From a pastor-friend:

I would like to back up , and amplify Rowland’s comments. Deeply thank God for, welcome, and listen to the “young Mum” in her enthusiasm for Darryl Reanney. There is real energy there, for you to tap into. learn from, and perhaps guide in its expression. We need such energies for spiritual/church renewal.

I am unfamiliar with Reanney, but from exploring writers of his ilk, it seems to me that all you need to be clear about is 3 things–: 1. the distinction between pantheisim ( God-is-everything) and pan-en-theism (God-is-IN-everything). The latter perspective is absolutely necessary. In creating a context for God’s best gift to us–human freedom and creativity as spirit persons– there HAS to be much in human life that is outside God’s direct will….with all sorts of contradictions, confusions, clashes etc. God is IN all human situations/happenings/people good and bad, but without being identified completely with any of them!

2. the Nature of That One Who is in in everything, and always has been, and in all religious traditions too, was incarnated in Jesus–the Word-made-flesh, “Christ and Him crucified/risen again. In the whole Christ Event, christians believe that we are looking into the very Heart of God –his infinite love: He bears on His heart intimately, intrinsically the suffering & sins of the world; He HAS and IS reconciling/restoring/making whole, the world to Himself.

(The blood of Christ IS the Heart of God, the Holiest of All, not a propitiatory sacrifice to appease the wrath./honour/ holiness etc. of a God who was somehow separate!)

“The pattern of all life is cruciform” –to quote Richard Rohr’s “Everything Belongs” p178.–because of life’s paradoxes, conflicts,’free’ people and groups, good and bad, at cross purposes. That is the sheer reality of all life on earth even within Providence!

3. The very essence of all religion and spirituality is to be awakened/drawn into mystical union with THIS ONE. Only in such union, that is forged in us through prayer, sensitivity and obedience to the promptings of the Spirit within us, can we live ‘centred’ and stabilized, learning to keep at the very point of life’s equilibrum. (At peace with God, at peace In God…..” in the Grace wherin we now stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God., even in tribulations also……….because the love of God (AND ALL THE OTHER FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT) is being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Ro. 5)…to ground all this firmly in the Scriptures)

I have stored a treasure from Hudson Taylor, Head of the CIM in China during the Boxer rebellion in the 19th Century. He was once asked. “How on earth do you manage to handle all these “pressures”? To which he replied.” It’s not the pressures that matter, it’s their geography. If they come between me and God, any presurre can become too great. But if they just press me closer to God, I can bear anything!” He KNEW! “Everything belongs”!

How can any of us ever be afraid or uneasy about such mystical union, or about exploring life to the full in That One– with all ‘young mums’, or any other questing souls?

Go with the energy my friend, and God bless the exploration!

Cheers!