dailydatewithgod

There are various points in our lives that call our attention.  We reach points in our lives when we make decisions which can change the course of our lives. We live for the points in our lives that tell us what the point is.  Point is a funny word especially when you consider what power we give it.  How many times have we asked ourselves, what is the point?  Why are we here?  Who are we?  What are we doing?  Why does this matter?  How often have we been in conversation with someone and asked them to get to the point?  Is it so we can know which direction to go?  Or is it to determine if it is worthy of our time and attention? If we have no starting point, how do we know which direction to move in?  What happens when the point keeps moving?  How frustrated do we get when it seems like a person or an experience we are having has no point?  On my daily prayer and meditation dates with God there is no specific point I am trying to get to.  Even when I think there is, I lose the point of the time with God and myself.  It is about being. My heart wonders why there must always been a destination point other than the one I am currently experiencing.  Maybe the point is to be okay without a point.  Who knew a dot could mean so much?  At the end of the day, the only thing I can find peace about in the belief that God is the point.  The emanation of love is our purpose, it is where we are right now, it is where we are going, and it is where we have been.  If it isn’t about love, then what is the point?

Having been raised in a traditional faith environment I was told from an early age who God is.  I was presented with a whole cast of characters who supported the work of God but they were not God.  There was one element among all of this which led me to wonder about the nature of God past what I was told.  As a Catholic Christian we are asked to believe in the Trinity.  It is the idea of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It is, of course, a mystery that cannot be explained in simple terms. Any explanation I might try to provide will certainly lack many of the essential theological tenants and philosophies but here goes.  Each of the members of the trinity are facets of the one God.  God created his son, and the Holy Spirit.  They work in relationship to one another which is a core part of how the trinity works to show us the nature of God.  We are meant to be in relationship.  The Hebrew scriptures which are the first set of books of the Bible speak of God as Father and God as Spirit.  In the Christian scriptures, the second set of books of the bible, we are introduced to Jesus who refers to His Father and speaks of the Spirit. Jesus tells us that he and his father are one.  Jesus shares that the spirit is an advocate for his disciples especially once he has left the earth.  There is much more involved but this is neither the time nor the place to go into it.  When I got into studying in college all of the worlds religions, I noticed some similar patterns in the polytheistic religions and in native american spirituality.  I saw connections to the faith which had become very dear to me and the sole of my spiritual practice.  It made me wonder how many more facets there are to understanding God.  In recovery I learned of the notion of creating one’s own concept of a higher power.  While I cannot fully describe my spirituality today it does have elements of all these things to which I have been exposed.  There are some very concrete facets of God for which I use the word God to describe, but what I am experiencing or knowing in that moment is not a typical picture of God.  Today I do not think it has to.  I think the journey of our hearts begins with exploring whatever facet works for you.  If we are not able to connect to one facet, what is the point of trying to make ourselves do so?  God is not limited by our understanding.  Who am I to say that the facet of God that resonates with you is right or wrong if it leads you to your heart?

Why is the idea of second chances so remarkable?  What about third and fourth chances?  Who determined that the first chance is the best or the most important?  God invites us with many chances to open our minds and hearts to grasp how much we are loved and cared for.  God does not care which chance is the one that awakens us.  It is about being able to allow it to be real for us. Sometimes it takes getting a sense through seeing, hearing, and experiencing love in many facets over time.  There comes a moment when we can no longer deny the truth of the power of love.  For people like me who were so busy expecting love to show up in a specific way I probably missed a dozen chances God had offered me to let it in.  I could not wrap my head around the idea that God’s love does not operate by human ideas alone.  Our worldly expressions of love give us an inkling as to the profound nature of God’s love but not the full picture. I can only describe it as first encountering the chances to allow love in as it was presented to me. Then venturing past what I was told and shown to see if it was real.  Next coming to terms with its limitations and untruths.  This was confusing and painful and I wondered what the true nature of love could possibly be.  At some point during one of these breakdowns of understanding, when my mind had given up and my heart felt smashed into a million pieces, another chance at encountering love appeared.  I was finally ready, having let go of my ideas and expectations to allow a profound sense of something I cannot really describe with words to resonate deep inside of me.  This hundredth chance was used by God to allow me to see not only am I loved but I AM love.  We all are.  Our daily dates serve as a quiet reminder because I forget, that even when I am not aware of it.  The power of love is always resonating within me.  We get a chance every day and every moment to embrace this truth of our Creator, but sometimes it takes the one thousandth chance to be open to it.

If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it starts with our basic human necessities of food, shelter, and safety.  Then it builds up to the highest level known as actualization.  Part of the reason we do not allow ourselves to engage in the invitation presented to us continually by God for deeper relationship is because we are still focused on our more immediate needs.  If we do not know where our next meal is coming from, why would we concern ourselves with making sure we spend time in nature connecting with all that is?  If we do not feel safe enough in the world, why would we venture into trusting a power greater than ourselves that cares for us?  The concept of love in any form holds no space to grow when we do not feel safe.  Much of the literature and study of the nature of love confirms this.  We have grand notions of what love is and all its forms. We also know what allows us to feel safe enough to let love grow.  We know how to make things look like love, but to be able to rest in it we must be able to trust it.  Otherwise we can not allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to allow it in.  Perhaps it is why in our broken moments when we have nowhere else to turn, we are willing to allow love in.  We have no strength to keep up our defenses and we are open to seeing another way.  These gifts of broken experiences crack us open and cause us to feel like we are losing part of ourselves.  The only thing we are losing is our defenses or lack of safety.  God holds a space for the growth of our hearts in the harbor of his love.  It is there for us to connect to when we are ready.  Sometimes the only way to be ready is to feel completely unready. In the darkest and most troublesome times of my life, it is not the neat and predetermined understandings of love that have saved me.  It is the madness that maybe just maybe there is a deeper experience of love and safety reaching back out to me that is keeping the light of life alive in me when I can no longer see it.

My prayer for us the curiosity to explore the sense of the safety of love provided by God that is beyond our understanding today.

The world is so loud sometimes it is overwhelming.  With so many voices and visuals garnering for our attention, it is hard to distinguish which ones to allow in closer.  God longs to be close to us.  An intimate relationship with our Creator is what we are made for.  Perhaps that is why God uses intimations to speak to the inner most parts of ourselves.  These inklings, whispers, and notions which inform our reality are only accessible when we slow down and get quiet.  When we engage in prayer and mediation of any form we are doing just that.  All these various religious traditions are designed to draw us into an intimate relationship with God where she can speak in intimations.  He will have our attention because of the intimate nature of our experience with ourselves and God.  The approach to this is not limited to specific rituals or services, it only requires a pause.  Over the years of my daily dates with God I have come to cultivate the pause throughout my day which allows me to hear and sense the intimations coming to me from God.  We have an intimate relationship which has allowed me to bare open all the parts of myself with a willingness I can only describe as miraculous.  The Christian mystic and Carmelite nun, Teresa of Avila writes in her book Interior Castle of the stages of our union with God.  She describes it as the passage of our soul through several stages to reach the deepest relationship with God.  We are all receiving invites from God all day long to embark on this intimate journey but because of the intimation style of communication it sometimes gets lost in the noise.

I used to think that in order to be certain about anything I had to be certain about everything.  Somehow in my mind in order to move forward and take action I had to weigh all the factors, have all the information, and know for sure it would work out.  Ha!  No wonder I struggled.  So when I would go ahead despite having what I thought was necessary, I was ready with all kinds of excuses and explanations so I could explain why it didn’t work out.  Only upon encountering others who would shrug and not be bothered by the fact that things did not go as planned did I begin to see how ridiculous the pressure was that I put myself under.  I was worried others would not understand and in order for me to feel safe, you had to approve and the only way you would approve was if you understood.  Is it any wonder I was trying to numb out the pain of life?  Talk about holding other people hostage to my perfectionist ideals because I needed them to understand and approve.  When I got into recovery I learned the distinction between understanding and acceptance.  I learned how to accept things I did not understand and I saw how others did that for me.  They did not understand why my ideas or plans didn’t work out but they accepted that I had put forth my best effort and had the intention to make it work.  Life does not always work out the way we want. In my growing daily relationship with God I have come to accept and even welcome the experiences that do not work out the way I want as evidence that God has something else in mind.  I am meant to meet the people on the stairs instead of the elevator that is not working.  My body is meant to move differently than I planned because the machines I wanted to use are all taken. My lack of acceptance is my unwillingness to be open to God’s plan instead of mine.  Sometimes it is the smallest plans that are hardest to let go of.  I can also think of many things I am grateful did not work out the way I wanted.  I would have missed out on all kinds of adventures and meeting of people.  Being willing to accept that I cannot change what has happened up to this moment regardless of whether I understand it or not is much more freeing than stewing about how it is wrong because I messed it up and didn’t plan well enough.  The real question is even though I cannot understand the mercy of God, am I willing to accept it? Can I accept that God sees me as whole and full of love even when all I see is brokenness and fear?

Have you ever wondered how it feels for a knife to be sharpened?  Does it hurt?  Does it feel good?  Does the knife go through the experience of being rubbed repeatedly against a hard cold surface because it knows that it will enable it to be its full potential?  I realize the absurdity of the questions but when I am using a dull knife it is purposeless.  Why even have a knife?  I need it to do something it was designed to do but is not up to the task because it has not been sharpened.  It makes me wonder if I resist sharpening by certain experiences because all I can do is think about being pushed up against a hard surface and enduring something, sometimes repeatedly.  But perhaps that experience is the very one that will enable me to live my purpose.  Maybe if I am able to connect to a growing experience as I am going through it with the greater purpose in mind, it will not be so painful?  Wishful thinking on some level for me.  I know when I am in the thick of walking through intense anger, processing a strong emotional trigger, faced with someone whom I am not able to see the good in, experiencing conflict of any kind, or in physical pain, I am only wishing it is over soon.  I have learned that over and over these kind of experiences occur.  Certainly they are not all super intense but who likes to not feel good for any length of time?  On my daily dates with God I have seen how God does not have the same fear of pain as I do.  The sense I get from God is that the pain is only real when I believe it is or think it is all there is. Maybe my approach to sharpening is what I need God’s help with the most.  God, show me how you see this?  Can I be grateful that if I am experiencing a sharpening that it is because I have been living up to my full potential and it is time to prepare me for more?  Am I being sharpened in my relationship to this person because it will allow me to connect to them and others from our hearts because afterwards I will be more easily living as designed? 

Years ago when I had my spiritual experience of Jesus opening up my heart when I was standing on the beach one night, I’ll never forget the message I was given.  As tears were streaming down my face and I felt like my chest was breaking apart, I heard God gently whispering in my ear, “I know this hurts, but I am right here. We need to clear out the anger in here in order to make room for the love.”  I assumed that it meant I needed to get rid of anger.  It seemed to go along with all the messages we receive from the world about good emotions and bad emotions.  We are supposed to have the good ones, and not the bad ones. But why would God have given us all of them if we were not supposed to have them?  I believe Jesus was indicating to me that we needed to clear the anger out of my heart not because it was bad or wrong to exist but because it had gotten into a place it did not belong. I was using it to shut down my heart and keep others at a distance. Emotions are indications of energy.  Energy is designed to be in motion.  Getting stuck in one place it loses its purpose.  It is no longer a helpful indication because it cannot communicate when it is stuck.  God wants us to have the full in motion experience of life and it may mean clearing things out of where they have taken hold.  When love is present in our hearts it is alive and moving throughout us.  It thrives through the heart.  Anger had lost its way in me because I pushed it down, made it wrong, and did not allow it to inform me.  Clearing it out of my heart allowed me to come face to face with it and over the years slowly make peace with it.  Only now am I learning to let it provide information for me versus drive me to shut down and push people away and close off my heart.  Clearing areas of our lives from time to time allows us to evaluate if we are making room for the vital purpose for which we are meant and if those areas of our lives are functioning as God designed versus what we have created.

I used to think everything in life was about getting it done.  Whether it was a task or having a feeling, the focus was on what it would be like to not be faced with it in the moment.  Or my intention was really about the feeling I would have on the other side of it, not the actual experience itself. In a finite world that works very well.  But from God’s infinite perspective there is no done. It is all part of the growing and evolving as we are designed to do.  A Course In Miracles states that we meet God in the moment because NOW is the space where the finite and infinite meet.  So if I am not being with what is happening in this moment, I will miss being with God.  I miss out on an opportunity to spend time in the presence of the one who loves me more than I could ever know or understand. After all these years of our daily prayer and meditation dates, you would think I would know this in my bones.  Perhaps it is why they call it a meditation practice. It is very much the daily practice of just being and bolstering the capacity to focus on being right here, right now.  I now see it spilling it over into all areas of my life.  I am more at peace and interested in the process than the end result.  I may not like the moment I am in, but I know how to be there with myself and not run.  I can recognize easier when my head is not where my feet are. Bolstering the focus on the now increases the practice and the capacity to not to want or need to be anywhere else.  It is simple but not easy.  It is a letting go of my plans and trusting things to unfold as God has planned and God has my best interest at heart.  God is committed to my growth in love.  God meets me in the now to remind me I am loved because I am love not because of what I got done.

The energy of life enables us to move from one thing to another.  Our thoughts, our feelings, our bodies, our experiences.  The day starts and the day ends.  Energy is the movement of ongoing change. God encourages us to walk with him on this path of life.  God offers the energy needed to live fully whether it is already innate in us or obtained by accepting her invitation to see things as he sees things.  The frequency with which we choose to bring God into our lives increases the power of the frequency of God’s presence in our lives.   The more we are open to God’s vision and God’s interpretation of what is happening in our lives, the less we are weighted down by having to figure it out and have all the answers.  In the beginnings of our relationship with God, most of us found ourselves attending to it with more frequency. As the newness wore off it became less and less.  Sounds like a lot of human relationships, doesn’t it?  As we make a daily choice to increase the frequency of our time with our Creator, we can allow ourselves to be unburdened and live with greater freedom than on our own.