The earliest memories I have as a child are of living with my family on the John Brown University campus in Arkansas. On more than one occasion I would find a stray dog to bring home to the apartment we lived in, which certainly did not allow pets. I eventually learned that my parents would end up bringing my new companion back to the animal shelter, so I began to hide them in the playhouse in our yard, sneaking them deli meat from the refrigerator. It didn’t matter how many times my dad found and returned them—every time I said goodbye was as devastating as the first, yet I would continue to find another dog to bring home. At five years old, I felt a pull toward those animals and a desire to have a unique relationship with them. That desire never left, but it wasn’t until much later that I had the opportunity to explore where it developed, and what it meant for my spiritual life. It was at twenty-three that I left my childhood home in Ohio with my four-month-old puppy, Gryffin, to experience a life in Massachusetts. For the better part of seven years, the only constant and physical companion I had was that puppy who would follow me from room to room and state to state.
Recently, I find myself thinking about those years spent with Gryffin. Now thirty-two, married and a new mother, Gryffin has since passed away—leaving my home in North Carolina with echoes of his footsteps and the last of his fur tucked under the furniture. These life changes—saying goodbye to Gryffin and welcoming my daughter into the world—have been both difficult and exciting as one chapter of my life ends and another begins. Entering into this next phase, though, I haven’t been able to shake a feeling of restlessness that seems to linger in the deepest part of me. As time has passed, I have recognized that it is in the absence of a dog that the feeling arises. Understand, this blog is not meant to be a tribute to my now deceased dog. I intend to offer an illustration that may help you, the reader, reflect on what it means to be an active part of God’s creation and, therefore, to live hopefully in the Trinitarian life we are invited into.
As I sit and reflect on this feeling of discontentedness, my phone buzzes with news of violence unfolding in Ukraine, and, in the next room, my husband tends to our fussy baby. In this moment, I’m more aware than ever of how humanity—and, indeed, the whole of creation—is undone by itself and, simultaneously, held together by itself. Humans have the capacity to both give life and destroy it, and in this world of individualization, we have become blind to the inner, Godly threads that weave between us and within us. Our spiritual practices have even become inward-focused, neglecting the deeper connectedness that we have to the rest of our God-given creation. The deeper I look into my feelings of discontentedness, the more I feel a longing for connectedness to something else, for a deeper spirituality. This longing for unity is a desire for a spiritual closeness to that which is outside of me. I believe this is a longing that all people, in some way, feel at one point in their lives—whether they are aware of it or not. Sometimes it’s perceived in the desire to experience the intimacy of marriage or friendship, and sometimes it’s realized in the bonds that we share with other living creatures. However we experience it, though, the restlessness that derives from the absence of such unity, ought to be a driving force within us. Before we reach that point, though, the acknowledgment or self-awareness of our place in the life of the Trinity is an essential practice if we are to experience life together in the fullness of God’s creation.
My first experience of truly being aware of my connection to God and creation came to me in the unlikely relationship with Gryffin. Over our almost ten years together, Gryffin taught me about joy and presence. Our trips hiking the White Mountains in New Hampshire and our roundtrips up and down the eastern seaboard created a bond that I can only describe as sacred. He allowed me to realize my place in creation and, consequently, my place in God’s transcendent presence in creation. The Jesuit priest, Ignacio Ellacuría, describes transcendence as not being outside of or above materiality and human experience, but as God within history, materiality, and human life.1 “[R]ather than a view of creation as God (a thing) creating another (thing), Ellacuría speaks of the taking-form [plasmacion] ad extra of trinitarian life.”2 In other words, God’s pervading presence throughout all of creation is indicative that creation is more than mere materiality, extrinsic to the life of God. Creation itself is an extension of God’s presence. Richard Rohr puts it this way: “Through the act of creation, God manifested the eternally outflowing Divine Presence into the physical and material world. Ordinary matter is the hiding place for Spirit, and thus the very Body of God.”3 He goes on to explain that, “when you look at any other person, a flower, a honeybee, a mountain—anything—you are seeing the incarnation of God’s love for you and the universe you call home.”4 It took me seeing the mountains, the ocean, and myself through the eyes and companionship of Gryffin to understand the realness of God’s loving company. “God is transcendent, among other reasons, not by being absent, but by being fully present.”5 Indeed, as surely as God is present in the sunrise and on the mountain top, God is present in the faces of our animal companions, as well as in our human counterparts.
To experience this Presence, there must first be an openness that allows a way for the divine flow to enter. How open we are to God determines how we will experience the Spirit and how we will then respond with our life. A self-reflective awareness will constitute a deeper openness, while a denial or unawareness will constitute a more closed connection to the Spirit’s transcendence. It is when we are closed to the Spirit that we harm one another. “When the dynamic openness is limited, a negation of Trinitarian life occurs, which is sin.”6 When it is limited, we are closed to experiencing the tender, healing touch of the Holy Spirit. We are closed to the wounded, grieving other. The very presence and experience of the wounded and marginalized people of this world is the reality of the permeation of sin—it portrays the lack of ethical response that we take due to our closure to God.7
The closure to God’s divine presence prevents us from living in true community, and from feeling the pain of our dispossessed neighbor. Out of our isolation, we resist the Spirit and we resist other people. When we are brought to a place where we recognize the divine in ourselves and others, we will become open to God’s transcendent presence. The awareness of God is more than a nod of affirmation or a statement of faith. It ought to be experienced as an overflowing love to the divine Creator and Sustainer. The person will see God’s glory reflected in the world they inhabit. Jürgen Moltmann says, “When I love God I love the beauty of bodies, the rhythm of movements, the shining of eyes, the embraces, the feelings, the senses, the sounds of all this protean creation.”8 In this sense, loving God is an all-encompassing awareness that acts as a lens by which we view creation. Moltmann continues to say, “When I love you, my God, I want to embrace it all, for I love you with all my senses in the creation of your love. In all the things that encounter me, you are waiting for me.”9 In all of the people that we encounter, God is waiting for us, beckoning us to him, to them. This recognition will compel the person to reach out to others and offer a touch of affirmation—which is also, constitutively, the touch of the divine, intrinsically transcendent God.
As I have suggested, creation is irrevocably bound up with itself, held together by God, the Creator’s, tender thread. Human beings are formed by one another, for one another, and always in relation to God. The desert father, Dorotheos of Gaza, explained this most profoundly:
Imagine that the world is a circle, that God is in the center, and that the radii are the different ways human beings live. When those who wish to come closer to God walk towards the center of the circle, they come closer to one another at the same time as to God. The closer they come to God, the closer they come to one another. And the closer they come to one another, the closer they come to God.10
This suggests that what we know of ourselves is known in and through our relationships with others. In our relationships with other people, in the encounters that we share, we are moved out of our own space. “The experience itself is not simply episodic, but can and does reveal one basis of relationality—we do not simply move ourselves, but we are moved by what is outside us, by others, but also by whatever ‘outside’ resides in us.”11
This movement to what is outside of us and to what is unknown to us, is, in a sense, the dispossession of a place that is comfortable and known. To be constituted by others is a way of describing the relationality and sociality of human beings—we are reliant upon one another and the rest of creation. This is experienced most profoundly when we grieve. Grief is a wound left by the agonizing tear to our being when we lose one who is close to us. With every loss, we are dispossessed of ourselves. The loss of Gryffin was felt most profoundly when I returned home without him. Home feels different and unfamiliar without Gryffin laying in the hallway or at the foot of my bed. My grief is having to transition into a life without him and his constant, familiar presence. It is having to figure out a life that doesn’t involve feeding him every morning and sitting with his head on my lap every night. In a similar vein, when we lose a friend or family member, we are forced to figure out our identity without that person. We depend on others to help provide our sense of belonging. Without that, we are left feeling isolated, detached, and abandoned, keeping us from experiencing the fullness of life intended by God. This, certainly, is an indication of “how we are not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them as well.”12
The interior portion of our self is what occupies our thoughts, desires, and motivations. It is the part of us that guides and directs our actions and responses to other people. It is the beginning place of our spirituality. The spiritual practices that we use to hone these skills and actions, though, are not a way for humans to transcend our humanity and inhabit a more divine space. Spiritual practices will actualize our humanity. In this sense, “spirituality does not call for the renunciation of humanness, trading humanity for divinity. It does not make us less human but more.”13 It will make us more in tune with our bodies, what we do with our bodies, and in turn, we will be concerned with other bodies as well. When we think of spirituality, there is a tendency to think of it as an escape from the material world, from the suffering of this world. Indeed, there is relief in experiencing the closeness of the Spirit; however, this does not undermine our fleshly bodies. The incarnation of Christ is the ultimate example of the importance of humanity. Did God not become human and experience suffering and death? Through our spiritual life, God meets us as fleshly human beings, and as we learn to relate to one another, we must remember the God of the cross, the God who suffered. This is the God at the center of the circle, the God we step toward in our suffering and joy, and the God that draws us closer to one another.
