by the crowds. He was surrendered to an immanent Grace, whose compassion he lived, whose intuitions he voiced and whose presence he powerfully embodied.

The Wounded Healer

In distinguishing the needy from those who conspicuously embody divine love, I would not want you to conclude that these two groups are different types of people. Those in need incarnate the divine presence, whom they can be coaxed into revealing. Those characterized by a divine energy are the first to recognize their own need. It is out of their neediness, often their pain, that they minister so effectively to others. It was the Jesus, who craved the companionship and understanding of his closest friends, as he agonized over his vocation in Gethsemane, whom early Christian disciples called Saviour. Jesus ministered out of his woundedness.

Relational Encounters

We also encounter God in our in-depth relationships with other people, when we engage them at the level of our most serious concerns and when we let down our defences and share honestly with them. John V. Taylor, in his The Go Between God,¹¹ argues that it is the Holy Spirit who makes these intimate moments possible. [16]

Henri Nouwen tells the story of an encounter with one of his past students, who returned to fill Nouwen in on what had happened to him since graduation. He didn't have questions on this occasion, but merely wanted to "celebrate some time" with his former teacher. They spoke of what they had been doing during the previous year. In time, the conversation fell away, but neither was embarrassed by the emerging silence. It was heavy with Presence. Eventually the student turned to Nouwen and said, "I feel, when I am talking to you that I am in the presence of Jesus Christ." Comfortable with this remark, Nouwen replied, "It is the Christ in you who recognizes the Christ in me". "Yes", he said, "He indeed is in our midst". It was at this point that the former student suggested to Nouwen that something had happened between them that was irreversible. Henceforth, the ground between them would be holy ground.¹²

Giving and Receiving Love

God can also be encountered when we open ourselves to the giving and receiving of love. I remember listening to a tape in which John Powell described the difficulty he experienced in helping a seminary student gain a felt sense of the presence of God. The student had had a poor relationship with his father, which had not been able to be compensated for by other human relationships. Working with the student, Powell directed him to aspects of the doctrine of God that focus on love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness and nurture. He also drew his attention to spiritual disciplines, to sacramental means of grace and to the importance of being immersed in Christian community, all of which had been helpful to others in their search for God. The student explored all avenues suggested to him, but to no avail. Finally, in a moment of inspiration, Powell suggested to him that he open himself to receive or to offer human love. The young man, acting on an inspired intuition, visited his father and began talking with him. The dialogue was awkward at first, but soon the tears began to flow. As they talked, he wall that fenced him off from God dissolved.

The seminarian's relationship with his father, on which his experience of God was based, had inhibited any affective relationship with God. Not only was his emotional life truncated, but he had been robbed of the capacity to experience the embrace of a loving heavenly "Father." It was, therefore, psychologically appropriate that his father, the unwitting source of his affective constipation, should be the one that he sought out.

Suffering

Suffering also gives us access to God. [17]

Martin Buber argued that all suffering prepares the soul for vision.¹³ Larry Dossey, a specialist in internal medicine, refining this perception, contended that not all suffering results in the perception of a larger reality beyond oneself. His point was that lesser suffering leads to self-pre-occupation. It is severe suffering that brings one face-to-face with reality. This self-confrontation, uncontaminated by comforting illusions, has the capacity to lead us into deep engagement with God. ¹⁴ What Dossey was saying was that a mild tooth ache, or a disagreeable neighbour, increased a person's concentration on themselves, augmenting their self-pity. On the other hand, the threat of utter destitution, the discovery that one has AIDS or the endurance of severe, unrelenting pain, catapult the individual beyond themselves into a state where priorities are re-arranged and where they are forced to come to terms with stark realities.

Moses was prepared for a revelation of God through the discipline of failure and Jeremiah through the emptiness, deflation and disillusionment of success and the threat of retaliation on the part of a humiliated queen bent on revenge. Responding positively to suffering is no facile matter. Job, who lost his family, property and health, and who was reduced to scraping the pus from his boils with potsherds, protested the moral illogicality of his circumstances to the point of exhaustion. However, when he finally surrendered to the grace ambiguously present in his circumstances, when he took his mind from himself and began praying for his friends, he discovered, not answers, but Presence, a Presence that transformed him.¹⁵

The Suffering of Others

Attending to the suffering of others can also bring us a sense of God's nearness. As Jesus indicated, God exhibits a preferential option for those who suffer. This suffering may involve a personal hell or social injustice. It could include poverty or violence of some sort, physical, sexual, or racial. In being present to others in their pain, in standing with them against injustice, we are aware of the larger Presence involved in their cause.

A Summary

I have spoken of the fact that we can intuit the presence of God

1. in the world of nature,
2. in the inward journey,
3. in encounters with the needy
4. and with those whose incarnation of divine grace helps us feel accepted and challenged,
5. in in-depth relations which are free of pretence and self-deceit,
6. in opening ourselves to the giving and receiving of love,
7. in our suffering
8. and in addressing the suffering of others. [18]

These means of discerning the presence of God are available to us because we are human. They are part of the sacramentality of life. They are not specifically Christian means of Grace. For this reason, Christians often overlook their importance.

Christian Approaches

What about specifically Christian approaches to God?

The Word

The Church has argued that God has addressed us in Jesus. This address is mediated to us in a number of ways. Karl Barth, a Reformed theologian, has argued that God's addressing of us, in Christ, involves three elements, which are associated with the three ways in which the expression, the Word of God, is used in the Christian Scriptures. These are, the Living Word, Jesus Christ, the Written Word, the Scriptures, and the Preached Word, the message of the Gospel, the good news about Jesus. According to Barth, Christians can enrich their lives by developing a relationship with the resurrected Christ, by reading the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and by being impacted upon by preaching.

The Sacraments

In discussing the range of experiences that mediate the presence of God to Christians, the Reformed emphasis on the Word needs to be balanced by the Catholic emphasis on the sacraments.

While all of nature is capable of sacramentally mediating the presence of God to people, the water of Baptism, and the bread and wine of the Eucharist, because of the sacred memories they enshrine, and because of their association with the passion and exultation of Christ, are an especially potent means of engaging the divine Presence. In the context of the living texture of the liturgy, these sacraments, provided they are entered into intelligently and soulfully, will deepen the experience of the realities to which they symbolically point.

The Church

No less than Word and Sacrament, the Church, as a fellowship of the Spirit, nurtures the spirituality of its members. In their care for each other, and in their mutual support, in the Church's missional outreach, Christians experience the healing and sustaining energies of the Spirit of God, of the Presence they have come to associate with the Cosmic Christ. [19]

An Unveiling

I cannot emphasize enough, the fact that our discovery of God is not what this phrase describes it as being. It is God's revealing herself to us. We do not "discover" God, she "discovers" herself to us. We need to want to encounter God and to be open to be impacted upon by her. Therefore, our approach should be characterized by a receptive, rather than a conquistadorial attitude. We cannot command God, nor can we conjure her into existence by a combination of heated desire or frantic effort. God's self-revelation is serendipitous. Usually, when it impacts upon us most powerfully, it follows upon experiences of failure, exhaustion, and, in some cases, despair. However, the more we learn to discern and flow with the grace that constitutes us, and our environment, the more we learn to recognize God's embracing presence in its flux. [20]

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