Feeding the Fire

By Judy Pilat

For this week’s blog, the question is how to pray.  Shall we pray to God’s Presence, opening ourselves to the infilling of Spirit? Or, shall we center on spirit within, allowing it to emerge? Dr. Tom Shepherd calls this the “Let It In/Let It Out” controversy.

The Let it Out position is supported by George Fox who founded the Quaker movement and theologian, Meister Eckhart, founder of German mysticism.  It is also supported by Unity’s basic principles.  According to Connie Fillmore and more recently, Ellen Debenport in her book “The Five Principles”, Unity’s second principle states that human beings have a spark of divinity within them.  Theologically speaking, this is the belief that God is immanent – within us, energizing us, inspiring us, nudging us toward our greater good.  In more traditional belief systems based on the bible and its post-Jesus interpretation, God and the Holy Spirit exist somewhere outside of our experience.  One or both may enter into the human heart and soul in response to the appropriate beliefs and/or practices.  In this system, God is transcendent.

Current Christian theology views God as both immanent and transcendent, terms that are usually viewed as contrasting propositions.  However, this is God we are talking about here.  There is no greater topic, there is no greater lesson, and perhaps logic and the traditional rules of discourse will only take us so far.  As theological thinking has evolved, so to has a middle ground or middle path that includes and reconciles our increasing body of knowledge, specifically scientific knowledge.

If God is viewed as the ground of being, the intelligent energy from which the material world is created, than God is outside of us, (or underneath us, behind us, the stuff from which we are made).  Dr. Shepherd says “Think Star Trek!  Think holodeck!” and this might cause a shift away from the “Let It Out” position towards the “Let It In” camp.   Before you actually move your chair though, consider this:  If you are growing stuff on one acre of land and you want a more bountiful harvest, you can go out and get more land, or you can concentrate on optimizing the growing conditions for the plants and trees on the acre you have.  Expand your resources without expending them as Eric Butterworth would say.  

It is possible to work with that spark of divinity to increase the light of God within, to feed the fire so to speak.   As that light grows, God moves in, through, and as us.  Humans are the hands and feet of the immanent God.  You can also acknowledge and appreciate that every other person, every living thing is likewise endowed with that divine spark within.

According to our text, “Glimpses of Truth” the Sahakains argue that God has an identity that exists independently from that immanent spark within us.  The God that is the source of the universe and the God within which the universe exists retains a distinct identity, and according to process theology, this identity is evolving.

At the end of the day, my position is that all of this is possible, and in all probability, is likely.  And at the end of the day (and the beginning too), when I pray, I center on spirit within.