dailydatewithgod

There is a constant chatter going on in the world surrounding this idea that we are called to be shakers and makers.  We are called to create and imagine.  As human beings it is in our DNA to make an impact on the world.  At least it is the message carried out by human growth and development, leadership, education, recovery, spirituality,  business, and so on in the U.S. Maybe it is just the effect of living in Southern California but either way it is a conversation I hear often.  What is our purpose? Why are we here?  What is the difference we want to make in the world?  These are all good things.  Intrinsically we create a sense of meaning in all our endeavors.  Our minds are meaning making machines.  We even make little inconsequential elements have greater meaning.  So when we are being told we need to align ourselves with the beliefs and actions of our highest selves and boldly create an impact on the world, it is not foreign to us.  On a heart level it is beating for a reason.  We are all created and have the ability to create.  We all leave an impact whether we intend to or not.  But our hearts have a gentler initiation into the consciousness around it.  Within us is the boldness we need to make an impact.  Our hearts call us to do so by being ourselves.  When we connect to the truth of who we are and dare to be that in the face of expectations and rules and regulations of the norm, takes courage.  It is about boldly impacting the world immediately around us and within us. The greatest courage we can garner is to be honest with ourselves from the heart.  It starts with the boldness of going inward and silencing the outside voices.  It is with the boldness of aligning our hearts and minds together so we can be courageous in the world outside. The boldness the world is requesting of us does not come in the form or pattern of a prescription that is the same for everyone.  Each day when we boldly dare to pause, connect to our hearts, be within ourselves, and present with all of who we are in the moment we are in is a day full of life.

I am always fascinated when you ask people how things went and they state good and that they can’t complain.  They can’t or they choose not to?  I mean we all can complain but it makes me wonder if it is because they do not think it is proper or they are completely satisfied.  In any given moment there are a number of upsets we experience.  Whether we admit to it or not we have a number of expectations and preconceived ideas going into any experience.  It could be as simple as how we think our drive to work is going to go or a first date. However, we are often not upset for the reason we think.  We determine that if only there was not traffic on the way to work it would have gone smoothly or if he or she had picked a different place to meet the date would have gone splendidly.  Our preconceived picture was not met and so we are perturbed.  Are we upset by the different experience or the disruption of our previously drawn picture in our minds?  We blame the experience or the person but maybe we are the responsible ones.  If we had created a different picture or let go of expectations would we still be upset?  In recovery I learned the crucial role of acceptance.  If I truly trust in a God who cares for me and is with me no matter what then I know I can face whatever comes my way without checking out.  In there I can roll with the upsets, I can accept things as they are not as I thought they would be.  Further on my daily dates with God I learned I can see them with my heart and find what there is to love within the upset or anything I decided I did not want as part of my reality.  I can learn to embrace the upsets as gifts because at the very least they remind me to be in the present moment and step out of the virtual reality of my mind.

To give an idea life we put it in motion.  I remember as a kid being overly concerned and hard on myself when I had bad thoughts.  In order to be the good Christian girl I thought my job was to only think nice things.  It is a belief I carried all of my life.  I knew fundamentally that the real badness would come from acting on them but nonetheless I saw myself as flawed and less than ideal because I had thoughts in my head that were not nice.  I did not understand that we all have all kinds of thoughts all the time.  Thoughts that never stop, good or bad, right or wrong.  My default perspective on myself was that I had done something wrong and I was to blame even for things I did not do.  I remember hating when a kid next to me in class would get in trouble.  I found myself cringing as he was getting disciplined.  It’s no wonder I was seeking a way to numb out.  By showing up for my daily dates with God I began to learn viscerally what I was being exposed to on how the human mind functions.  That on some fundamental level most people walk around feeling like they are not enough or do not do enough.  We measure ourselves by what we see with our eyes instead of what our heart sees.  We look to other flawed humans with their mixed ideas about themselves and expect them to provide us with something they cannot do for themselves.  Growing up I figured if I just followed the rules and did what was expected of me, I would be seen as okay and therefore safe.  It was a great illusion that worked on many levels and so it became my practice.  But practice did not make perfect it made for internal struggle.  It made for a need to numb out.  It made for a life constantly seeking the approval of others.  We all do this to some degree.  We are designed to belong to each other and we know growing up in a particular culture or family what the expectations are of members. My daily dates with God have shown me another option.  I get to spend time each day with a being who loves and accepts me no matter what good or bad I have thought or done. I have learned to turn to the core of who I am to determine whether or not I am approved of.  My practice of showing up for these dates has brought me closer to the peace I thought I would experience from all my other practice but never did.  I now recognize the key to my long desired peace and freedom lies in the main practice  of showing up for myself and for God one day at a time.  It is about honestly evaluating if all the other practices in my life are in alignment with my core practice or detract from it.

We are drawn to the familiar and the longer we live our minds will continue to filter what it encounters based on the familiarity. Scientific studies have shown that what keeps a person young is the experience of novelty.  In the space of variances we are back in a child mindset from which we can grow and learn.  One of the greatest gifts that has unexpectedly come from my daily prayer and meditation date with God is the realization of variances within the familiar.  When we learn to pause and breath, it opens our eyes and our hearts to see what we may have not seen before.  Practicing and using the eyes of our hearts gives us the power to witness all the variances which have been staring us in the face but we were blind to.  On automatic pilot we know who that person is, we understand what they are saying (they always say that anyway), and we know how to drive to work without thinking about it.  When we are present to the experience as it is, we find the various new road we could take to get to our destination or the layout of the houses and trees we drive past every day to work.  In the moment, we notice the variances of expression on the face of our loved one and we hear something different in their voice when they share with us their words and ideas.  God invites us to discover the variances in the familiar instead of allowing our automatic piloted mind to run the course of our day.  Taping into our hearts in the moment we are in gives us access to a whole new world we never knew was there all along.

One of my favorite things in the world are flowers.  They are a gift of possibility among plants.  There are so many variations of colors, shapes, and sizes.  Flowers brighten up a room and bring smiles to people’s faces.  They are like a love letter from God that arrives unexpectedly.  There is so much that goes into the creation and development of flowers that happens without our knowing.  Yet we get to benefit from their presences all the time.  We come to know them in their blooming.  In our own lives our period of flowering can seem effortless to those outside of ourselves because they cannot know what is happening beneath the surface.  Unless we share the story of our flowering most may just see the end product and think we have always been that way.  We do not benefit just from the end product of a beautiful flower.  We benefit from the whole process because other systems and ways of life continue because of the needs of a flower for its growth.  A botanist could explain it better than I could, but many elements including how we get food to eat come down to the interplay of flowering in nature.  Flowering happens to flowers and all other plants, including ones that sustain our livelihood. Having a greater appreciation for the process of flowering in nature provides an enriched perspective of the gift of beauty that flowers provide.  The same can be said in the story of our flowering.  Knowing how we bloomed is as much an essential part to appreciating the beauty of who we are as noticing it when it reaches its pinnacle.

We tend to think new is better.  In many cases it is.  Who doesn’t want the newest version of something, even ourselves?  When we are new into an experience it is the fascination with the unknown.  We see this all the time in children.  Everything is new for them and holds such possibility.  As we age, newness is largely defined as better or a chance to start over.  We are okay with newness as something else but are not always as open to newness is replacement of something of which we prefer the old.  Many times we prefer the old simply because it is familiar. Instead of the new bringing possibility, it brings fear because we are being asked to let go of what we already know.  It is apparent in our thinking which impacts our feelings and our actions.  There is nothing wrong with something that works, but we are funny creatures that hold on to things even when they aren’t working.  God encourages us to embrace newness as children do with a sense of wonder and fascination.  We are asked to open our hearts and embrace the fear of the unknown so as to grow our capacity for greater love in our lives.

It can be hard for us to imagine the breadth and depth of God’s reach.  For many people God is some sort of entity in the sky that overlooks all of what is happening and seems to not be involved in our every day lives.  I do not recall identifying strongly with this concept.  Perhaps the God as father idea has been distant for me.  But the idea of all of God being so far removed from my day-to-day is not something I have found to be true.  On my daily dates with God which began around 16 years ago, I slowly discovered a completely new experience.  The degree to which God is involved in my daily life is the degree to which I welcome God in.  God does not come uninvited.  God does not wear out his welcome.  The degree of peace in my life is directly correlated to the areas of my life into which I welcome God into my heart to be near me.  It can be scary at first, but when I realized my freedom of spirit lies on the other side of the welcome I began to shift my perspective.  God has designed us all to be free within our hearts to love unabashedly and be the messengers of light to ourselves and the world.  When I welcomed God deeper into my heart despite my trepidation, I found a gentle and loving experience of acceptance that I did not know was possible.  And when I welcome God into the darkest parts of myself, I humorously find God accepting and ready to get to work to help me see the gift of my dark parts.

It is said that hope is eternal.  It is a timeless and transcendent experience.  Hope is maddening on one level and the only choice that makes on another.  It is the flame of faith that carries us through when nothing else will.  A life without hope seems glum and dark and yet we often label it as fanciful and trite. We tell ourselves to push through the difficulties and pretend it isn’t the hope living within our hearts that is carrying us through.  We tell ourselves to be tough in mind and keep focused.  All the while hope is fueling us from within.  It is the silent partner that we take for granted.  To be hopeful is sometimes labeled as being gullible but is the childlike quality of love magnified.  It is a gift from God to be able to hope.  When we allow ourselves to embrace this quality within our hearts, we commence a way of living that holds all kinds of possibilities.  Hope engenders a new breath, a new moment, the sense that neither we nor God has given up on us yet.  Hope allows us to know deep down that the story is not yet over because love has not yet found its fullest expression but it is on its way.

The gift of a new time frame to begin again is a sprinkling of hope on the tapestry of our lives.  We place a lot of meaning on phases of time.  Meaning that would not be present unless we put it there.  We do this to make sense of our lives and provide a purpose.  If we did not have special meaning for new phases we would miss out on the ceremonial experience which is intrinsic to human life.  We would not have cause for celebration and a reason to bring ritual to share the stories of our lives.  A new year is reason to celebrate because it is an opening to possibilities.  It is the indication that we have not yet given up nor has the universe given up on us.  Each day on my date with God when I take the time to connect to my heart and to listen for the breath of the gift of life that moves in and around me, I am reminded of the openness and expandedness of the universe existing within me.  It is there all the time but I am often too busy to notice.  My time with God allows me to be within the openness and reconnect with the power of love and hope that God made inherent in all of us.

Often we determine what we do or do not do based on the reaction or expected reaction of others.  Given the multitude of people and all the possible variations of responses, it seems quite silly. Still we do it. It is inherent in us to want to be loved and accepted. There is nothing wrong wanting to be loved an accepted.  When it causes us to stop listening to the wisdom of our own hearts we go against what we were designed to do as children of God. I have learned the hard way that at the end of the day, it is between me and God. When I leave this earth, no one goes with  me and each and every day no one else lives inside my head.  My daily date with God reminds me to check with my heart and move from there. God knows our hearts and sits still within them.  God invites us to explore the inner workings of our hearts by pausing and connecting.  Upon reflection in the stillness of our hearts we have the courage to go ahead anyway.  Mother Teresa lived by following what she knew from the stillness of her heart. No matter what others did or said, she went ahead anyway.  She kept her version of “The Paradoxical Commandments,” written by Kent M. Keith on the wall in her home for children: