“I am walking through the mind and body of God.”
That’s just one of the many heady quotes from Sharman Apt Russell’s 2008 book, Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist. I won’t be coy; I loved this book, and I’m glad I chose it when I was researching the topic of pantheism. I had read about pantheism online, and I wanted a more in-depth introduction to the topic. I chose Standing in the Light partly because it was highly rated, but—and I hate to admit this—mainly because it was cheap. I downloaded the Kindle copy for $3 as part some sort of Amazon sale.
What is pantheism? Simply put (by Russell), “Pantheism is the belief that the universe, with all its existing laws and properties, is an interconnected whole that we can rightly consider sacred…” Personally I think of it as a philosophy that’s not quite a religion—although I’m sure some would argue that it is—that appeals to people who would by and large consider themselves atheists, but who feel that a purely scientific-materialist worldview is missing something. Maybe that something is a sense of awe when contemplating the vastness and mysteriousness of the universe and that seems to only grow as we learn more about it.
Here’s another favorite passage: “Importantly, what pantheism is not is theism—the acceptance of a single, personal god. Pantheism is not atheism either, a disbelief in a sacred or numinous universe…. The well-known atheist and scientist Richard Dawkins calls pantheism “sexed-up atheism.” Well, nothing wrong with being sexy.”
“Nothing wrong with being sexy,” typifies one of the things I most like about the book, the personal and at times humorous tone. Russell is the author of 12 books (four novels and eight nonfiction titles) and is a long-time writing teacher. And it shows. Obviously she is someone who has sat with this topic for years, if not decades, and has processed it so thoroughly that she can express herself clearly and concisely to the average reader.
With such chapter titles as “The Early Greeks,” “Baruch Spinoza,” and “Holistic Science,” you might think that this book would be a dry slog, but it was the opposite, and it’s those chapters on the historical context of pantheism that were the most interesting to me. One of the reasons I chose this book was to get a better overview of the topic, and this book certainly delivered that.
Russell traces the roots of pantheism all the way back to the ancient Greek Stoics and explores strains of pantheistic thought running through various disciplines over the millennia since, including physics, architecture, art, the environmental movement, and of course religion. Reading Standing in the Light, I think I about doubled my knowledge of Quakerism, learning enough to know that I’d like to learn more.
That’s another reason I enjoyed this book so much: it has pointed me in so many directions for further exploration. I added Spinoza’s Ethics to my reading list as well as The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. I watched several YouTube videos posted by a Quaker meeting about what they believe and what happens during a Sunday gathering.
Russell weaves episodes from her own life throughout the book, which does two things: provides a biographical context for how she came to pantheism as a philosophy or outlook or way of viewing the world (none of those formulations seem quite right) and models how one might approach one’s own life with a pantheistic view, alert for the wondrous in the everyday. Perhaps that’s what having a philosophy or a religion does for us: Allows us to intentionally bring a certain sensibility to our lives.
Or maybe it’s more about creating a dialog between our response to the world, particularly those moments of awe or transcendence that visit us, if we’re lucky, and the intellectual/spiritual frameworks others have created (religions, philosophies, etc.) that can help us comprehend those moments, so we can describe them to ourselves and others. I get that sense from Russell’s book: She’s both a writer trying to describe her very personal experience of the world, particularly the natural world, and an intellectual exploring a range of ideas about living in and understanding the world.
And that may be the perfect way to describe a tension that pantheism addresses, the tension between science and spirituality, atheism and religion. Russell describes her volunteer work near her New Mexico home counting birds as part of an annual bird census, and one of her recent books is titled, Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World, so its clear that she has a background and an affinity for science and ecology, yet she makes the point that pantheism is not atheism. “But the pantheist acknowledges a strong religious impulse. The pantheist walks literally, every day, in the Mind and Body of God.”
If atheism and religion are the two poles, then pantheism is a kind of compromise between the two, although one much closer to the non-religious side of the spectrum. That’s my own way of describing it to myself at least.
I enjoyed the sections describing her life and background because hers is a life and a mind in some ways completely alien to me. She’s a nature lover. I like to think that I am, too, but it’s hard for me to believe it when I read about someone like Sharman Apt Russell who has chosen to live in a very rural area and who thinks a lot about nature and the environment—far more than I do, truth be told. She writes, “I believe that science is about connection and complexity, harmony and surprise. Science is about beauty. The more I see—the more I know—the more beautiful the world seems…. My sense of beauty is also limited, almost always evoked by the natural world.”
I live near the downtown of a small city. I enjoy visiting natural places, but would I want to live in a remote area far away from a reasonably sized town? Probably not. Nature can be beautiful, and I have had almost religious experiences of awe on nature trails in quiet woods and among mountain peaks, but I think a lot of things are beautiful that aren’t natural, too—books, people, experiences, buildings, and cities—and I’m also a little suspicious and squeamish about nature. My dad took me fishing when I was a small boy, and the first thing I pulled from the smelly saltwater of Biscayne Bay was a slimy googly-eyed squid that left me terrified of the ocean and anything fishing-related for years afterward.
Nature stings you. Nature bites you. Nature can rip you to shreds with its sharp teeth and fill your veins with poison. It’s hard for me to imagine the kind of relationship with it that Russell has.
On top of that, science and biology are interests of mine but definitely among the lesser ones. Not my best subjects in school. Nowadays I have a good relationship to nature; you could even say I’m very fond of it. And I realize the importance of protecting the environment, but I am light years away, it seems, from the kind of intimacy with nature that Russell has.
But there are other ways that I think we are simpatico. For instance, she writes, “At some point, I should confess: Magic plays a huge role in my life as a writer. I would give up much before I would give up magic or magical thinking, which takes up hours and hours of my time, days and months and years, and gives me such enormous pleasure.” That really resonated with me, as did, “I am not so different from one of my New Age friends who says she likes to play with the idea that her dead sister talks to her or that her totem animal, the coyote, sends her dreams at night. I simply compartmentalize more. I call my magic metaphor. Then I put it in a box and shut the lid.”
Anyone who has grown up reading a lot of fiction and loves imagining other worlds should totally get what she’s saying here. Do wizards and talking rabbits and murderous interdimensional robots and flying saucers exist? Of course not. And yes. Suspending disbelief is not exactly believing, but it might not be as far away as you might think either. Making your way through life embracing (even only periodically) useful, beautiful fictions may be the closest that some people ever get to a religion. I think that’s true for me.
To me, pantheism holds open the door for the numinous and the magical occurring in everyday life, without having to commit (or even the ability to commit) to a belief in the supernatural or cling to a religious dogma. I may not be ready to call myself a pantheist yet as I continue to shop around and try on different worldviews, religions, and philosophies, but I could do far worse. Pantheism seems a much better fit for me than most other labels I’ve encountered so far.
It may not need saying again, but I loved this book. It gave me a lot to think about, it pointed me in some new directions, and beyond the ideas discussed, it was beautifully written and a pleasure to read. It certainly deserves to be read more widely. For several years, I’ve been meaning to start writing book reviews. Standing in the Light is the book that finally got me to do it.
The Swansonian 