When we imagine God as the soil in which everything that exists is rooted, it awakens very different spiritual sensibilities. When we imagine God as the rich substrate of Divine Love, we begin to think of everything; every man, every woman, every antelope and tree and single-cell bacteria, as rooted in the Divine.
We all hunger for healthy souls. A Soil image of God helps us approach our spiritual quest differently. We see the fruit of Divine Life always and already coursing through us. Of course it is. We derive our very being from the Ground of Divine Presence. We no longer plead for health or healing from the Supreme Being. Instead, we seek healing in the always-present Divine Reality in which we are rooted. Healing of soul, relationships, and our planet… we find in our state of being rather than asking for it from a Divine parent. The capacity for wholeness and healing are already in us for we are rooted in God.
When God is the Source from which all of Life and Being grows, we no longer go to an Authority outside of ourselves, hat in hand, and ask for healing. Rather, we simply configure ourselves to draw from the Divine Life and Love that is always Present, always in us, always around us. Ours becomes a quest to cooperate with the Divine Reality that is as surely Present to us, as the ground on which we walk.
Likewise, character development becomes a natural by-product of our natural state of being. Of course we are becoming virtuous people. We are rooted in God! Love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and kindness, and so forth course through our beings… because the Source from which we live, and move, and have our being… is the Divine character.
The spiritual journey becomes a quest for spiritual eyes that see and ears that hear. It becomes a simple quest to align ourselves with what already is. God is in… and around… and above… and below us; for God is the very soil that gives us life. The spiritual life becomes about opening our eyes to the always-is, always-present, Divine Reality. And when we do, the Fruit of the Divine Spirit is manifest in us just as surely as the earth’s grain bears its fruit.
That’s a very different framework… and a evokes a very different spiritual journey… than when ours is an angry God in the sky.
I’ll illustrate the difference in the next post when I return to the ancient spiritual poem we looked at two posts ago. Rather than interpreting it through the lens of a God-person-in-the-sky, we’ll look at it through the lens of the God-as-Soil-of-our-Being.
And again, different images of God awaken different spiritual journeys.
