Camping Theology: Panentheistic Meditations

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Camping Theology: Panentheistic Meditations
By Tarris D. Rosell, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology in Ethics
Central Baptist Theological Seminary, KS

Panentheism is a theological perspective found, to varying degrees, in the Christian feminist writings of Sallie McFague and Marjorie Suchocki, other process theologians such as John B. Cobb, in the creation spirituality of Matthew Fox, and perhaps also the American Jewish theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel. It is an approach to thinking about God that comes in handy when theologizing on one`s annual family camping trip.

The panentheistic blurring of sacred and secular gives rise to theological writing options without end. If "all is in God," a construct given weight by the Apostle Paul`s Areopagus speech to Athenian philosophers (Acts 17:16ff), one could write "a theology of …" almost anything. Not enough of us have been so inclined, distracted as we are by all that humans have created.

I write my panentheistic "theology of camping"-or maybe just theologizing while camping-from a site at 8500 feet elevation in the Colorado Rockies. A God who "does not live in temples made by hands" (Acts 17:24) is encountered more readily while meditating outdoors in the temple of that which God made. A divine being who is not "like gold or silver or stone-an image made by human design and skill" (Acts 17:29)-might be experienced better and more accurately described while removed from human artifacts and immersed in the divinely ordered natural world. It is all sacred space out here.

Immanuel Kant contemplated with "increasing admiration and awe . . . the starry heavens above" as a modernist antidote for rationalistic materialism (in his Conclusion to Critique of Practical Reason). A postmodern camper rediscovers the ineffable while looking up at a night sky unpolluted by city lights. We reach out and find that God "is not far from each one of us. For in [God] we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28).

This sort of theology is not the animism, polytheism, nor pantheism of some other religions. The Christian panentheist does not find gods everywhere nor God in everything. All is not God nor is God all that is. I look at the enormous craggy rock jutting out from the earth above my campsite, at the snowcapped mountains off in the distance, and it is not deity that I see.

We use the descriptor "majestic" for such a scene as this and it is apt, as much so as when this term is sung in praise of the mountains` Creator. But I rather easily make the distinction between the majesty of creation and the majestic all-encompassing One who "made the world and everything in it" (Acts 17:24). Too easily, I forget about both when confined to home, office, classroom, or the relatively low roof of a church building.

Like our common God-talk, I might use anthropomorphic language for the mountain, or the large pine tree that now gives me shade. He is a grand old man, and she spreads her branches to protect all those who come near. As we often do in reference to deity, I sometimes personalize natural objects and even speak to them with awe and in admiration of their grandeur. In gratitude for the mountain`s steadfastness or the tree`s protective shade, I offer thanksgiving both to them and to the One.

With Saint Francis of Assisi, we might call our fellow creatures or creations by sibling titles, "Brother" or "Sister", as I do here when a full moon appears on the eastern horizon at midnight and the sun just a few hours later. Brother Sun and Sister Moon are indeed magnificent and seem beneficent, shedding light and radiance, warmth and energy on mere mortals like me.

But they are not gods; neither do I understand them as divinely inhabited. Inhabiting the divine is more than enough.

I think such God-thoughts when gazing in wonder at paintbrush and bluebells, big horn sheep on a hillside, a herd of elk grazing the tundra at 12,000 feet above sea level, a pair of coyotes darting across the valley below, and rainbow trout swimming or jumping upstream so as to spawn in still waters from whence they came.

Even cawing crows at dawn, tiny chipmunks scurrying to and fro upon this Colorado earth, and the abundance of ants instill respect for all that is. These are not-so-subtle reminders of our creaturely status together as living co-inhabitors of the divine.

This in-God experience is especially tangible while camping with my life partner and our four teenage and young adult children. Out here we are less distracted, more related-the family we intend to be in God.

On day hikes we ooh and ahh together at each bend in the trail offering new and breathtaking vistas. We snap photo memories to view and share later; and we make allowances for each others` physical weaknesses when the trail gets steep or grows long. We offer one another water and bread for the journey, communing as one body in this Body of God.

Around the campfire at night, family members share our various God-thoughts, things that would go unthought or unspoken in busier times and places.

I must confess that our family does what hardcore campers might derisively refer to as "car camping." It does involve a tent-all six of us together. No pop-ups, RVs, or cabins for us! But we go to tent-sites accessible by car and in proximity to dozens of other car campers. We may not have water and electricity at our site, but such amenities are not far off, and our cell phones still ring up here.

Discovering gratis accessibility to wireless internet a day or so after arrival, I surf the internet, check email, type a camping theology on my laptop at our campsite. Miles away from any "temples made by hands," human invention still intrudes.

Yet even this partial retreat from what is called civilization is sufficient for panentheistic theological reflection. Even while car camping, one might see nature in God and encounter that theos in whom "we live and move and have our being," who truly "is not far from each one of us."

1 See Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN 1993.