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"Immanence and its antithesis are identical, and in a way, meaningless, for are we not taught, '...the world entire is filled with God's presence...'? He who steps forward spiritually, drawing closer to the Source, and he who falls back, retreating, are equally connected to the Blessed Creator. For the process of spiritual advancement, and the process of repentence from transgression, are two sides of the same thing, being not alterations of material being, but of inner nature. Oneself changes: the Creator is ever present."
from Sefer Me'or Enayim (Illumination for the Eyes), by Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730-1797). Translation mine.
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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