The Tender Vagueness of God: Six Ways to Know God without Grasping God

The Tender Vagueness of God

Six Ways to Know God without Grasping God

Jay McDaniel
Sept. 12, 2026

with help from Open AI

Satisfactions can be classified by reference to ‘triviality,’ ‘vagueness,’ ‘narrowness,’ ‘width.’..The right chaos, and the right vagueness, are jointly required for any effective harmony.

Whitehead, Process and Reality

[The Galilean vision] dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present.

Whitehead, Process and Reality

The Right Vagueness

Imagine that God is not a “thing” but a divine milieu: an atmosphere and background for the whole of life. Imagine, too, that this milieu operates through what Whitehead calls “the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love.”

I borrow the phrase “the divine milieu” from the French Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). It is the title of his book Le Milieu Divin, written in 1926–1927 and published posthumously in 1957. Teilhard’s point, and mine as well, is that we cannot grasp God as an object within our environment, because God is the encompassing environment—the atmosphere and background of our lives. Still, we can walk with God, living our lives within the light and love of the divine milieu.

If we are to live in this way, we need what Whitehead would call "the right vagueness." The right vagueness involves sensing God as a background for life, not reducible to a focal object in mental space that can be inspected and scrutizined. This means experiencing God obliquely, experiencig God with the corner of our mind.

Readers will recall Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, in which the fox asks the Little Prince to sit quietly at some distance from him. The fox will look at him only from the corner of his eye, and each day the prince may come a little closer. Trust develops through quiet, patient, and indirect presence—not through scrutiny or excessive speech. The fox is not absent from the prince, nor the prince from the fox; each is present to the other without becoming an object of concentrated inspection.

Something similar may be true of our awareness of God. God may be felt obliquely, as a quiet atmosphere of presence. This atmosphere is with us, and inside us, before—and perhaps more deeply than—than it is turned into is an object of focused thought. This atmosphere quietly colors experience, holds its elements together, and gives us a sense of orientation, depth, and possibility. Yet when we turn toward it and try to inspect it as a clearly defined object, we may miss something essential: the tender vagueness of God. Like the tonal background of music, the divine presence may be most fully received not through concentrated scrutiny but through a receptive and trusting form of awareness—by listening from the corner of the mind.

Triviality, Vagueness, Narrowness, and Width

See also The Aesthetics of Lived Experience

A moment of experiential satisfaction, Whitehead suggests, can be understood according to four measures: triviality, vagueness, narrowness, and width.

Triviality need not be understood in purely pejorative terms. It names the multiplicity of elements being experienced, consciously or unconsciously, without any strong sense of connection among them. They remain relatively scattered or chaotic. In some circumstances, this chaos can provide a healthy antidote to stifling forms of order; the absence of rigid coordination can itself open possibilities for novelty.

Vagueness measures the degree to which some or many of these elements are felt as sharing certain qualities, so that their “manyness” is experienced as a vague “oneness.” This vague unity forms a background against which other elements can be more clearly distinguished. Often it is a nourishing background, present in experience as something that enriches everything else.

Narrowness is the concentrated focus on one or more particular entities that stand in the foreground against this background. The entities at issue form a 'contrast' with the vagu background and with one other. They can also form a contrast with ideas and possibilities. For example, when we perceive an actual state of affairs and realize that "it could have been otherwise,' the contrast is between actuality and possibility, forming what Whithead calls an 'affirmation-negation' contrast, which, as he sees things is the essence of 'conscious' experience

Width measures the degree to which experience is spacious enough to include many distinct elements in contrast with one another, allowing a “contrast of contrasts” to be enjoyed within a wider harmony. Width consists of width of inclusion in particular entities and possibilities. Thus it is different from vagueness.

The enjoyment of satisfaction in the immediacy of the moment can involve all four: a felt multiplicity of influences, a complementary sense of the unified background they form, an awareness of one or more objects in their uniqueness, and sufficient width for these objects to be felt and enjoyed simultaneously. As Whitehead puts it, a satisfying moment needs “the right chaos” and “the right vagueness,” along with focused attention and a widened horizon capable of including many contrasts at once.

An Example from Visual Experience

When seeking examples of these four modes at work, it is natural for human beings to turn to visual experience, since vision plays such a prominent role in our lives. Imagine looking at a landscape photograph. It contains countless patches of color, variations of light and shadow, and minute details that are present without being individually noticed.

Together they form a general atmosphere: perhaps one of spaciousness, tranquility, or foreboding. Within that atmosphere, a particular tree, mountain, house, or human figure may become the focus of attention. Yet the photograph may also invite the eye to move beyond this focal object and take in the relationships among foreground and distance, brightness and darkness, earth and sky. Its richness lies in the way the many elements contribute to a wider composition.

It is important to remember, however, that the human preference for vision is not shared by all creatures. A bat might turn instead to auditory experience; a dog, to olfactory experience; and an earthworm, to tactile experience. Here I will focus on auditory experience because I want to consider God neither as a particular object located in visual space nor, more pertinently, as an idea occupying mental space. Instead, I want to consider what it might mean to feel God’s presence as a nonfocalized and vague—but nevertheless nourishing—background of everyday experience, much as we hear tonal backgrounds in music. This is what I mean by the vagueness of God.

I want to suggest that this vagueness belongs not only to our experience of God but also, in some sense, to God’s own manner or mode of being. God's vagueness is part of who God is and what God is. It is holy vagueness.

An Example from Auditory Experience

Consider listening to a piece of music. Many sounds enter experience without being individually noticed or strongly connected; this relative multiplicity is triviality. Some of these sounds merge into a general atmosphere whose elements are felt together without being clearly distinguished; this is vagueness. Against this vague background, a particular melody, rhythm, instrument, or voice may emerge as the focus of attention; this is narrowness. At the same time, the experience may be wide enough to include melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre, and dynamics in their contrasts with one another; this is width. The richness of the music lies in the way these many elements are gathered into an integrated yet differentiated whole.

Tonal Backgrounds

Of special importance for my purposes here is the tonal background. It may not be heard as a distinct object or consciously examined in its own right, yet it surrounds, supports, and conditions everything that is heard. A sustained drone, a recurring bass figure, or the resonance of the room can establish the tonal field within which the melody acquires its character. The background is therefore not merely an absence of clarity or a collection of unnoticed sounds. It is a positive and nourishing presence: a vague unity that gives atmosphere, orientation, depth, and coherence to the music as a whole. We may be more conscious of the melody, but the melody could not have precisely the meaning it has apart from the tonal background within which it unfolds.

Theists might assume that God is experienced primarily as an object of narrowed focus. Sometimes, as in prayer, this may indeed be the case. Or perhaps in theology, when people are focussing on the properties of God. But Whitehead’s aesthetics of satisfaction invites us to consider another possibility: that much of the time God is experienced—and thus known—in the mode of vagueness, as a nourishing background. Like the tonal field of a piece of music, God may be felt without becoming a clearly distinguished object of consciousness. God may surround, support, and orient experience while remaining in its background, giving depth and direction to the melodies of everyday life.

As soon as this nourishing background is rendered into a distinct object of experience—especially an object occupying the mental space of a person’s mind—something important can be lost: the support it offers by holding things together and providing orientation, depth, and meaning. The objectified idea of God may remain, but the encompassing presence of God recedes from awareness. The spirit is missed, and the letter takes its place.

The Divine Milieu

This does not mean that we human beings can or should avoid thinking about God. It does mean, however, that some metaphors can better accommodate the vagueness of God as a nourishing background than others. Teilhard de Chardin’s metaphor of the “divine milieu,” for example, may be especially helpful in this regard. It presents God as an encompassing environment of life and meaning rather than as a localized object. In this respect, it may serve our purposes better than metaphors drawn more explicitly from localized, bodily experience, such as “father,” “mother,” “ruler,” or “friend.”

There are, of course, very good reasons for using these more personal metaphors. They communicate intimacy, agency, care, responsiveness, and love. But when we use them, we need not imagine a person as a spatially bounded object, located exclusively in one region and absent from all others. A person can instead be understood as a field of consciousness and experience whose life extends into the relationships through which that person affects—and is affected by—the surrounding world. Truth be told, a person can also be an atmosphere—and a “vague” one at that. We often feel another person’s presence not by focusing on that person as an object but by sensing the mood, warmth, tension, or possibility that the person brings into a room.

This way of thinking resonates with Whitehead’s critique of what he calls the “fallacy of simple location”: the assumption that something exists only in one sharply bounded region of space and time, with no intrinsic reference to anything elsewhere. Even a focalized entity does not exist in isolation. It is present beyond itself through the influences it exerts, just as influences from elsewhere are present within it. Applied theologically, this suggests that even when God is imagined personally—as father, mother, ruler, or friend—God need not be imagined as a localized being standing outside the world. God may be personal while also being field-like: an encompassing presence felt wherever divine influence is received.

Six Ways of Experiencing the Vagueness of God

Listening for guidance. We may experience God as a quiet prompting toward healing, courage, creativity, or compassion. The prompting need not arrive as a clearly articulated command. It may be felt simply as a gentle lure toward the next best step.
Listening for compelling ideals. God may be felt through the attractive power of truth, goodness, and beauty. We need not focus explicitly on God in order to respond to these ideals. In being drawn toward them, we are already responding to the divine Eros within experience.
Listening for comfort. In grief, loneliness, anxiety, or pain, we may feel accompanied by a presence that understands without needing to name or visualize it. This quiet companionship can be understood as participation in the consequent nature of God—the “fellow-sufferer who understands.”
Feeling ourselves within a larger, nurturing whole. At certain moments, we may feel ourselves contained within a wider field of life and love. The whole is not an object standing beyond us and available for inspection. It is the encompassing milieu within which we live, move, and have our being—as a fish lives within the sea or a melody unfolds within a tonal field. We experience God not by looking outward at the whole but by sensing ourselves as already within it, surrounded and sustained by a presence larger than ourselves.
Engaging in addressive prayer. We may speak to God as “You” without forming a clear mental image or precise concept of the One whom we address. The words may be definite—“Help me,” “Thank you,” “Be with her”—while the divine recipient remains graciously indefinite. Here God is personal without becoming picturable: a listening presence encountered through trust rather than inspection.
Experiencing healing and creative transformation. God may be felt as a quiet movement within us toward becoming whole: a loosening of resentment, an opening of the heart, a recovery of hope, or the emergence of a new way forward. We may not experience God as a distinct presence or know precisely where the transformation comes from. We may notice only its effects—greater freedom, renewed energy, an unexpected capacity to forgive, or the courage to begin again. Like a tonal background that quietly changes the meaning of a melody, the divine milieu can reshape our experience from within.

In all six ways, vagueness is not mere ignorance or deficiency. It is a mode of intimacy appropriate to a presence that surrounds us, dwells within us, and exceeds every image we form of it. God is known less by being inspected than by the guidance, attraction, comfort, belonging, relationship, and transformation through which the divine presence becomes effective in our lives.

What if I don't experience any of this?

What if I do not experience any of these forms of divine presence, at least consciously? What if the divine milieu feels to me like a cosmic vacuum—empty, silent, and devoid of love?

One possibility is to continue “going through the motions”: praying, meditating, singing, walking in nature, participating in community, or treating others with care, even when no sense of God accompanies these activities. Going through the motions need not be dishonest. It can be a form of patient openness—a way of preparing the ground for an experience that cannot be manufactured or demanded. The practices may continue until, and unless, some sense of divine presence emerges.

Another possibility is that elements of divine presence are already active within experience without being consciously recognized. A fresh possibility, a moment of unexpected courage, an attraction toward beauty, or an impulse to care for another may carry a divine influence even when it is not identified as such. If God is a vague and nourishing background, then God need not become an object of consciousness in order to be felt or effective. Indeed, the divine presence may be most deeply operative precisely where it remains unnamed.

None of this requires us to deny the reality of divine absence. The cosmic vacuum may itself be the honest shape of a person’s experience, sometimes for many years. Faith, in such circumstances, is not pretending to feel what one does not feel. It may consist simply in remaining open to the possibility that the silence is not the whole story—and in continuing, when possible, to offer others the love one cannot presently feel surrounding oneself.

A Note on the “Hiddenness” of God

The hiddenness of God need not mean that God is entirely absent from experience. God may be hidden from narrowness—from the focused perception or conception that turns something into a clear and distinct object—without being hidden from nurturant vagueness. God may be felt as the encompassing background of experience even when God cannot be isolated, inspected, or clearly defined.

Indeed, it may not be in the nature of God to become a clear and distinct object of focused perception or conception. God is not one localized entity among other entities, occupying a particular place in either physical or mental space. God is more like a field of presence: an encompassing milieu within which creatures live, feel, and become. To demand that God appear as a sharply defined object may therefore be to seek God in a mode that obscures how God is actually present.

From this perspective, divine hiddenness is partly a consequence of using narrowness as the primary measure of reality. We assume that what is real must stand clearly before the mind. But some realities are known differently: as atmospheres, relationships, orientations, possibilities, or quiet sources of nourishment. God may be hidden from the inspecting eye yet present to the receptive heart—unavailable as an object of scrutiny but available as a sustaining presence, a gentle lure, and a surrounding love.

Multiplicity and Divine Vagueness

The consequent nature of God in Whitehead’s philosophy is God’s ongoing subjective experience and unification of the multiplicity of the universe in a spirit of love. It consists both of God’s feelings of each actual entity and of the actual entities themselves as lovingly felt. The “manyness” of the universe is thus included within the divine life without being erased or reduced to sameness.

When we experience particular beings—or the totality of beings, including ourselves—as held within a larger field of love, we participate in God’s own loving experience of the world. God may then be felt not as a narrowly defined object of attention, but as a vague and encompassing field of feeling: the divine milieu in which the universe, in all its multiplicity, is received, cherished, and gathered into unity

Whitehead on Tenderness

It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present. (Whitehead, Process and Reality)

The image— and it is but an image— the image under which this operative growth of God's nature is best conceived,, is that of a tender care that nothing be lost. (Whitehead, Process and Reality)

He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage. (Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality)

God, tenderly saving the turmoil of the intermediate world by the completion of his own nature. The sheer force of things lies in the intermediate physical process: this is the energy of physical production. God's rôle is not the combat of productive force [526] with productive force, of destructive force with destructive force; it lies in the patient operation of the overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization. (Whitehead, Process and Reality)

It is the business of philosophical theology to provide a rational understanding of the rise of civilization, and of the tenderness of mere life itself, in a world which superficially is founded upon the clashings of senseless compulsion. (Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas)

Something is still lacking. It is difficult to state it in terms that are wide enough...Apart from it, the pursuit of ‘Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art’ can be ruthless, hard, cruel...The notions of ‘tenderness’ and of ‘love’ are too narrow, important though they be. We require the concept of some more general quality, from which ‘tenderness emerges as a specialization. We are in a way seeking for the notion of a Harmony of Harmonies, which shall bind together the other four qualities. (Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas)

The life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency the world . . . The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victor. (Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas)