dailydatewithgod

In the realm of understanding how we can become more of the truth of who we are, we have to look at what is driving our operation.  From where are we getting our motivation to take action in our lives.  We like to judge ourselves by our thinking but the world judges us by our actions. While our thinking may be brilliant, it does not have value until we write it down and share it with others.  Thinking in and of itself simply supplies the reasoning and the motivation for the action.  Our feelings or rather our interpretation of our feelings also motivate our actions.  Sometimes thinking comes before feeling, other times it is the opposite. Action draws from both.  As we learn to pay attention to how our thoughts and feelings impact create our reality we can see how they set the stage for the actions we are taking. Powerful action is created by the fusing of the two. When we choose to align our thinking and our feeling by fusing them together, we are energetically aligned with our heart and our spirit.  The actions we take have a greater and more lasting impact.  Think about a time when you did something good or bad with strong passion. Passion comes from the fusing of our thoughts and feelings.  Those around us can feel the effects long after we have left the scene.  God invites us to choose wisely what we are doing when we harness the power of fusing our thinking and feeling into action.

We all do it and we all condemn it and look down upon it.  Escaping into our phones, the media, other people’s lives, drinking, drugging, eating, shopping or something else.  It seems to be on the increase and because our default is to measure ourselves by our productivity in life we see it as a bad thing. In all of nature there is a balance between productivity and rest, between being charged up and cooled down, between excitement and sadness.  We move from one state to another because it is the flow of life to move from one state to another. Life does not have a judgment on our behavior they way we do.  We tend to see things through the lens of what is wrong here.  Escaping may be part of our natural inclination to seeking a break.  Stepping out of a situation and putting our attention on something else for a while gives our minds and bodies a time to be and move in a different way.  This can often provide insight into what the next productive step should be. If we ignore the need to pause long enough it will require an escape.  God invites us to pause all throughout the day,  its called breathing. The breath goes in and out.  If we are in a situation where we can only breathe in or only breathe out we will need an escape.  If we take a step back from the judgment and pay attention to what our way of escaping does for us we can make it a point to provide it for ourselves in a balanced way so that escaping does not take a turn for the worse or become our focus.

It seems the commercial world is full of endorsements.  You may be hearing a lot of it right now in the US because we are about to have an election.  The power of endorsing comes from the value we place on those who are endorsing.  The relationship to what is being endorsed becomes the motivating factor to get you to buy this or vote for that. It is how pretty much everything happens we just do not call it that. As human beings we are very heavily influenced by those around us, even if we think we are not. Every time we asked someone for their opinion we are trying to determine which view they are endorsing.  The question we want to ask ourselves in each moment is, what is our heart endorsing in this moment?  When we look at what God gave us as a tool to determine how to make our decisions we need not look to others but to the energy of our hearts.  When we pay attention to the message and the energy that is either growing or diminishing we have a sense of what our hearts are endorsing as the most aligned with the truth of who we are.  Many spiritual paths have similar endorsements and we think following those will make us good people.  They can create an experience of what it is like to be in alignment with our hearts but if our hearts are not on board, it will be disconnected from us and not be much of an endorsement. Sometimes, we get stuck in the disciplines and lose sight of the spirit.  The intention is to help us get back on the path of our hearts when we fall off course.  Slowing down, taking a breath, even touching our hand to our hearts gives us the chance to see what our true self is endorsing in the moment.  It may be scary, it may be joyful but the more we stop and listen the more clear the endorsements become.  God encourages us to know our own hearts as God does.  When we learn what endorsing love means in our lives it becomes clearer whether or not someone or something outside of us is in alignment with what we want to be endorsing.

As we take a look at what we can create in our lives from day-to-day to further the expression of the truth of who we are it may stand in stark contrast to what the world expects of us.  Most of us judge things that are different from a place of wrongness.  It makes sense, our minds are instinctively set up to sniff out possible danger which often shows up in what is different.  Our default for survival is to avoid the anomalies, the differences, and be one with the crowd.  We can be assured of making it to the next stage because we are included and will be protected in case of outside danger.  Those who are like us will recognize us and include us.  Differing to our minds presents possible danger.  The very idea of diversity inclusion is foreign to our minds.  But to our hearts which experience God in differing ways, it is not something to be feared.  When we are willing to embrace differing, we are opening our hearts and minds to what God has created as an opportunity to expand our capacity for love. It does not mean bring it super close right away but there is no need to run from it or make it automatically wrong.  Our hearts are full of curiosity and because we know God can bring us through anything, we have nothing to fear.  If we are willing to embrace differing ourselves from the crowd by being curious in the moment and open to the discovery of love in a new way, we can be the light we are called to be.

Given God has created so many experiences of love, we can spend an endless time seeking God and never come to the same experience twice.  There is something to be said for the ones that resonate deeply with ourselves.  Each of us has a way of being the expression of love in the world.  Each of us is gifted with being able to be the voice, movement, and space of love for ourselves and others.  A lifetime spent in discovery of what is our rhythm of love’s expression is what brings our hearts joy.  Feeling everything along the path of discover is part of the process.  It is miraculous how we are able to embody the spirit of love in such a unique fashion.  The more attention we give to the discovery of how we are the best expression of love, the more we embody the imperfect process of life.  It is not about having figured it out already.  It is a lifetime of discovery.  It is about being open to paying attention on the discovery path to what resonates most deeply within us.  It helps to attune to what contributes the freedom of the expression of love within us and what holds us back from freely giving from the space of love. Learning to embrace what is holding us back is also part of the discovery.  God encourages us to embrace the discovery with full knowledge that there is no greater meaning of life than to spend it in the discovery of how we are the greatest expression of love we are designed to be.

