dailydatewithgod

When we exist solely in our place of knowing the world seems very secure.  It is nice and cozy until the unknown dashes some cold water on us. In some cases, the dash feels like a bucket dump of ice-cold water. On my daily dates with God, I have seen my openness to the dashes of unknown growth.  Over time as we learn to embrace the dashes of the unknown, we can cultivate a sense of security in being unknown.  Dashes can come into our experience in such a way that we revel in them.  By residing in our heart’s courageousness we have more strength to welcome in the dashes of the unknown with appreciation.  Curiosity becomes the lens through which we see the dashes of life’s unknown because we recognize it as love’s way of introducing us to another element of ourselves.  Grounding ourselves in the truth of who we are at our core, we know that the dashes of the unknown will not and cannot alter our knowledge of who we really are and who God knows us to be.  We can even seek out the dashes of the unknown because we desire to grow the power of love in our hearts for all of life. Any time we find ourselves drifting into a story that tells us the unknown dashes of life will disrupt the core of who we are we have lost sight of who God knows us to be.  All we have to do is pause, take a breath, connect to our hearts and see God readily holding the space not altered by the dashes of life unknown.

The Persian mystic poet, Hafiz creates life-giving playful depictions of God.  It is simply a joy to see God through his eyes. My eyes have been opened to seeing God in many new ways since embarking on my journey of recovery. The very least I have learned from my daily dates with God is how much God is present through simple existence.  I say simple not because existence is easy or simplistic, but because it is fundamental.  We often want to find God in extraordinary and majestic ways and there is nothing wrong with being dazzled by God, it’s quite fun.  More often than not, the path of spirituality is about witnessing and embodying the presence of God in all of existence.  Over and over again it is the simple moments of being which bring me to meet God.  The more I am willing to let go of how I think God could, would, or should show up, the more I am graced by God’s presence in the littlest elements of existence.  The beauty of this openness is the degree to which it lightens the experience of existing.  Life takes on new meaning when we can see the thread of love’s presence in all that is.  Yes, even the dark and messy stuff have light connected to it. The beauty of existence is, in fact, it’s simply being what is.

So much of our focus is outside of ourselves.  It is important to keep our eyes open and looking at what is in front of us, if we don’t we will bump into things.  What we lose sight of with our outside focus is how much of what we perceive outside of us comes from our interior view.  If you are not clear on how this is possible, next time you witness something ask the person next to you what they witnessed. You will notice a difference in what they saw and heard from your version.  How many times have we wondered, were those people watching the same thing?  How could they not see what clearly happened?  How much frustration stems from other people who do not see what is so obvious to you?  We cannot know or understand the reality of other’s interior but we can know and own our interior.  God encourages us to remain connected to the interior landscape of our being because it contains the truth of who we are.  Maybe we think its silly to pay attention to our interior.  Maybe we are afraid of what we will find. I have learned that no amount of seeking outside of myself has brought me the peace and freedom I have found when I was willing to let go of my ideas about what I would find when I explored my interior world. When we learn to make peace with all of what makes up our interior landscape we see peace in our lives.

At the end of my first ever relationship, I remember a pivotal conversation I had with God. I informed God my heart was closed and moving forward I did not want to connect with anyone until I met the person I was supposed to marry. I laugh out loud and have a great deal of compassion for that young woman who was sure the only solution to the pain (aside from the food I was already using) was to shut down my heart. I did not understand until many years later, I was asking to turn off all links to love with anyone including myself.  We have ideas about what love is and what it is supposed to look like and when it does not show up that way, we don’t see it.  It is much the same way when we approach our relationship with God. The reality is we are far more connected to love than we can see.  The links to the presence of love are deep within us.  It is part of our makeup.  We could no sooner disconnect from those links than turn the planet to move in the reverse direction. On my daily dates with God, I continually encounter the subtle and profound ways God chooses to introduce the links of love present in my life.  When I stand in the courageous space of my heart and hold the open breathing space of possibility, I see with the links with the eyes of my heart as much as the eyes of my mind and body. I would share some of those love links with you now but I do not want to taint the options your heart wants to show you of your love links.

As I walk through this experience of facing the world as it is I am constantly surprised by how palpable God’s presence is.  When I was willing to step outside my knowns of God and get connected the deepest part of myself my whole world opened up.  Palpability of God is not a constant experience but it is a consistent one. On our daily dates with God, I have learned to let go of my ideas of how and what God is supposed to be and find God in all the wrong places.  The palpability is not always a literal touchable experience although I have had those.  The unexpected palpable experiences of God are the ones I sense internally.  It sounds all woo-woo and bizarre but it is as real as a handshake.  It is the moments when my heart skips a beat.  It is the time I find myself smiling unexpectedly because I am touched emotionally by something or someone.  It is the rush of gratitude when provided a new perspective on how to see a troubling situation.  The palpability of God is only limited by my willingness to experience God as touchable.  My prayer becomes, God how are you touching me in this moment?  God, how are you making your palpable presence known in my life right now?  

