Union with God

Some who are tediously metaphysical might worry that all this talk of union with God blurs the distinction between Creator and creation. Far from blurring this distinction it sets it in sharper focus. John’s Gospel says we are the branches and Christ is the vine (Jn 15:5). The branches are not separate from the vine but one with it. If the branch is cut off, you won’t have a branch, for it soon shrivels away. A branch is a branch insofar as it is one with the vine. From the branch’s perspective it is all vine. Speaking of this transformation of consciousness that marks the moving into awareness of our grounding union with God, Meister Eckhart says, ‘All things become pure God to you, for in all things you see nothing but God.’ John of the Cross speaks along similar lines. ‘It seems to [the soul] that the entire universe is a sea of love in which it is engulfed, for, conscious of the living point or center of love within itself, it is unable to catch sight of the boundaries of this love.’ When life is lived from ‘the center’ as John of the Cross terms it, all of life seems shot through with God.

– by Martin Laird in Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation