I am not a mathematician or physicist by any stretch of the imagination. So let me make the disclaimer up front. I am an African American Presbyterian clergywoman, spiritual director, author, and teacher with interests in womanist mystics, generational healing, and healing prayer. This article is a reflection on my reading about quantum physics, theology, spirituality, and psychology. It was a challenge to bring two very abstract concepts like quantum physics and mysticism in a conversation that made sense, but it resonates. I can feel it.
In my reading, I learned that everything is made up of minute bundles of energy called quanta. These bundles can act like both a wave of energy and a particle. They’re mysterious in that one quantum can seem to be in two places at once until we actually look at it. The moment we pay attention, it “decides” where it is. It doesn’t actually travel through the space; it just seems to disappear from one spot and show up in another. This is known as superposition. If two of these tiny quanta are connected (i.e., twins), whatever happens to one instantly affects the other, even if they’re far apart. This is known as “entanglement and non-locality.”
Mysteries of the universe and the mysteries of God seem to be one and the same: unanswerable yet not unknowable
I also learned that matter is made up of tiny particles and a lot of empty space. Each particle consists of electrons orbiting a nucleus made of protons and neutrons. The interaction between the electrons and the nucleus creates a force field, and this force field is what takes up space and gives objects their shape and weight. The stronger and tighter the force field, the denser the object. That’s why a brick feels harder than a human body; the force fields holding its particles together are stronger.
These terms and definitions, as best I could decipher, resonated with spiritual principles, mysticism, and miracles with which I am familiar. They prompted my spirit, intuition, and imagination to ponder several thoughts and questions. I began to wonder whether miraculous events in the New Testament might be glimpses of divine energy operating in ways similar to quantum phenomena.
In Quantum Theology, Spiritual Implications of the New Physics (revised and updated, Crossroad Publishing, 2004), Diarmuid O’Murchu writes that myths are stories that offer deeper meanings of universal truth, and that the stories of the Bible can be considered as myths. Beneath scholarly research on the scriptures is the experience; the resonance of universal truth that changes people’s lives at the deepest level. Quantum physics, in this sense, feels like a myth. The mysteries of the universe and the mysteries of God seem to be one and the same: unanswerable yet not unknowable. Knowing is not based exclusively on logic, reason, certainty, consensus, or tradition. It is also intuitive, creative, sensory, embodied, experiential, and mystical. Can you feel it?
Entanglement, non-locality, and the healing power of Paul
The Book of Acts describes one of the most extraordinary moments in the ministry of Paul, where the power of healing seems to move beyond physical touch or direct presence. The passage reads:
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that when the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. (Acts 19:11–12, NRSV)
At first glance, this story seems simple: God’s power is working through Paul so intensely that even items that had contact with him carry that power. But when we look more closely, this story reveals the quantum principle of entanglement (two particles connected in such a way that the state of one immediately affects the other, even when they are separated by distance). When cloth, a handkerchief, or an apron, touches his skin, it becomes energetically “linked” to him. These pieces of cloth become, in a sense, his entangled twins. They carry the same vibrational signature, the same divine charge, that flowed through his body.
When these entangled objects are carried away and laid upon the sick, they produce the same results as if Paul himself were there: diseases leave and evil spirits depart. Nothing visible connects the person holding the cloth to Paul’s physical body. Yet something invisible does, an unseen thread of divine energy that continues to operate across space. The healing occurs not through physical proximity but through energetic connection or non-locality.
Applying the principle of entanglement, we can imagine that Jesus’s life and energy are “connected” to all who are attuned to him
JESUS, THE CENTURION, AND THE SERVANT — ENTANGLEMENT, SUPERPOSITION AND NON-LOCALITY
In Matthew 8:5–13, we read:
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed …” And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.
Here, Jesus heals without being physically present. He does not touch the servant; he does not even enter the house. Yet the servant is healed instantly.
If we apply the principle of entanglement, we can imagine that Jesus’s life and energy are “connected” to all who are attuned to him. The centurion’s extraordinary amount of faith acts like a tuning device, aligning the servant with Jesus’ divine field. The servant and Jesus become “entangled” in a spiritual sense.
This is similar to Paul’s handkerchiefs in Acts 19:11–12, cited above. Just as the cloths become entangled with Paul’s divine energy and transmit healing at a distance, Jesus’s intention and divine energy entangle with the centurion’s servant, producing the same effect instantaneously—action at a distance. In both cases, the miracles propose divine energy is quantum energy.
The divine feminine
The miracles propose divine energy is quantum energy
In her book Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (vol. 1, Westminster John Knox, 2017), Rev. Dr. Wilda C. Gafney writes,
The literal first word of Genesis 1:1 is not ‘in the beginning’. It is in-beginning or in a beginning or when beginning. A beginning gestures to spiraling creation and its stories, as well as to multiple contextual ways of hearing, imaging, and retelling these stories. The second word is a masculine verb – He created. In Genesis 1:2, the second verb articulating divine action occurs in the feminine, She pulsed, which can mean hover, flutter, or tremble.
Gafney’s translation of Genesis 1:1-2 reads, “In beginning, He, God, created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and shapeless, and darkness covered the deep, while She, the Spirit of God, pulsed over the face of the waters.”
Gafney continues,
She, the Spirit of God, She-who-is-also God, at the dawn of creation, fluttered over the nest of her creation at the same time He, God, the more familiar expression of divinity, created all. They, Two-in-One, are the first articulations, self-articulations, of God in (and the God of) the Scriptures. God is female and male, and when God gets around to creating creatures in the divine image, they will be both female and male, as God is. Though the Divine is articulated with feminine and masculine gender in the Scriptures, in translation and tradition, God became exclusively male. The gendering of God’s Spirit as feminine calls for the feminine pronoun, yet generations of translations have gotten around this by religiously avoiding the pronoun altogether. In each case, the text will say ‘The Spirit’.
Even without her rightly deserved pronoun, she is still here flowing, fluttering, pulsing. Can you feel it?
The Divine Feminine, also known as the Holy Spirit, reveals herself through quantum physics. Her resonance is her siren call to bring her back into our collective consciousness. She seduces mystics, seekers, and scientists into rediscovering her universal truth through a medium that takes us beyond traditional perception.
“She pulses” over the waters of creation, active, dynamic, and life-giving, complementing the masculine. “He creates” showing that the Divine expresses themselves through multiple modes and localities simultaneously. Through entanglement, the Divine Feminine invites us to enter into her cosmic consciousness. She compels us to confront the unanswerable but not unknowable. She is creative. She is the catalyst for sustained change. She is the foundation of relationships. She is the creator of community. The Divine Feminine insists we recognize we each have a unique part to play in the dance of the cosmos. Can you feel her?