Simplistically speaking there are two general modes of operation when it comes to how we approach life.  Most people tend to either want to be prepared or just take it as it comes.  We do no unilaterally follow this pattern but we lean towards one or the other.  I trend towards the prepared approach.  There is an equation of safety that I feel is present when I am able to be prepared.  I recognize it as a childhood construct that directed much of my choices and interactions with others.  As a mature adult, I see the illusion of preparedness of safety because I can only prepare for the knowns.  I cannot project all the quandaries which come my way when I show up having done all my preparation.  I used to think I wanted a God who would protect me from quandaries.  I thought it was best to know the right answer and to be what others wanted me to be.  That led to exhaustion, self-annihilation, and addiction.  I do not recommend it. I cannot undo the quandaries I experienced as a child, but I can use the resources I created to navigate around them.  The reality is we all do the best we can.  Every quandary we encounter whether we could have foreseen its presence or not is a chance to see our own courage.  I do not want a God that shelter’s me from quandaries.  I want a God who stands with me and provides an open avenue to be reminded of the truth of who I am.  My mind will always be inclined towards the safety I think I get from avoiding a quandary, but my heart knows it is the quandaries in life which open me up to a new and previously unknown experience of the capacity of love.

So much of our survival skills are slated to keep an eye on what is wrong.  It is a much-needed survival mechanism to be able to detect problems and prevent possible danger. Given that we live in a world where our very survival is much less under threat, this inclination to focus on the wrong and the bad gets misplaced. It is still built into our psyche and I am grateful that it is but when we find ourselves turning it inward it can become harmful.  Just a few days ago when I was in yoga class, I could hear the conversation in my head about how I wasn’t doing the pose right or the best way possible.  So much for practicing something towards peace of mind.  My mind was busy beating me up.  Yet in a moment of breath, I heard an alternative in the form of some questions:  “What if what I am doing is correct?  What if how I am going about this class is precisely the way I am meant to participate in it today?” Now I got why in class there is always a reminder to stay with the breath in our movements.  It was the breath that activated the space in my heart to provide an alternative to my mind’s perspective.  It was the breath that gave me enough pause to ask a question and explore other perspectives. My doing it precisely the way the teacher set up the exercise and the way the other students were doing it had no bearing on my survival.  My mind was simply doing what it knows how to do.  The heart can engage a different conversation and present options.  It is not an either-or thing, sometimes it is fitting to hold the space for both to be true but harassing myself is hardly the way to go about it. So I took another breath and decided that how I was practicing in yoga class was precisely as it was meant to be in that moment.  Sure, I could go harder and stronger but bludgeoning myself into submission was not the way to get there. And I did find myself able to go past what my mind had decided I was capable of, but first needed to be where I was.  I needed the moment I was in to be precisely as it was meant to be.

We all have routines and systems we use to navigate through our lives and our days. Some of them are intentional, others are an automatic result of being a part of a greater system.  Over time we develop patterns and harden our methods of navigating those patterns based on familiarity.  God invites us to look at the methods we use to navigate our lives and determine if they resonate with the truth of who we are. Some of them are patterned after watching those around us and we don’t even realize we have adopted them.  I’ll never forget the time I saw my brother do something in his kitchen when he was cooking and realized I did the same thing.  It was something we had watched our mom do and while there was never any discussion around it, we both adopted the method when preparing food. On my daily dates with God, I am encouraged to notice methods that awaken my heart and connection to the truth of who I am in any situation.   The more often I can stay connected to my own core, the more my life reflects what I value and why I am here. When I detect those methods I can make use of them intentionally to connect to my heart and be the person I know myself to be in word and deed no matter what is happening outside of me.  Taking the time to pause and reflect is a method that anchors me back into the moment.  Inserting a question into an experience or thought inside my head allows enough pause to breathe and awaken my heart.  Looking up, literally looking up, is a method I have adopted when I need to step out of my head’s ideas about what is happening or what the next step is. When we use our own methods to bring our heart’s perspective into the conversation of our lives, we become the embodiment of the truth of who we are.

One of the core realizations stemming from the humility of choosing to walk a daily engaging path with God is how much I do not know God. The ubiquitous nature of God is outside my capability of presence so I can never fully grasp what it is like to be God. That is not what I am searching for, after all, who really wants that kind of responsibility.  The way I see it my purpose as I walk this path one day at a time is to be open to the ubiquitousness of God. The best I can do is not close off any idea or concept of how God might choose to show up in my life.  It becomes an element of surprise and curiosity that awaken my heart and opens me to learn more about love.  God can show up in the dark or in the light.  God can show up in the person I can’t stand and in the person I admire.  God can show up in the tissue I need when I am crying and in the empty box of tissues, I find when I really need one to wipe my tears.  God’s ubiquitous nature is outside my realm of possibility but being open to it allows me to expand my knowing of love and what awakens the truth inside of me.

I sometimes wonder if my heart had hands what kind of picture of my life it would draw. How does the vision of my heart coincide and differentiate from the vision in my mind?  More importantly, if my heart were to describe my life how would that be different than the words I might use. On my daily dates with God, I have noticed that certain experiences in life evoke an aliveness in me that is experienced in mind, body, and soul. It is those captivating experiences that draw me into a deeper desire to connect with what it is that moves this aliveness.  Knowing I can draw on such an experience because it has sketched itself in the memory of my heart is part of what draws me to spend time each day on a date with God.  The simple but not always easy commitment of daily prayer and meditation has opened up layers of life that my mind cannot conceive of.  The picture of my life drawn by my heart stems from the draw to connect with the truth of who I am.  It grows from the willingness to trust that how God sees me is truer than any conception I can have of myself.  If I am willing to set aside my version of what and how things are supposed to be for just a moment by taking a deep breath, I draw my heart into the conversation to provide an avenue to connect to God and experience a different angle.  In my mind, everything falls short and is not enough.  With each breath, my heart gets exactly what it needs to play in the game.  I cherish the ways I am willing and able to draw my heart into the conversation about the measurement of my life because having more than one version available to choose from opens me up to seeing and being more of the fullness of who I truly am.