Living in the divine

St. Paul, in an articulate address to the Areopagus in Athens, tried to convert the learned Greeks to his version of Christianity. St. Paul suggests that all people, in all cultures, engage in the "searching and groping" after the divine. He adapts the sixth century BCE Greek philosopher-poet Epimenedes' words to his purpose, "in him we live and move and have our being." In the original poem Minos, the first King of Crete, addresses the god Zeus, "in you we live and move and have our being." St. Paul elaborates that the divine is not something formed by art or imagination, but something more elemental, more organic—that which connects all things, that in which all that is exists. That is a expansive view of the divine that moves the divine beyond words and images. It is a view that mystics in all spiritual traditions have agreed upon—whatever can be said, imagined, or fashioned about the divine is too limited, and will, therefore, likely mislead. For St. Paul, such would be idolatry. It is also why in Judaism and Islam no images of the divine can be found. Both religions take idolatry seriously!
Such an expansive view of the divine raises all kinds of questions. Such a view also critiques much that goes by the name of religion, together with most formulations about who or what God is, as if we could put words to that which is beyond words.
Nonetheless, the ancient wisdom suggests that we live and move and have our being in the divine. Though we cannot speak of or image, we can experience for every day and in every way we exist within the divine.
Perhaps this draws us to an understanding of the divine within nature. If all of nature subsists in the divine (and nature is all that is), then to experience nature is to experience the divine. In other words, if you search for God, then you will likely find God in the everyday matters of life; in relationships, in the Other, in the beauty of the senses—touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, seeing—in laughter and love, in friendship and labor, in anguish and pain, in sorrow and joy, in exertion and rest.
This expansive view of the divine leads us to wonder, and to wonder beyond words. Perhaps, as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgemstein said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
+Ab. Andy