Content Warning: Is God Everywhere? Is The Opposite There Too?

Is God Everywhere? Is The Opposite There Too?

Content Warning

I respect spirituality and religion when they are practiced compassionately. I hold space for mystery and all we don’t understand. I value our individual right to consider the wonders of the physical and spiritual world in ways that work for us, as long as we don’t infringe on other people’s rights. I wish we would all see the value of science. What I share below might offend those belonging to the church of my birth or to the spiritual communities I’ve been in since, people I love and people who are strangers to me. I mean no offense, and although I hope you won’t take any, I am less concerned with what you think about me than with what world our grandchildren will live in.

I use “God” here to encompass many variants, not as an expression of a particular religion or worldview, but as shorthand. I understand the limitations and the connotations. Feel free to replace the word “God” with something from other languages or cultures, or something more nuanced that captures a sense of an elusive divinity.

When people claim to know, I tend to move away. I don’t claim to know. I do wonder.

Is God Decentralized?

Is God sitting at the top of a hierarchical structure or permeating our world in a more decentralized way? The latter feels more likely to me.

Something vital shimmers through everything. You’ve felt this too, right? Often, it’s not when we are seeking it. Often, it’s not in the form we think it should take. It can be surprising where and when we feel it, or see it, or hear it, or know it.

Octopus Brains, Forest Families and Close Calls.

I think about the decentralized nature of an octopus’s neurological system. Their powers of perception and processing are spread throughout their bodies, each arm having graceful, intelligent autonomy while maintaining coherence with the octopus as a whole. They have nine brains!
Is God within an octopus?

I think about the way a forest has decentralized power. Trees and mycelial networks communicate in multiple dimensions to preserve the health of the ecosystems and beings living within them. They tend in reciprocal, nuanced, and self-sustaining ways.
Is God within a forest?

I think about how a community roared into action to save a loved one’s life recently. With lightning speed and cooperation, help flowed to and around them like a hive; a complex living organism with a single mission of keeping this person alive. We were drawn together in our devotion, family and strangers alike. Each one of us sensed and performed specific roles, unknown only moments before.
If there is a God, they were with us under the stars and the porch lights that night.

Tell Us What To Do

Humans often lack the patience and depth to grasp and value these kinds of decentralized beings, systems, and events. We gravitate to hierarchy, centralized power, and authority figures.

Tell us what to believe. Tell us what to do. Tell us how to make sense of this incomprehensible world.

I’m not criticizing. It’s easier that way. We can focus on what’s within our own scope of power. We feel more secure. We go about our business knowing that someone knows what’s best. We don’t have to think about (fill in the blank).

But what if it’s wrong?

What if the authority figure, the model, and the directions are horribly, dramatically wrong?

What if they are destroying everything?

We are destroying our world. I don’t think this is hyperbole. We are making improvements in some areas too, of course.

We share responsibility for the destruction; knowingly and unknowingly, we have all participated. However, people who seek positions of power in public service should act to improve our world in the aggregate, not harm it. (You laugh – I know that’s not how it works, but that’s how it should work.) Some people and some countries are taking these beneficial actions, but not in the highest echelons here in America, not now.

Our irreplaceable public heirlooms are being sold off, traded, and destroyed. A lying, ego-maniacal, predatory, felonious president is rewarding his extraordinarily rich buddies and family members and companies who’ve bought a stake in him. The corruption is unspeakable. They’re essentially stealing from other countries, and from even the poorest among our own people. It’s not just him. He is the figurehead, the driving force who promises and threatens like an abusive spouse. He appeals to our worst instincts.

Seven Deadly Sins

This man claims Christianity while being an embodiment of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

The “sins” may as well be the rallying cry, the perverted virtue-signaling of the current administration. But the “deadly” -ness is felt by those less fortunate around him. We are indeed in the upside-down.

Is it not sinful to let children die from preventable causes while billionaires get richer from our tax dollars?

Is it not sinful to aid people who sexually abuse women and girls? Is it not sinful to steal from poor children?

Is it not sinful to destroy entire species and ecosystems that presumably were created by whatever combination of generative God powers and aspiritual natural forces created us?

The miracle of our natural world is a reflection of God. Protecting children and vulnerable creatures is basic decency. We need our decentralized God/Goddess/Spirit/Divinity/Nature more than ever.

If God Is Everywhere, The Opposite Is Too.

God is everywhere. God is in you and in me. It does not make us God, but we can carry God’s holiness like blood in our veins. It can nourish and enrich us. Help us radiate God stuff in the world.

If God is everywhere, then the opposite is too.

The ungodly stuff can flow through us too. It can corrupt and taint people. The toxic sludge that corporations are increasingly allowed to pour into our waterways will poison those ecosystems. The slurry of lies, corruption, racism, and misogyny that pours from our president and his minions can and does poison us. It flows through us if we imbibe it. It has changed us.

In my hometown recently, on the first day of school, some kids waved goodbye to a parent and got on the bus. They didn’t know until they stepped off the bus again that their parent was gone, taken by ICE. Some Americans cheer this, laugh about this, want more of this.

Later this week we mark a day when our country was targeted needlessly and thousands lost their lives. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

Both influences flow through us. We can be kind, cruel, thoughtful, thoughtless, honest and deceitful. None of us is wholly one thing or another. It’s up to us to monitor ourselves. I hope that we see clearly enough as individuals, as a country, and as a species to know which is which, to sort lies from truth, and the God stuff from the opposite.

If God is not in the places of rare beauty on this planet, I don’t know where he/she/they/it is. (No one knows what gender God is. It seems absurd that God would have a gender at all. If God, who supposedly births all things into existence, were to have a gender, it would make more sense to be female, right? Or all genders simultaneously? I don’t understand, but I want to learn new things, to be illuminated. Don’t you?)

Let us do what we can to protect our earth, vulnerable beings, sacred places, and undiscovered wonders. If there is a God, decentralized or not, may we learn from them. May we learn to be worthy stewards of these magnificent creations, to have humility, to be kind and thoughtful parents, children, partners, and temporary visitors. May we feel the shimmer of this enspirited world and be divinely (and practically) guided through these challenging times.

Mara

As always, you can make time to connect here.

Read more about my beliefs here. About Whole Spirit and Whole Nature here.

©2026 Mara Bishop

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash