dailydatewithgod

We can be physically present and mentally and emotionally absent.  It seems as though the world predominantly values being physically present.  It is harder to be aware of the other ways of being present unless we choose to pay attention to it.  Plus it is different for every person.  Beneath it is in the availability of our hearts.  Our hearts will beat so we are able to show up physically but if we are in the mental and emotional space of needing protection we will be guarded and less available to what the heart wants to teach us and share with others.  There is time and space for all experiences so it is not as though it is only valuable when we have more availability.  It is the courage to know for ourselves what the availability of our heart is.  If we pause and listen to the rhythms of our heart we can tend to it.  We can know we are in a space of less availability of our heart to the world but more availability of our heart to God.  God alone can restore us to the recognition of the fullest capacity of availability of love in our hearts.  Our creator designed us and knows the longings of our heart before we know them for ourselves.  On my daily date with God I have been given the gift of learning to tune into the availability of my heart.  It enables me to take care of the core of who I am.  It encourages me to show up and be available to the lessons of love and the opportunity to give love.  It grants me the curiosity and self-compassion to be less available when I know it is time for restoration of my heart by God. Through the process of our daily dates, I am able to show up physically, emotionally, and mentally with an aligned availability of being.

We are called to travel the road between our hearts and minds and while it seems as though it should be as simple as walking the path we do not know what we will encounter. Sometimes the fortress around our hearts is much like the one Prince Phillip encountered when he reached the bridge to rescue Sleeping Beauty from the castle of her sleep.  He needed to cross the bridge before he could rescue her.  The bridge was covered with thorny bushes and was guarded by the dragon Maleficent.  He had to find a way to bridge the strength of his mind and the courage of his heart to cross the bridge to his beloved.  It means creating a bridging within to complete the distance.  The beauty of our hearts is that God has provided the materials to build the bridge.  The bridging is God’s hand in helping us to open the door to give and receive love.  If we rely on the tools God provides for us we will have what we need to complete the journey.  The dragons and the thorns fall away and we are able to open up the entrance to our hearts.

It doesn’t sound very pleasant when someone says they are biding their time. Who likes waiting? I remember hearing a statistic once that human beings spend three years of their life waiting in line.  I proceeded to look at time in the post office or the grocery store line as racking up my time in line instead of it being fruitless.  Sometimes it helps to tweak the perspective and give it purpose.  If we were to imagine how much time God spending biding for us to accept his love we would find our time standing in line to be minimal. How much time do we bide in the hopes that someone will change their mind or circumstances to change?  The question is not do we spend time biding.  The question is what do we do with our biding time? God doesn’t just do nothing while biding his time.  She continues to be the fullness of creation.  Time does not stop, systems of nature do not go away, and we do not crumble to pieces.  The moment of our awakening we get an inkling as to the potential of God’s love to open us to a multitude of possibilities of love’s presence.  God is building those possibilities while biding.  When we are waiting for someone to love us, do we bide our time by loving us or them?  When we are biding our time do we model ourselves after the One who is growing in love for us with each passing moment. God does not love because we respond to God’s love.  God loves because of who God is.

We all try really hard to put on a good face.  I am not sure exactly what it is that drives us to think that we need to cover up our flaws.  It seems like so much more work.  We only allow certain parts of ourselves to be seen and yet we seem surprised when we find out things about other people that we never knew.  No one can keep up the facade forever.  If we all have flaws, what makes us think it is so important to hide them?  Perhaps it is the judgment we see for those around us who are not able to hide their flaws so easily. We fear we will experience the same thing.  Yet how many of us have grown because of our flaws?  How many of us have found ourselves in situations we would not have planned but turned out to be presented with an opportunity we would not have imagined otherwise?  We don’t think of these things when we are busy covering ourselves up.  I am guilty of this just as much as anyone.  I do not walk around touting about being an incest or obesity survivor.  I do not broadcast the fact that I almost failed out of college at the end of my freshman year.  I certainly don’t tell the people in my yoga class that I can’t hold the poses using my abdominal muscles for the length of the exercise.  It is actually quite comical that we spend so much time working to cover things up only to have them revealed when we least expect it.  Depending on what we consider our flaws to be we then have to go through the process of  admitting them to the people close to us.  The real kicker is that most of the time they already knew what our flaws were to begin with!  It seems like a waste of energy.  God looks at our growth process.  God is not concerned with how many flaws we have, though she doesn’t see them as flaws.  He wants us to use the all the gifts we have been given to grow in love.  Even the gifts we call flaws.  Deep down even we know they are gifts.  Why else would we spend so much time wrapping them up?