Jesus, cruciform Divinity, is the God to whom we can relate due to his humanness. “In Christ’s cross we confront a God who seeks to be known as a broken being—suffering, destitute, humiliated, and abandoned.”14 We are able to identify with Jesus’ humanity and the suffering that he experienced at the hands of human beings. When this happens, the intercession of the Spirit offers the comfort of Christ in times of suffering. “The Holy Spirit doesn’t deal with us in a domineering way, but tenderly and considerately—in fact, in the spirit of fellowship.”15 The fellowship of the Spirit is the invitation into the life of Jesus when we open ourselves to experience the transcendent Presence. This is precisely what Ellacuría meant when he spoke of the “grafting ad extra into Trinitarian life.”16
As we enter into the Trinitarian life, the community of believers becomes bound by the Spirit—it becomes the community of the Spirit. “Spiritual community—our being in relationship with others, moving toward fullness in God together—is the way things really are.”17 When we grieve the loss of someone or feel the pangs of abandonment, the yearning for community and comfort often surface. It is in these times when the feeling of dispossession is at its highest that we desire the touch of another, the affirming glance of a brethren, and the embrace of a neighbor. Community is the place where our core longings have the potential to be more fully experienced. In sharing a space with other people who are open to the transcendent presence of the Spirit, we experience the presence of God through others. Their glance, touch, and embrace become the mediatory glance, touch, and embrace of Jesus.
In this life, the pain of unmet core longings becomes too natural. In our loneliness and grief, we feel fragile, as if the desire to be close to another makes us dependent and weak. Because of this, we often miss the communal nature of Trinitarian life, the ever-present Spirit softly nudging us to open ourselves to the experience of others. In the pain of loneliness, however, is the Spirit of Jesus reminding us to be near to one another. Loneliness, grief, and abandonment are no longer pains that we need to suppress or flee from. Within the fellowship of the Spirit, they are acknowledged and become the force that pushes us forward. When we “mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.”18
Recognizing this hope, though, will not save us from the pain of the present. It will make us more aware of the discomfort of our human reality, and the desire for the tender presence of the Spirit will be greater. I truly believe that God meets us in the most unlikely and quiet places of our lives. As God now meets me in my marriage and the tiny form of my daughter, God first met me in the body of Gryffin and on the dirt paths we walked together. What began as a youthful desire for companionship and adventure developed into spiritual awakening, opening my eyes to God’s limitless presence. When it came time to say goodbye to Gryffin, and I felt the loneliness and hopelessness that accompanies death, the Spirit reminded me of God’s permeating Presence and hope returned. It’s in those pangs of loneliness and the longing for unity that we are reminded of our place in the life of the Trinity, and therefore, that we are never alone if we open ourselves to God’s transcendent presence. In the changing of the seasons, in the death of those we love, and in the birth of new life, the Spirit is reminding us of the resurrection after the death and suffering of Jesus. It is in this memory that we are invited to live into the hope of our shared, collective resurrection.
Originally from Ohio, Melanee Hamilton currently lives in Asheville, NC where she is the Lead Storyteller for Haywood Street Congregation (United Methodist Church). Melanee, a Brethren PK (pastor’s kid) previously interned with On Earth Peace, a CoB-affiliated nonprofit organization, where she revised the Matthew 18 Workshop on congregational conflict and reconciliation. She also has considerable work experience in outreach to homeless veterans and others suffering from mental illness and substance use disorder.
- Michael E. Lee; J. Matthew Ashley, Kevin F. Burke, and Rodolfo Cardenal. A Grammar of Justice: The Legacy of Ignacio Ellacuría. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2014), 193.
- Ibid., 193.
- Richard Rohr. The Universal Christ: How a forgotten reality can change everything we see, hope for, and believe. (New York: Convergent Books, 2019), 16.
- Ibid., 52.
- Lee, 193.
- Myra Rivera. A Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 46.
- Lee, 194.
- Jurgen Moltmann. The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, (London: Fortress Press, 1997), 88.
- Ibid., 88.
- Dorotheos of Gaza. “Dorotheos of Gaza (6th Century) Humility and Communion.” Taize. http://www.taize.fr/en_article5234.html.
- Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou. Dispossession: The Performative in the Political. (Malden, MA: Polity Press), 3.
- Butler. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, 24.
- Ibid., 104.
- Ibid., 105.
- Moltmann, 90.
- Lee, 2.
- Rose Mary Dougherty. Group Spiritual Direction: Community for Discernment, (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 8.
- Ibid., 93