This Uncontrollable Pervasiveness

The direct experience of God that grows from genuinely quieting and denying oneself is a humble dimension of both internal and external experience. It cradles and fosters an integrity and fullness of simple openness that is incompatible with any aspect of alienation from Others, oneself, and the world. Why? Because love, which is the unconditional regard for these, and compassion, the outworking of love, which is having one's guts moved in response to the plight of an Other and then setting one's life on hold in order to meet these needs on these Others' terms, will always be fraudulent without a more thoroughly profound and meek openness to the subtle, persistent presence of God in the real world. After all, God walks in the garden 'in the wind [literal] of the day' (Genesis 3). This liquidly uncontrollable pervasiveness lies at the root of all that is life-giving. Mysterious. Ubiquitous. Disturbing in the worst of times. Refreshing in the best of times. But mostly subtle. It is definitely and universally present and potential. So that in spite of its overwhelming power it will never 'break a bruised reed' (Matthew 12). With all of this in mind let us start from a given fact, namely, that if sensate people who lived four thousand years ago once took this as a central reality for human life everywhere, they clearly no longer do so today.