dailydatewithgod

One of the things that pull at me about this whole Corona Virus experience is how vital human embrace is.  Indeed, we often do not appreciate what we have until it is gone.  Human affection is no small matter, it is part of what we need to survive. When one considers how much time and energy human beings put into pushing each other away whether physically or verbally, it is hard to believe that embrace plays such a large role in our survival mechanisms. God invites us to see our level of embracing of others as a barometer of the degree to which we embrace ourselves.  Of course, an embrace is more than physical.  How we hold the space for someone to be all of who they are with their thoughts, feelings, and actions is a way of embracing each other.  What becomes evident when we do the work of getting to know the truth of who we are is the degree to which we do not embrace all of who we are.  If I cannot embrace and hold space for all my thoughts, feelings, and actions then how I can really do it for someone else.  We react to each other often because we are under the misconception that other people are doing something to us.  Through our daily dates, God has shown me how to embrace both the light and dark of who I am.  It is not easy to embrace my feelings of anxiety or anger especially when the world keeps telling me to flip it into gratitude as quickly as possible.  God does not shy away from the human experience the way we humans do. God has taught me there is no reward in embracing the idea that it is a success if I can spiritualize my way out of being human.  God has given us the courage of our hearts needed to embrace the full totality of our human experience and find the fruits of the spirit in the light and the dark.

So much of our brainpower is used to make use of the visual images we encounter.  There are the ones we are consciously taking in and others we do not even know we are seeing. Our brain automatically codes and categorizes those images for us.  Our nervous system takes that information and feeds it to the body so we know how and when to act based on the interpretation of the images.  The brain does this will all our senses but we tend to believe what we see as being the primary cause because it is a dominant experience of being human.  It is probably why the idea of being visually impaired or blind is frightening or baffling to us.  It is a beautiful gift to be able to see things, I am most grateful to have full use of this sense. The downside is how we get caught up in believing that the display is the whole picture.  In our system, our visual acuity works in conjunction with all our other senses to provide a full experience.  When we lean on the display as our only source of information we lose out.  It is how our perception of people can change when we go from seeing them in a picture to interacting with them in person.  It is not that their physical display is any different but when we add being able to hear them and touch them it is a different story.  The display can seem untouchable and infallible but when it comes out from behind the beautiful glass we have some real substance.  It is so easy to default into thinking that the display is the most important.  Life gives us ample chances to see past the display but often we are so busy being confused or disappointed because it does not match up with the parts we filled in from our imagination based on the display. God invites us to notice that we are perhaps less disappointed by how people are outside of the display not because of who they are but because of who we imagined them to be based on the display.  Equally, we may be working hard to meet other’s expectations of who we are supposed to be based on our own display. When we take a breath and open ourselves to the moment where we are present with the other person we can let go of what the display was in our heads and embrace the truth of who the other person is.

One of the elements that became clear to me when I worked as a teacher is how much of it is about planting seeds.  Never being much of a gardener it was not the first analogy that came to mind. I did not go into the teaching profession for results per se.  Of course, I wanted to have an impact on my students for the better hopefully.  With time I began to see that my essential role was to layout the kernels of learning both through direct instruction and action.  Once in a while, I would see a kernel take root.  Other times I even got to see it flower.  Most of the time I wondered if the kernels were any good or what the point was.  In those moments, I would come across a flower and be reminded it was worth it.  It became an act of surrender and courage. My teaching changed from the idea of wanting to shape lives to doing my best to provide kernels that would find the soil they needed to flower.  We all do this in our lives.  We get confused when we set up expectations but the truth is we never know how the kernel of our being will be received by others.  Some will not want to absorb it into their soil. Some will, but not water it.  Still, others will ingest it immediately and grow it into something not even resembling what we thought the kernel was made of.  God invites us to be the intention from our hearts and minds as to the kind of kernels we are giving to the world through our being more than our doing.  There is no forcing something to grow the way we want.  The most we can do is take care of our own soil so the flowering of our being will leave the kernel essence of who we are with all that we encounter.

The fourth step in the 12 step way of living is an inventory.  Just like a shopkeeper takes stock of what he or she has in their store, the recovering addict takes a look at what he or she has in stock in their mind.  Particular attention is made to looking at it through the lens of relationships with others.  The idea is to get a clear sense of how he or she has been operating prior to surrendering their drug substance of choice.  From there a pattern emerges of the tactical equipment that has been used regularly to handle those relationships with self, others, and God. The equipment is known as defects of character. An equal part of the recovery path is to also take stock of the effective kinds of character.  The ones that were operating when the addict was not inclined to use.   Knowledge of the equipment that we turn to guide us through our lives and assessing which pieces add to our peace of mind and effectiveness versus those that take away is vital if the addict wants to move forward in life without needing the substance to numb out.  12 steps are referred to as a way to live life in rough going.  I think we would be hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t experiencing life in rough going right now. Taking the time to figure out which equipment is going to enable us to move the rough patches without destroying ourselves might be a good idea if we want to see the other side of it.  The equipment is not just in our minds but in our hearts. When we are at our wit’s end with the defective equipment in our minds and the effective equipment it is not easily accessible, God encourages us to slow down and tap into the equipment of our hearts.  There is a storehouse of equipment within us that has not been battered by the rough going because nothing we experience in life can remove the imprint of God from our hearts.  Taking stock of the heart’s equipment may sound painstaking and rough going on its own especially if we have allowed a bunch of mind equipment to get piled on top of it.  My daily dates with God showed me how to pause and clear my way to reach the equipment of my heart especially for the times when my mind’s equipment was on automatic pilot.  Learning to clear the path to reach the equipment of my heart is not always easy but it is the ticket to freedom I have searched for my whole life.

Living in a city known for its endless parking lots we call highways one sees a lot of cars up close.  It is evident in the design of a car that it has certain curves and grooves which come together at a certain point to create something functional.  Then, of course, there are the grooves we call dents and dings that will cause the insurance company to raise your rate.  Those grooves are not part of the original design but can give a car a unique character.  The same goes for the grooves in our own bodies.  Some are present in the design of being human. Others are ones that we create with lived experience. We call them wrinkles, lines, breaks, and bruises.  Living in Western culture the dominating thinking is that we all want to look as young as possible.  We value the smooth groove of a young body versus the bumpy or lumpy one of an adult body.  What we do not see with our eyes when we look at the grooves life has helped us shape throughout bodies is the character it represents.  The wisdom that comes from moving through the process of obtaining those grooves is what makes us interesting, quirky, and with some stories to tell.  Our hearts know the value of the groove in our bodies because it carries the oxygen of life through it.  Our hearts hear the message of the woman whose grooves on her face alone tell the story of her words of wisdom.  Our hearts feel the warm laughter that resonates loud through the pudgy body of our funny uncle. God invites us to welcome the grooves that have built on the inherent ones in our human design as a sign of the beauty through which our hearts can reach each other without being stopped by our mind’s eyes ideas of what is the right groove to dance to.

We all know what we are like when we are operating at our best.  We feel like we are in the flow of life.  It is a time when we are void of it we want to get back to you. If you are anything like me I default to thinking I am to blame when I step out of a time of flow.  Slowly through my daily dates with God, I am willing to take into consideration a different possibility.  Perhaps being in the flow of life means that it goes in and out. There are times of consolation and times of desolation.  Neither of those means we are void of anything in the least or acting in bad character just different.  In a world of duality, we understand things through their contradictions and paradoxes.  It seems as though it is unfortunate that they come through pain and discomfort but consider that the dawn is breathtaking because it arises out of the darkest time of night.  We do a lot of consideration in our mind which is important.  We are designed to contemplate and meditate on our lives.  It is what makes us distant from all the other animals.  God encourages us to bring our hearts into the picture when it comes to consideration.  When we take a breath and open up the heart resonance we widen the consideration arena.  Our minds’ contemplative power is increased through what the heart is willing to consider.  The whole of who we are can show up and play a role in the consideration process allowing the whole truth of who we are to engage in the flow of contemplation.

