dailydatewithgod

In the world of work and life there is a lot of language around purpose and vision. There is debate as to whether it is best to go with your sense of purpose and craft your life around your vision or whether to just take life as it comes. We can easily get caught up in the overall greater meaning and purpose of life that we can lose sight of the importance of the life we are actually living today. The only way we or others will know if we are living our purpose or making a contribution is if it shows up in our everyday lives. Perhaps it is the influence of living the 12 steps, but when I got into recovery I realized the power and importance of living one day at a time. In the beginning it was the only way I could fathom stepping into the unknown. After a while I realized its validity in using it for all areas of my life. When it comes to contributions who we are being as much as what we are doing determines the kind of contribution that we make. A work product or a specific action is easier to provide proof of our contribution but when it comes to the contribution of our being that is more subtle. It is kind of like what Maya Angelou said, ” I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” While I take notice with the idea that we actually make others feel things, she was speaking about the impact that we have on each other just by our presence. If we learn to cultivate an awareness of our own hearts and use that to guide our interactions, the contribution we make will far outweigh the specifics of what we say or do. This can work conversely as well. If we are hurting in our hearts part of our contribution will be the in the weight of that on our experience and possibly the experience of others. God encourages us to be mindful of the contributions we are making in the daily little moments of our lives. It is the accumulation of those that we will look back upon at the end of our lives and determine what our real contribution was.

What kind of impactful contribution might we find ourselves able to make by aligning the contribution of our body, mind, and heart today?

It sounds simplistic to say life is a series of moments put together. What else would we call life? A list of things accomplished? The number of days lived? Breaths breathed? What do the days, breaths, or accomplishments even mean if we are not present for them at the moment they are in? How do we really know we are showing up for the life we are living? God encourages us to step outside of our societal and intellectual markers for what makes a life and step into the moments where life is happening. When we pause, take a breath, and connect to our hears we have the lens through which to see the situation of our lives. The reason most of us are afraid of dying is that we have not lived. We notice that it is already halfway through 2021 and wonder where the time went. When was the last time we were so caught up in the moment time ceased to exist? On my daily dates with God, I am invited, as we all are, to settle into a reality where there is nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. It is a moment for my body, mind, and heart to connect with each other in the focus of breath and be with whatever is. It does not mean that my mind does not wander in meditation or that I am zenned out. It means I show up intending to get a taste of what life is about by being in the flow and experience of the moment, whatever it brings. There is a gentle acceptance and surrender of my ideas and agendas. This perspective then is carried through the day and it becomes a living practice. It is a practice of how to be the fullness and truth of who I am in all moments that present themselves. I am guided through the lens of my heart on how to be in the moments I want and don’t want to be in. Whenever my life does come to an end I want to know within my heart that I was able to show up with all of who I am in the moments I was in for whatever life was offering.

What moments are we finding ourselves in for which we believe we are not meant to be in (despite all the evidence of the moment) today?

The idea of working within our limitations flies in the face of every self-improvement, the voice of mastery, go-getter or, and anything slated towards growing and expanding. But until we are aware of our limitations we do not fully grasp where we actually are. It gets more soundbite play to talk about blowing past the limitations set by ourselves and others. How many of us have launched ourselves in that direction only to be slapped back down. Get the smackdown hurts sometimes literally and always figuratively but often it is only when we get knocked back into our limitations are we willing to face them. Operating in reality is not playing small. In contrast, we do not know how far we have come until we know where we are starting. I don’t know about you but if I do not know where I started from, along the road when it gets tough I lose all sense of where I am on the path. I begin to judge myself and my situation by outside arbitrary ideas of how it is supposed to be. If I am familiar with the limitations I am working from when I embark on my path I have evidence to combat the loud noise in my head that says what I am doing is not enough. And that voice is always there are ready to point out how what I am doing or who I am is not enough. I have yet to find anyone who is not familiar with that perspective. God invites us to use the limitations we are within to lay the groundwork for growth. In the simplest way if I recognize that on this day my heart is closed off I can celebrate when I smile at someone even if I don’t feel like it. On another day that simple action may not be enough. But on this day it is exactly what I need to see that I moved from the limitation of a permanent frown on my face to a change in muscle structure. Our limitations give us the gift of perspective. When we engage our hearts as the lens through which to see our limitations, we are less likely to give as much credence to our mind which is so ready to compare us to someone else who appears to be operating as enough. The irony of course is their mind is telling them the same thing. When we pause and take a breath, tap in our hearts and take stock of the limitation we are in at the moment, we can connect to the best way to either accept or choose to move forward.

Are we open to looking at our limitations through the creative perspective of our hearts today?

Do you ever wonder if there are actually any normal people out there? I feel as though a common conversation is that we all wish we were normal. And there are those that bemoan the supposed normal and say that it is boring. I have started to believe that normal is not actually a reality. It is some supposed ideal about the middle ground or common expectation. The irony is that we all seem to want to be somewhere we are not. God invites us to celebrate wherever we actually are. Wishing it were not so, labeling it as an aberration does not get us anyway. And what if who we are is an aberration? We would be boring zombies if we all trotted the same course. Maybe the real normal of life is being a creative expression of the aberration we are. Norms and commonalities are good and helpful but if desiring to meet them comes at the expense of discovering the creative aberration of how life can be I don’t want normal. It takes courage to be willing to sit in and with the truth of who we are especially when it means rubbing up against what we believe or have always been told is what we are supposed to aim for. Taking the road less traveled (the one that lays outside the boundaries of the usual course) takes the moment to moment choice guided by the energy of our hearts to be open to exploring life from the angle of aberration. We may end up somewhere in the land of the normal but it will still be our creative path of aberration that got us there and we will have some different stories to share which can expand the definition of normal

Are there areas of our lives where our focus on trying to be normal is steering us away from the creative aberration that is being called up within us to be expressed today?

We do not know what we are made of until we reach beyond the bounds of who or what we know ourselves to be. It is risky, scary, and highly uncertain to venture beyond the known, at least according to our minds. There are all kinds of barriers that pop up when we choose to push beyond the known in any area of life. It is the heart and spirit within us that is the silent champion for stepping into the realm of exploits. Balancing the push and pull between these two forces is in and of itself an exploit. Many of us spend a lot of time listening to all the reasons why it won’t work, how it makes no sense, or what the worst is that could happen. We are so used to the story in our heads that we do not even question it. One of the benefits of my daily date with God is the recognition of the sound of my own voice in my head. While in some cases, it does not seem like a benefit. Given that it rambles on whether I am aware of it or not, I would rather be aware. It is the very thing that often deters people from engaging in more than a cursory step into the world of meditation. When we slow down long enough to listen, it can be loud, obnoxious, never ending, frustrating, and any number of negative connotations. Yet, only when we become aware of it can we accomplish the exploit of questioning it. Questioning it long enough to get some space between the presence of the thought and the movement of the body. It is not about quieting the voice in our head immediately. In my recovery journey, it has been about befriending it. Learning what the heart and spirit is behind it. Only when I exploit it by meeting it face to face can I learn the nuances of what it is here to teach me about myself , about who or what I am being in the moment. If it were an exploit that everyone traveled, there would be more who know themselves as the courageous energy that lives within their hearts no matter what their heads are telling them.

Are we willing to traverse the exploit of the inner working of our minds and discover the courage that is present within us today?

