thoughts on reality and God's presence in it

Ever read 'Practising the Presence of God', by a man called Brother Lawrence? The idea, basically, is that God is present and very close and intimate with us and our whole issue of living "in" his presence is not to conjure him up somehow but to just recognize him more clearly, which comes easier with practice; the book is about Lawrence's thoughts on the matter and some wisdom from the dish "pit" of the monastery he lived in. It's a book worth reading, in my opinion.

My noteworthy thoughts on the matter are about feelings and the real reality.

God's presence is not wholly a feeling, not necessarily connected with that feeling of spiritual high, or the feeling of closeness, or even the feeling of being loved. For there is apparently a difference between being loved, which we are beyond measure or even imagination, and feeling loved. And this is true of God's presence in regards to any sort of feeling. Sometimes He brings feelings with him, I think to add concreteness to his existence and to encourage our faith that the things he says are true. For example, if he says he loves us, at times we will feel it strongly. If he says he is close to us, sometimes we will be overwhelmed by his nearness. And we get hints at the pleasures of heaven, when laying at his feet and worshiping him will involve some sort of sight which we now lack. (There are obviously other aspects to Him and what it feels like to be close to him, I have just avoided trying to make a comprehensive list.)

I have been foolish and claimed that these feelings marked that he was truly near. I then proceeded to complain that either he was not near me, and had abandoned me, when I did not feel anything or that if he was really close by he should give me the feelings so that I would know. This is foolishness and leads down a bad road, which I took a number of steps down. Fortunately, for my sake, I found out that true intimacy with God is not a prolongation of good feelings or state of being but really sharing with him the whole spectrum of feelings and states of mind which I pass through in a day. I assume this is true of real intimacy in any sort of relationship.

One of the dangerous rabbit runs I started down was connecting the spiritual/invisible with the sort of false experience I could conjure up using my imagination. I started believing that the spiritual was as real as that fake world I can conjure up in my head, which is not real at all. (Of course, in the ridiculous world according to Doug things always work out for me as I want them to and I am always the hero.) Then I started imagining things along the lines of the spiritual/invisible instead of a conversation with the girl I like. And that, my friend is awful. It is like shutting your eyes to the world and daydreaming when if you would just open your eyes you would see something even better, and it would be real. Because God really is Real!

And if he is real, I think that an important factor in experiencing Him is to live in reality ourselves. By this I kind of mean living in the present. We are always jumping forward in our minds to the future or lingering in the past. We miss the exact place where we are. I don't think we will live truly exactly where we are in time and space until we are on the Other Side of time and space, but we can get close for little spurts. I think God in his invisible, constant presence is found here: in the real reality.

It turns out to be kind of sensual. I guess as humans our contact with reality is based on the senses. I do mean more than 5, for I do mean more than the physical. We have senses of the invisible from some indistinct place in our invisibles. (And there is that weird sense of someone looking at you from across the room; you just know.) I think as Christians in our day we feel some residual effects of the Puritan era, which I brutally generalize as the classification of any pleasure as sinful and any sensual experience of the world as something to be mistrusted. I, at least, have felt some pressure to live in some haze-like existence of denying that we are on the earth and pretending that we are in the Heaven already. We are certainly not of the world, and oh, do I long for heaven, but we are undeniably in the world. This business of "feet on the ground, head in clouds" is, in my opinion, foolish. I think it is at least better put 'flesh on the ground where it actually is, heart in heaven where our treasure is'.
I think that learning to live where we are at is good practice for the hereafter. And since God is here in his own, very real way, it doesn't mean ignoring him. Just don't start loving the place or wanting to stay.
For me the 5 senses have begun to serve to pull me back to reality, and in the reality to find God. So instead of doing my best to hide from it, I can reach out to feel the bitter wind crossing the drillfield of VT in winter and know that I really am where I am. And God really is here with me.