It is so touching to watch others embrace.  It is as though you can see the warmth emanating from one person’s heart to the other.  I remember many years ago coming across a set of green copper sculptures at this gallery in Tubac, AZ.  They were both of a couple’s embrace. One was a man and a woman facing each other with her face at the nape of his neck .  The other was him standing behind her with his arms wrapped around the front of her body and her leaning back into his neck.  The tenderness of the emotion conveyed in the embrace was profound.  The owner of the gallery stated there was a woman who had come by a few days before and stood for hours looking at them and asked the owner if the sculptor was married.  Our embracing of one being to another has the capacity to be profound when it comes from the heart.  If it is forced or obligatory the experience is not one of actually being embraced.  It is much more than the physical motion. It is the intention and the feeling behind the action.  When we think of how God embraces us, do we conjure up ideas of something as intimate as the sculptures I described, a grandmother who has cupped the face of her grandson in her face, or the way a child holds on to the neck of the mom who has bent down to hug her hello after being away?  Perhaps it is none of these because while sometimes we like the idea of God with skin on, even we cannot measure the embracing God has placed within our hearts.  God’s embrace which lives within us needs no arms, faces, or bodies.  God made sure we would be able to connect with it when we open up to the idea of God embracing all of who we are in this moment.  The moment we take a breath.  If we are busy keeping part of ourselves out of God’s reach then God’s arms of love cannot profoundly embrace us.  We will be lacking in the experience of love’s embrace not because it does not exist for us but because we do not think we deserve such a profound experience.

We live in an energetic universe as energetic beings.  Every cell in our body is an element of energy. We convert our food into energy cells so we can use to keep up the biome which allows us to show up as this whole person.  We are responsible for making sure we take care of the vessel we are inhabiting.  Otherwise, whatever else we want to do will not happen.  This includes making sure we are charging our system on all levels. If we are not able to be present as a form of energy in the universe we cannot provide the charge we have been granted to give to life. God has charged us with being the messengers of love.  The manner in which we are to do that depends upon what our gifts are.  Those gifts need to be nurtured and supported.  They will have no impact, no charge, to their presence if we use them aimlessly. We like to think it just happens automatically but that has not been my experience.  God gives us the vessel and the system in which to operate.  What we do with it to share the message of love is up to us.  The options are limitless but we will know which we are inclined to by the ones that charge us up.  When we engage and participate we are charging ourselves and those around us. The influx of energy from the charge spurs others on to be the messengers of love they are created to be.  If we find ourselves involved in something that causes us to become weak or worn down too easily, it may be that it is not what is meant for us or we are not allowing ourselves to be charged up before proceeding.  The level of energy present is an indication of life-giving presence.

We pay a lot of attention to the nourishment of our bodies.  In the most literal understanding of nourishment this makes sense. Yet, we limit ourselves if we do not consider the nourishment of our hearts and minds as well.  I find it funny that at the gym we are all there nourishing our bodies by getting our blood pumping and taking care of ourselves and splashed across the screens are scenes of devastation and people arguing with each other.  Something is amiss here.  This is why I do not watch what they display on the screens.  I use the time instead to read books and I have a series of affirmations I read through.  I recognize the importance of nourishing my mind while nourishing my body.  We are whole human beings. There is no sense eating well and exercising only to be telling yourself all day long what a piece of crap you are and putting your attention on all the despair and hopeless things of the world.  We do not want to ignore the things that are not working well in the world, but we want to be able to bring some heart and peace of mind to them. How else will things change?  The information we allow into our minds is our nourishment.  The relationships we cultivate nourish our hearts.  When we pay attention to those levels of nourishment we allow ourselves to grow and flourish in the same way the plant is nourished not just by the attention of the gardener but by the light of the sun and the rain of the clouds. God is the gardener and if we allow God to oversee the growth of our hearts and minds, would he have us take in the nourishment we are taking in or would she weed some of it out?

