Immanence

A theme common to all religions is that God, or the ultimate reality, is both transcendent and immanent. God is transcendent in that he/she/it is beyond our human comprehension, and that nay For instance, “he” and “she” are corporal, social concepts, and God cannot be restricted to such categories, or any categories, for that matter.

But God is also immanent, meaning that God can be perceived or intuited through his/her creation, a creation that includes both nature and human beings. This is a common theme in The Psalms and in the teachings of Jesus.

This art piece looks at the immanence of God in nature through a Christian lens. There is the centre orb representing God the Father/Creator/source of all life, there is the cross representing Jesus and there is the aureole representing the Holy Spirit. These representations are embedded and infused with nature imagery. Not only are there depictions of plant life, but I have drawn on Native insight that nature presents itself in fours: the four seasons, the four elements (earth, wind, fire, water), the four limbs of the human body, etc.

So I have here the Trinity of God embedded in the Quaternity of Nature. 3 in 4. 3, the symbol of God + 4, the symbol of Nature = 7, the symbol of wholeness.

The colors are also significant. Often in the Old Testament the immanence of God is described as bringing the abundance of “grain, wine and olive oil”. This theme is carried forward by the eucharist, of which elements are wine and bread (grain + olive oil). In this art piece there is the wine color, there is the green of growing grain and there is the natural wood which I rubbed with olive oil.