dailydatewithgod

Life is about progress, not perfection.  I am not even sure aside from God what is really perfect.  I have had experiences of perfection but most of the time when I fall for the idea of perfection there is an element of safety I am desiring.  There is this idea that if everything is just so, I will be okay.  If all things went according to plan this might be a realistic thing to work towards, but when do all things go according to plan?  And whose plans? Mine? Yours? God’s? I never thought of myself as a perfectionist because as far as I am concerned I fall very short of perfectionism in any realm.  But I do know that I am someone who progresses. Sometimes it is hard for me to see my own growth but that is what friends and mentors are for.  Those are also the people acutely aware of how hard I am on myself and perhaps wish I could more readily see my own progress. Yet even in that, I am progressing.  After many daily dates with God, I have come to recognize the power of progress as a kind of perfection.   You could say progress is in the range of perfection. As long as we keep growing, we are alive.  What is more perfect than life?  The beauty of God, if nature is any indication, shows us the power and mystery of how life unfolds despite our plans.  How many times have we experienced something we did not plan which turned out to be better than our plans?  More times than I can count for me.  Being in a relationship with God allows me the breadth and depth to not need to be protected from life but a willingness to embrace it.  I have come to know that no matter what happens it will progress to something else.  If I keep my eyes fixed on the Creator of all things I might catch a glimpse of the perfection of this progression of life and come to find peace.

We carry around strange ideas about what it means to have things in our lives.  We figure if we have things in our physical hands it is ours.  We do not claim the same level of ownership when it comes to our perceptions and ideas about ourselves and life. Sometimes no matter how much we operate from particular beliefs or ideas, in the moments we are labeled with them by others we act confused as to where their assessment stems.  We are even known to quickly abandon the possession of them.  And what about what we possess in our hearts?  What do we claim ownership of there?  Our confusion about this stems from a lack of awareness of how we came to possess the beliefs and perceptions we hold within us.  Most physical objects we know how we came to own them.  But so many of our ideas and feelings have been handed down to us or we adopted unknowingly from our early caregivers.  Yet we continue to possess them and in some cases claim them as our own without realizing whether or not they are still true for us.  It is the work of awareness to be willing to slow down and take a look at what we are possessing and in some cases what is possessing us in terms of ideas and perceptions that are not a fit for the truth of who we are. God invites us to use the energy of our hearts as a gage to determine if what we are possessing in the form of ideas and perceptions serve to facilitate the truth of the message of our lives in the moments we are in.  We do not have to drastically unearth everything at once.  We are invited by life when we experience moments of discontent between our hearts and minds to pause and look deeper.  What might be possessing our mind that does or does not resonate with our heart?  We have the courage to take a look if we so choose.

When we look at the decisions we make in our lives it is helpful to look at what our criteria are for making the decision. Sometimes we get caught up in using criteria that are not our own.  We were instructed at some point on how to decide on something but were never told the criteria of the person instructing us.  Paying attention to our criteria requires a deeper look at what our values are.  It also asks us to pause and pay attention if we are listening to the criteria in our minds or in our hearts.  Are our minds and hearts in alignment on the criteria we are using?  Our criteria shape our perspectives motivates our actions and tells us more about the truth of the room from which we are operating on a daily basis.  Spending time in quiet listening both to the stories in our mind and the rhythms of our heart enables us to take a step back and get to know ourselves.  Only then can we begin to shift the criteria from which we make our decisions.

We are constantly picking up information from multiple sources.  Our bodies and mind do such a good job of handling them automatically that we are not consciously inundated with them.  If we were we would probably go mad just from the sheer volume alone.  Understanding this can shed some light on how things get lost in the shuffle when it comes to communication.  We intend to transmit a certain message or experience and the people on the receiving end do not get it.  Whatever we are transmitting can also be misconstrued because it is not being done in a clear and cohesive manner.  If what we are transmitting is not in alignment with the truth of who we are the message comes out unclear and lacking power because what is mixed up in the transmission are contradicting elements.  When we do things because it is what is expected but the people who are receiving what we are doing sense the lack of authenticity. Often it is so subtle we do not notice it within ourselves let alone with other people.  We all do this and with some exception, it is not intentional.  Often it is not until someone does not receive our transmission do we stop to take a look at what we are transmitting. God invites us to pause and take a look at the state of our heart before transmitting anything of value.  It helps to be clear about the intention and motive of the transmission.  Being able to sit with ourselves and get to know the truth of who we are goes a long way to transmitting the messages we want to convey to ourselves and the world around us.

Sounds is very powerful.  If you have any doubt of that think about the power of hearing your favorite song.  You hear it and you are transported into a delightful experience.  Out of nowhere you feel a renewed sense of energy and life.  The ability of the waves to travel throughout the physical world is mesmerizing.  One of the elements of a sound wave is its ability to create an echo.  When it bounces off a surface and comes back at us reverberating the wave we experience an echo.  If we think back to the first time we heard our own voice echoed back at us, we were fascinated.  Something about hearing our own voice talk to us is intriguing.  Given how much of life’s energy travels in waves, what are the other echoes of our lives?  We look to see if our thinking is returned to us by others and when it is we feel a kinship to them.  When it comes to the echoes of our hearts, things become more sensitive.  A lot of what we experience but cannot put a name to are the echoes of our hearts.  When we extend our hearts they come back to us. When we withhold our hearts we experience the lack of heart energy coming back to us.  Nothing happens in a vacuum.  The lack of unintentional energy being given creates as much of an echo is intentional energy.  Waves continue to flow and bounce off each other whether we are paying attention to them or not.  What might our heart be calling us to echo to ourselves and to others today?  What do we need in order to answer the call of the echo of our hearts?

We see ourselves as whole beings, and we are. The whole of ourselves is made up of many diverse elements.  No one thing about us provides a whole and complete picture of who we are.  The longer we live the more motley we become.  The question is how embracing are we of our motley nature?  How much do we value all the diverse elements of our being?  Are there certain pieces of our motley nature we would rather not share with others?  Is there a motley element of us we wish was not there?  If we are honest with ourselves we share this experience.  I never liked the idea of being labeled one thing or another.  There are all kinds of personality tests and questionnaires one can take to see where on a particular spectrum they lie.  One can learn what their particular inclinations are or default modes based on the descriptions in the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram.  There are some out there which made sense to me but if I am really honest, I did not want to get a label put on me because it felt like people would know who I am. I did not want it to be so obvious, it is easier to keep people at a safe distance if they do not know who you are.  Besides, I embrace my motley nature.  Sure, there are things I do not want everyone to know but over the years and my dates with God, I see the value in my quirkiness.  As I continue to grow, I am willing to let people in close enough to see my motley nature which is simply a reflection of the various colors of my soul.  The more I am willing to allow them into the light, the more they will enhance my experience of being and the ability to be present and of service in the world.  It sure beats working so hard to keep it under wraps.  The elements of my motley nature I still struggle with embracing stem from the various traumatic experiences.  Those are the ones I bring to God and ask, God how do you see the color and beauty in this?  Help me to see what you see?  Help the little soul inside of me who saw only darkness in this part of my motley nature be willing to see it in the light?  

We like hard physical evidence.  We feel better when we can witness things with our eyes, hear them with our ears, touch them with our hands and so on.  We see this in babies. As they begin to grow they want to touch things and they viscerally react to things they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.  All of our senses provide a palpable experience of what life is.  There is so much palpability to life we get caught in thinking it is the only experience of life.  What about the things we cannot see, hear, taste or touch?  What about the things others see, hear, taste, touch or smell that we do not?  What is the value of palpability if it is not a shared experience?  Which of our senses allows us to know the palpability of a shared experience?  Our hearts are responsible for pumping the blood and bringing fresh oxygen to our body and ridding it of toxins.  But is that all it does?  How do we describe the palpable nature of our hearts?  We speak about our heart as though it is more than an organ.  We say we have a broken heart when we are in pain over a relationship.  We describe our hearts as tattered and torn when we are worn down or feel we have been violated.  We automatically touch the area of our body where our heart is when we are sharing with others something we would describe as heartfelt.  As kids when attesting to something we double ensure its palpability by crossing our heart (or say we hope to die).  Our language reveals so much about the palpability of our hearts that we cannot deny it simply because it does not fall under one of the primary physical senses. Perhaps the palpability of our hearts is more than meets the eye.

As I have grown in my relationship with God on our daily dates I have come to see the beauty in the beingness of life.  Our being shows itself to us when we dare to show up and attempt to live our lives.  We do not know who we are until we see what we are made of.  We can be full of ideas and beliefs but none of it matters if we do not know how to be it.  The phases we go through to uncover the truth of ourselves are the experiences of being.  In order to grow and change we go through different phases.  Hopefully, we take what we need and discard what we don’t for the next phase and take the next step.  Our hearts are guided by what will enable us to grow in love.  The depth and breadth of love we are willing to courageously step into will change depending on the phase we are in at the moment.  We strangely see ourselves as stagnant and unchanging. Yet how many times have we surprised ourselves and others by who we are being?  When I think about the person I have become over the years it is only when I look back at where I have come from that I can identify how much I have grown.  I see how the different phases I went through attributed to my growth of heart even if I did not think the phase I was in was where I wanted to be at all.  Sometimes we look at particular phases of growth and wish we had not gone through them. Yet we do not know to what degree they shaped the person we are today.  I try to remember this when I am in what I would call a stuck phase or a repeat phase.  I find myself thinking how much I would like to move quickly through a phase or it is one I have already dealt with.   It is in those moments, when I remember to reach for God who takes my hand, draws it to my heart, encourages me to take a breath and just be in the moment I am in, trusting the phase will pass when it is time.

The interconnected nature of our experience causes us to continually associate with others.  No man is an island and often as much as we like to think of ourselves as on our own, everything in our very nature contradicts this idea.  Literally, our biological nature is a system of connections and associations.  We are linked in the general sense as beings who have multiple facets to ourselves.  On a baseline level the links between our digestion and energy.  Then expand out a bit to think about our links to those who make the food we digest to create energy.  Even further out, we are therefore linked the people who planted, harvested, raised, and distributed the food to the store we bought it from.  Our links to everything around us are so obvious we have lost sight of them.  When we pause for a moment to look at the links in our lives there are too many to comprehend and those are the ones outside of our being.  What about the links within ourselves?  What is the strength of the links between our heart and mind?  Between our intention and action in life?  Looking at the links give us some indication based on our recognition, as to why we find ourselves feeling lost and alone.  What would it take to develop the strength of the links within ourselves?  Do the links within ourselves determine the kind of links we have with others and life in general?  These are questions we can begin to look at when we pause, take a breath, and spend some time in quiet with ourselves.  It may not be our first inclination until we realize there is nowhere else to look. God encourages us to pay attention to our links within ourselves starting with our heart is linked to all the other parts of ourselves.

We spend a lot of our time and energy labeling things as good or bad.  I am not sure if it is our inclination to stay within some sort of moral construct or we just stopped paying attention the fact that we feel more comfortable with the idea of things or people being good or bad.  We get used to knowing what is right and what is wrong and within cultures and families there is a common understanding.  It does help us to feel a part of. It takes care of our survival instinct to not be left on our own to die.  But some of the things we go along with agreeing as good or bad or right or wrong may not be wholly one or the other.  The best we can do is evaluate a situation in the moment we are in.  It is good to have some guiding principles but if we fear disobeying the agreed upon group norms just to stay acceptable to the group, we might neglect the deeper question of workability.  Workability implies a level of flexibility and presence to the moment we are in as the person we are in the moment.  What was right for me as a four year old may be not good for me as a woman in my 40s simply because of its unworkability.  Holding my parents hands when I crossed the street worked and made sense as a four year old but doing so now does not only not make sense it does not work.  I do not even live in the same town as my parents.  It may sound like a silly example but when was the last time we took a mindful look at the unworkable elements of our lives we are still following because they are considered good or bad at the time we learned them?  It takes courage to pause and look at the workability or unworkability of elements of our lives because to do so brings up possible fear.  God has given us the grace through the power of our hearts to pause and be in the moment we are in.  This provides the ability to evaluate the workability of all the facets of our lives without getting lost in the boogie man of fear masquerading as sensible and the right thing.