Years ago Apple,Inc. was running an ad campaign, “Think Different.”  They had posters and ads with the faces of great thinkers of our time like Einstein, Jim Henson, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Amelia Earhart, Martha Graham, and more.  I remember overhearing someone criticize the campaign for incorrect language.  The correct English would have been to say, “Think Differently.” The point of the campaign I presume was to see it differently and to do so the alleged incorrect grammar garnered more attention.  When we think differently what we think about is different.  On my daily dates with God I am invited over and over again to think differently.  God encourages me to come at an experience or a fixed perception from an angle I had not even considered.  She is ready to show us love differently than we are used to seeing it. Where I see black and white, God sees a whole rainbow of colors.  Where I see options A or B, God sees the whole alphabet.  In order to think differently, I have to open my mind up and let go of my fixed way of seeing things.  I am not able to allow the experience of differently to occur if the eyes of my head and especially the eyes of my heart are blocked by what I have determined is love or not love. God invites each of us to open the eyes of our hearts and heads to see the evidence of love all around us.  God sees love differently. If we are convinced that there is no love present in what we are seeing or thinking about, we will not be open to the presence of love showing up in a different fashion.

There are many times when I question whether or not I am on the right path.  Over the years I have warmed up to the idea that it is not about a right or wrong path.  The perspective I have adopted as a result of my daily dates with God is looking at it through the lens of whether or not I am actually on the path I am on.  It sounds funny, but I am sure I am not the only one who has spent time thinking, “this isn’t how it is supposed to go” or “why did this have to happen?” or ” I think I am doing this wrong because it is not working out the way I hoped it would.”  My willingness to trust in God’s assurance of my capability have lent me the vision to see that I am capable of more than I thought I was.  The courage in my heart far surpasses what I knew to be present within me.  God assures me often on our dates that if it is in front of me, it is most likely meant to be there.  I actually sometimes embrace when things do not go my way as a sign of letting go and trusting in God’s assurance.  Through it I will develop my own assurance of what my heart and mind can do.  It is an assurance that the world holds within it so many possibilities and ways for our growth in love. So even if it looks like dealing with an angry roommate, being stuck in traffic, or learning to love my body just as it is today, I can be assured that when I keep my eyes on God it will unfold exactly as it is meant to.

Our lives reflect the state of our minds and hearts.  When I stop to take a look at my life I can see how it is a portrayal of things that are important to me.  How I spend my time, who I surround myself with, what types of information I surround myself with and in what format.  We can see the portrayal of our lives as though it were a story being played out on a movie screen.  The portrayal is the end product, it is the summation of the whole.  Yet it is all the elements leading up to it that provide the complete project. It is in the elements where we can make the changes if the portrayal we are watching does not seem accurate.  It makes no sense to walk up to the movie screen and start telling it to change.  We have to go back to the script writers, the directors and the set designers.  Most importantly, we have to recognize that we are the primary actors in the portrayal of our lives.  If what we are watching is not what we want our lasting legacy to be, then we can put forth the effort today and make changes.  I sometimes wonder what those who have had their lives portrayed on the big screen would think about what kind of story it tells about them. We do not need to wait for the end of our lives.  Each day we have the opportunity to adjust the portrayal.  We can determine at the close of each day if it showed a measurement of our hearts or our heads or both.  After a time we can look back and notice how many of those days were an accurate portrayal of how God sees us.