We are easily fooled by what we see not because we are fools but because our eyes only tell us part of the picture.  Most humans rely heavily on their sense of sight which makes sense.  There is a reason why in ancient times blindness was considered to be a curse.  There is a reason when we are alarmed at a change in our ability to see either temporarily or as an effect of harm to our eyes. Maybe it comes from the inherent if not direct knowledge discovered by neuroscience that our eyeballs are actual physical pieces of our brain outside our skull.  God encourages us to take things a step further.  What our eyes give us is an offering of information.  What we do in our minds translates what we are actually seeing and gives it meaning.  When we learn to take responsibility for the meaning we create we can appreciate and value the offering that our eyes or any part of our sensory system gives us.  In our willingness and courage to own what we do with the various kinds of offerings our senses pick upon, we see the gift we are being given all the time.  Our perspective on how our lives are orchestrating themselves is placed back within our personal sovereignty is not the fault or caused by the outside stimulation with our senses pick up on.

What seems to be unaware of all the kinds of conversations we have going on at once.  There are direct ones with other people. There are indirect ones with other people. Plus the dialogue we have with institutions or things.  What drives all of it is the inner conversation.  Not just the chatter we hear bantering about in our minds that we all pretend is not happening while the other conversations are happening.  Also, the ones that are occurring beneath the level of thought.  There is a heart conversation, a body conversation, and an energy conversation.  God encourages us to become fluent in the languages of all the elements of who we are so we can notice the conversations happening in our very being.  We like to think we have a handle on the conversations with others or often think we know how they are going to go before they happen.  The reality is we are projecting the inner conversations.  The kind of outer conversations we have with others is a mirror of the inner conversation we are having with ourselves.  Taking time to pause and notice our inner conversations is our key to creating outer conversations that we walk into with an open mind and an open heart.  God invites us to learn what being in a relationship with others is through conversation by getting to know who we are through our inner conversations.

When we look for ways to gather ourselves and bring ourselves together we don’t often think of patchwork as being the best option.  We think we need to take the threads we have and start over from the beginning.  We do not realize how powerful the stitches we use to mend ourselves to empower us to value all we have done and been through up to this point of needing some mending.  Being worn down and falling apart is not a sign of failure.  It is a sign of living fully.  Our minds might tell us that everything must be perfectly logical and lined up.  Yet the very heart of who we are speaks to the power of getting back up after falling down.  We can decide how much we value the stitches we need to mend ourselves.  Our hearts invite us to look at moments of being torn apart as an opportunity to notice where the threads were growing thin and calling out for mending without judgment.  Our hearts are interested in what enables us to grow whole and complete. While there are times when starting from scratch may be the best option but even then we do not need to toss aside the torn elements of ourselves.  We can honor them by using them as a template when implementing the stitches needed to make us whole.  Asking God to guide us using the courage and curiosity which lies at the truth of who we are to stitch ourselves into wholeness is only a request away.

When we are so accomplishment focused we can lose sight of how vital it is to be in the experience of everything that leads up to it.  It is easy to digest the idea that the steps which are specific markers are important. More foreign to us is the importance of the intervals along the path to where we are heading. The in-between times are moments when the whole of who we are can get connected.  It renews our energy to have a pause. In case it has gone unnoticed, as human beings, we are easily distractable.  How often along a particular path do we lose sight of where we are going or why we are going there.  The interval serves as a mechanism to refocus.  Maybe a part of us is not in alignment with where we are headed.  An interval is a moment to break and reassess if it still where we want to be going.  In a success-driven culture, anything besides a forward motion is often signifying weakness.  When we fall down, we get back up.  That is good and there is nothing wrong with moving forward and accomplishing things.  It is our drives that allow us to survive.  If we took the radical chance and began to value the intervals along our path, we might find the energetic gems they provide in getting us to where we want to go.  God invites us to see the intervals as the clarity points to keep us focused on the whole of our experience as we travel this path of life.