Sources

My theological upbringing emphasized the infilling of the Spirit: the notion of God out there, powerful and ready to intervene. That’s good. But slowly recognizing the indwelling nature of the Spirit; the notion that God is just under my skin and shot through my personal history, a God who himself populates the recesses of my inner world (even having a inner world) has been, for me, a revelation. The glorious imagery of Genesis 2 comes to mind: Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Streams came up from the earth

There’s more going on than we think, and it’s not just ‘out there’. The writer Sara Maitland said something like this: If God is not the cleverest most intelligent being in the universe then I’m off. Similarly if God is not the wisest being in the universe then what’s life about? It’s sinking in that God is truly omnipresent, not merely having a finger in every pie, but She is that wisdom that penetrates the world, like a stream coming up from the earth and watering and blessing the whole of life. And it seems we have to take it, the God-world of barely seen galaxies and the depth of an individual soul's, on trust.