AWARE OF THE PRESENCE [M, 2-24-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—AWARE OF THE PRESENCE [M, 2-24-25]

 

I would like to be a mystic, have experiences of mysterious sounds and voices and lights and colors and temperature changes. I respect the witnesses of folks who have those experiences. I’m not a mystic, though. I’ve never had those experiences. But I am an awarer.

That’s not a word, but it should be. By it, I mean simply that I am aware of the presence of what William James called the “something more.” [1] There is something more than we can experience with our earthly senses and encompass with our earthly words.

We usually refer to that “something more” as God.

The problem with the word God, though, is that, as Paul Tillich put it, “As soon as you say God, you lose God.” In other words, the something more can’t be contained in any word, or any number of words.

As an awarer, though, I need to use the word God to be able to explain that I am aware of God. I don’t see God, but I am aware of the presence of God.

It’s like when I’m looking out the window and Helen comes up behind me, a little bit off to my side, and she looks out the window with me. I can’t see her, but I know that she is there. I am aware of her presence.

 

I’m also aware of the presence of God, looking out the window with me, looking together at the universe.

Awareness is not belief. I am a believer, as well as an awarer, but they don’t necessarily go together. You can be one without the other, I think. The point is to allow either belief or awareness, the former basically intellectual and the latter basically spiritual, to lead you toward the something more.

Perhaps you need not be either a believer or an awarer. Maybe you just need to be a knower, knowing that there is something more.

Rachel Remen tells a story of taking her mother to see a nephew ordained as a priest. The family was Jewish, refugees from Russia, and Rachel’s grandfather, her mother’s father, was a famous rabbi. But the nephew’s father had married a Catholic girl and converted. His son was becoming a priest.

Rachel’s mother was not religious. She was in poor health. The service was two hours long and entirely in Latin. Rachel worried about her. But as they left, her mother said, “It was wonderful. My father, the rabbi, would be so proud. Another life dedicated to befriending the movement toward wholeness in others.”

Her mother was not religious, but she had been a social worker and advocate for the poor, trying to make a better world, trying to help others move toward wholeness.

Remen concludes that all those ways of helping others move toward wholeness, of being aware of the something more, are holy.

John Robert McFarland

1] The Varieties of Religious Experience