Growing up with pets I remember two distinct responses both our cats and dogs would have whenever they were restricted in space. Whether gated in a room or a kennel space, they would either resist the limitation of their environment by fighting it or relishing in it. Resistance looked like growling and clawing at the door by the cats or jumping up and down and barking by the dogs. The relishing looked like finding a smaller niche to curl into by the cats and running around playfully even if in circles by the dogs. While I am not sure that cats and dogs have a mindset or a biological imperative to fall into one of two responses, it appeared as though they made a choice on how to handle their limitation. It makes me think of how we as human beings handle limitations. Our clawing, growling, barking, and jumping up and down has more of a verbal context but there is no mistaking when we are resisting limitation. Relishing our limitations seems to be somewhat dependent on whether they are self-imposed or not. What appears to be a limitation placed on us by outside forces is very often self-imposed. Given that we always have a choice on how to handle any limitation (much like animals do), the truth of any limitation is the degree to which we believe it is true for us. We have the advantage or disadvantage of talking ourselves into or not. We can choose to accept a limitation by using it to define ourselves or we can resist it by finding a way to relish in it. All we need is a little creativity. I am reminded of something that occurred to me early on in recovery. The idea of acceptance is a key concept in recovery. I learned through experience that understanding while fascinating is not the gateway to freedom, acceptance is. But I hit a bump when I am not able to accept something or someone. When I am not able to accept what I cannot change, what happens then? In a moment of clarity or as I often like to think of it, a moment when Spirit whispered in my ear, I asked myself what in this situation, this perceived limitation of acceptance can I accept? It dawned on me in that moment. I can accept that I do not accept it. Ha! Too simple to be conjured up by my analytical mind. I could create a nudge through the perceived limitation by accepting that for today, I accept that I cannot accept [insert whatever it is that day]. By pausing and listening, by breathing and quieting my analytical mind stuck in the endless cycle of how this limitation is not acceptable I was able to be with me as God is with me. It is what God shows me each day on our daily date. The way I am being with me is in accepting all of what is true about me and my view of my circumstances in this moment.

Are we willing to pause and explore creative ways to accept the limitations we find ourselves in today?

It is clear to me so far that things are rarely what they seem.  Besides the fact that always going on are levels of reality that escape our cognitive awareness, it is simply not rational given our limitations that we can know all that is happening at once.  It would probably blow our minds.  I think often of a scene from the movie “Dogma” in which the angel recalls to the main character how he delivered the message to Jesus about his impending crucifixion because the voice of God would have blown apart Jesus’ eardrums.  It appears that there are some things we cannot be aware of or experience on the level we think we should be able to.  It is why I believe the role we all have is to be messengers of God without the wings, unfortunately ( I still think flying would be an awesome experience and envy the bird at times).  The thing is we do not often know exactly how or why we are the messenger or the message.  God calls upon us to keep an open channel. Like the channel of peace, St. Francis spoke about.  The risk is it requires a level of transparency between us and ourselves, between us and God.  After many years of daily dates, I have experienced the futility of pretending with God to be different than I am in this moment. It is not easy to admit to myself, God, or anyone that I still carry judgment about having feelings of anger.  Especially when it comes to those things for which I know anger is not particularly helpful as far as I can tell.  On our daily dates I have learned that God readily holds the space and acceptance so I can just tell God (as if God did not already know) I am feeling (insert feeling) and I don’t like that I am feeling it.  I think it is wrong. I think it should go away.  I think I should be better than this.  In that moment of transparency, I can hear myself talk about what I am thinking.  God moves me to pause, breathe into my heart, and with humility ask, “how do you see this God?”  Recently while experiencing a familiar turmoil with full transparency I asked God and what I heard back was “growing.”  Not the word I would have chosen which is how I know it did not come from me.  Upon some reflection, I can kind of see.  I am growing in my ability to feel deeply.  I am growing in my desire to more readily practice self-compassion. I am growing in my ability to be present to discomfort and do what is in front of me to do anyway. I know from experience all of these expand my capacity to be alive and to love.  Until I am willing to be transparent and lay out my thoughts and feelings I am a clogged channel and there are no messages or opportunities to be a messenger that can get through.  I am learning. I am growing in my learning.

Are there ways in which transparency might open the door for us to be a live channel for God to speak through or for others to experience the message of who we are today?

The consequence of being the cause of everything in our lives means we are also being the effects of everything in our lives. At least in terms of our perspective. Of course, no life is void of impact by outside sources but when we are being bombarded by those outside influences we can lose sight of our personal sovereignty. It is easy to fall into a sense of victimhood. Believe me I am well practiced in that way of being. Recognizing the agency we have in how we see the effects of our lives and more importantly the perspective on those effects is the key to freedom. On my daily dates with God, I am always being directed to my heart. It is as though God is saying, “Listen the beat, pay attention to the rhythm, what is it speaking to you about who you are being right now?” When I look at the effects in my life, I am reminded of what Victor Frankl wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” What comes out of my daily dates with God because it is a practice is what I think of as the pause button. When there are causes in my life and I am perceiving effects as unfavorable or not how they “should” be I can choose to activate the pause button. Stop, put my hand on my heart, take a deep breath and notice what is happening. Frankl also describes this: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I figure if I guy who survived the camps during the Holocaust can hold so strongly to a belief in freedom, I would be wise to practice the same. It is not about discounting what we think and feel in the moment. It is about honoring and validating both and recognizing we can create an effect that mirrors who we are at our core not just what is happening. It is easy enough to get angry when someone else gets angry or things are unfair, unfortunately staying angry and only reacting from anger does nothing more than keep us angry. I know, I have done it. I spent plenty of time being angry about what happened to me as a child and when I was done being angry I decided to take a pause and find a different path. It still does not make what happened right , fair, or not cruel; but who I am is more than my circumstances. My best moments are when I am bothered by an effect of being an incest survivor that has shown up in my present day life and I hit the pause button. I tap into the energy of my heart and ask God, “How do you see me?”

Are we willing to pause and use the energy of our hearts to create an effect that demonstrates the core of who we are today?

With all the world has experienced in the pandemic that began more than a year ago, coming face to face with bereavement is something I do not think anyone has escaped. We have not all lost a person to the pandemic but bereavement is about sorrow, tribulation, misfortune. It is about learning to let go of expectations and things imagined. I am not convinced that anyone set out at the beginning of 2020 thinking it would turn out the way it did. No one counted on having to let go of either people, customs, ideas, events, ways of being, relationships, physical connections, and many more nuanced things. It is not about a comparison that someone’s loss is bigger or less. With loss comes a felt sense of sorrow. Sorrow and grief that call upon us to pay attention. In the midst of a pandemic there was barely any time to adapt to one loss before another came. In some cases, there was a loss that was grieved and then whatever it was returned and then it was lost again. Given that the western culture as a whole does not deal well with deep emotions, is it really a surprise that most people are still feeling like they are trying to get their heads on straight? And we are not yet out of the pandemic. There were perhaps brief moments of hope at the start of 2021 that things would shift but no surprise, nature has no care or concern about human time clocks and dates. It moves in and out of cycles regardless of what numbers we place on it. With every misfortune there is an opportunity to show up for the deeper calling. It is the same calling that God extends to us each and every day when our breath comes in and when it goes out. We do not give much thought to each breath as being gained or lost. Yet I imagine there are many who have been grieved in this pandemic that would give anything to have one of the breaths that we don’t even notice. I don’t have any answers about how to handle these things and when I spend time with God on my daily date or anytime through the day the one message that continually comes through is to pay attention to what is right in front of me. God invites me to pay attention to the the things that are escaping the site of my eyes that my heart holds and releases with a knowing of what is most cherishing right now.

Are we open to paying attention to our heart’s calling to cycle through our breath and creatively ride the experience of bereavement today?

Living in a world of duality there are certain contradictions to which we have become accustomed. Sometimes I think contradictions are not so much opposite ends but things that exist on a spectrum of understanding. Often behind seeming contradictory ideas lies a common intention. What looks like contradictory action is driven by a similar desire. When the idea of what creates and constitutes connection we can see over the span of time how much that has changed. Within the contradictions of connection are the nuances of circumstance, expectation, intention, and definition. What one person sees as a way to connect with another feels like a disconnect to the other person. Only when they are both willing to discuss the felt experience of a break in their connection do they see the effect of all these nuances. On my daily dates with God I am continually invited to learn new ways to create connection within myself and by consequence others. Being willing to breathe into my heart the possibility that the displeasing element of myself, one I was hoping to do away with becomes an invitation to find the face of love in an expected corner of my being. The recognition that God is present to the creative ways love calls upon us to connect to our inner and outer world specifically to expand the understanding of love is beyond me. It is why I return day after day, moment after moment to the connection that I have with a God of my understanding. Through the connection to God, felt or not at the moment, lies the promise of hope to connect with love in a way I never could have imagined was possible.

What creative connection to love is God inviting us to open our eyes to today?