God In All Things

God is in all things– as giving them being, power and operation.

One can say that God is more closely united  to each thing than the thing is to itself.

St. Thomas Aquinas Cited in Christian Mystics

Fox continues his commentary on this supernal reality in these words:

Not only is God Within All Things but God is intimately within all things, the active power within all things— giving them their being and existence,their unique operation.

Experiencing this realization takes practice and meditation. A good place to begin is to meditate alone in nature or with a close friend: 

[Ask} How do I perceive God as being, as bestower of power and of operation?

Do I sense that at these deep levels I/we are not alone but are a part of a far broader and deeper river of history?

Part of an ocean of evolution far greater than ourselves? Part of a dynamic and evolving community of beings?

It is easy to see for me to affirm the profound truth and the core realities that accompany Aquinas and to begin to answer Fox’s wide-ranging questions.

Following in Fox’s footsteps, maybe in a book or two of my own, I could accomplish that! But for now, and in following the format of offering no more than a page or two of reflections on any of the 365 themes, what I will collect and present, it will have to be limited and more personal; not in depth, but in length!

However, I was not given these powerful teachings or mystical truths in any of my Roman Catholic years of elementary and secondary education! I barely knew who Aquinas was, because, as best as I can recall, he did not show up in the Baltimore Catechism! 

I would have to thank Matthew Fox for introducing me to Aquinas, some 15 years after the Roman Church and I parted ways, only to become reinspired during the early years of my liberal and inclusive ministry to actively/avidly connect to Creation Spirituality; To value that approach to spiritual knowledge has had, an emphasis placed on the mystics that will continue in my life-long appreciation and continuing study of their compassionate truths.

Paradoxically, I was first introduced to the concept of the God within by a Bolivian mystic, modern interpreter of the enneagon/enneagram, and I would have to declare, my most significant spiritual teacher, Oscar Ichazo, who was the founder of the Arica Institute. 

I was affiliated with that school of consciousness studies for 20 years during the 70’s to the 90’s. I will often have daily insights and will have grateful remembrances of how profoundly important and instrumental those training and those varity of mystical systems of understanding of the human psyche have been in my life…

There was an Arica invocation, often used in conjunction with the Arica Logo or School symbol that went like this: “           

God is eternal;

is in all of us, is in everything, 

 is One, without second.”

 Every day since that introduction over 50 years ago, every time I see the symbol on my office wall, and every time I seriously contemplate the depth and importance of this affirmation, I am reconnecting to Oscar, affirming Aquinas, aligning with the theology of panentheism.

I am bearing witness to the ultimate intimacy that binds or connects us to the Christian mystical ideal that “God is All in All.”

Further Christian note:

From a recent Fr. Richard Rohr Column where he quotes Mirabai Starr on Julian of Norwich:

“God is all that is good. God has created all that is made. God loves all that he has created. And so anyone who, in loving God, loves all his fellow creatures [and] loves all that is.

All those who are on the spiritual path contain the whole of creation, and the Creator. That is because God is inside us, and inside God is everything. And so whoever loves God loves all that is.” [1]

[1] The Showings of Julian of Norwich: A New Translation, Mirabai Starr (Hampton Roads: 2013), 23–24. [Italics mine.]