For those of you who remember vinyl records, you’ll remember how miraculous it was that a needle read lines grooved on a piece of plastic and played the song through the speakers on the stereo.  The grooves were an easy way to tell when it was moving from one song to another.  It was terribly annoying if the needle got stuck in a groove and kept repeating over and over a small portion of the song. In other words for the song to play full-out, the needle had to be able slide smoothly along the grooves.  We too have grooves in our mind, our bodies, even our hearts.  They are the patterns by which we are able to see and hear the music of our lives.  Life has a rhythm and a cadence and it is all going according to plan until the needle skips a groove or someone touches the record too closely and causes the needle to skip forward or get stuck in a groove. This meant in order to hear the song, you had to buy another record or play a different one.  It is not like a cassette tape or CD that could be easily recorded over again. The question is what kind of grooves do we have in place in our lives that need to be interrupted or broken?  What grooves when opened us up to be willing to play a different music?  Do you like the music of your life?  Are their records we are still playing no matter how worn the grooves are? In order to determine where the music of our lives is getting its cues, we have to look at the grooves we are operating within.  Change is sustained by switching grooves.  God invites us to quiet our minds and connect to the grooves, to listen to what they are really telling us and determine if they are still useful.  Some of them were placed by family and society and no longer play the kind of music of who we are in our lives today.  As adults we get to choose the grooves go under the needle and play the music of our lives.

There is something unique about the people with whom we choose to surround ourselves.  There is a common phrase used in leadership and self-improvement circles about noticing the five people we surround ourselves with and the effect they have on who we are, how we behave, and what is important to us.  Scientifically there have been studies demonstrating the power of the crowd to influence behavior.  Often times it is mentioned as a warning instead of something to make note of, something to be grateful for, or something to look to what we might be contributing to others.  The positive side of community in the heart-felt sense is the power of genuine connection.  It is marked by people we can be ourselves with and do not need to put on a show.  Community is the people that we can be vulnerable with and who share their stories of similar situations without needing to fix us.  Community of the heart is there with us in the madness, in the joy, in the confusion, and normal boring ups and downs of life.  For some people this experience comes from family, church or faith-based groups, 12-step groups, work, extended family, school, and many more.  It matters little where we experience community of the heart but that we know it as the place where we can wear our heart on our sleeve and those around us will want to get to know it, all of it, all of us. This sense of heart community was something I did not understand the strength and power of until later in life.  I have learned the grace and the power of being with people who are delighted when I am present, to whom I am not obligated to contribute to but want to because I am able to see the beauty of their hearts and all the messiness.  On the outside we may not have a lot in common but our hearts know how to mirror each other.  I have learned the pain and the beauty of letting others in my heart.  I see that I was not ready for this until I learned to develop that kind of heart relationship with God. Looking back on my life I can see where God showed up in heart communities in little moments all throughout my life.  I am grateful to be willing to risk experiencing it more fully today.

One thing God is diligent about is God’s love for us.  It seems that no matter what we say, do, or feel, God never waivers in love for us. If we are willing to recognize ourselves as made in God’s image, it means the distance we feel from the power of love is an illusion.  The tenacity of love’s presence is alive inside of us.  We may have gotten disconnected from it but just because we have does not mean love disconnected.  In those moments of disconnection, I go back to what I have learned on daily dates with God  and I reach for God’s hand, tell God where I am, and ask for affirmation of the truth of love.  One thing I have the tenacity to do is not give up on God even when I want to give up on me.  Showing up each day for our date no matter my state of mind or how long I can be present for, I do it.  I know it is me God wants to spend time with on our date.  It is the tenacity of my heart allowing me to let go of my ideas of what prayer and meditation look like.  The tenacity gives me the openness to release my expectations of God’s presence in my life.  It reminds me of a song I think I first heard as a little first grader.  In my K-8 Catholic school the graduating 8th graders were standing on the bleachers in the gym singing the song, “Here I Am, Lord.” Even at a young age, it struck me deeply the way the author spoke to God: “Here I am, Lord. Is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night.”  Looking back it was the longing and the questioning that drew me in.  The idea that all I needed to do was to let God know that I am here and simultaneously wonder if it was me God wanted.  I did not have to know if I was the one but I was willing to take a chance from something inside me. I am not sure I heard God calling in the night but something inside of me felt drawn to God.  “I will go Lord, if you lead me.  I will hold your people in my heart.”  My tenacity fuels my willingness to be led by God.  I just didn’t know as a kid how much I would be asked to leave on the side of the road.  As far as holding people in my heart, I think it is something that we are led into one day at a time. We all get a chance to do it when we remember to see others from the eyes of our hearts.  It takes tenacity but God provides us with plenty of it if we are willing to tap into it.

I have heard the expression the universe abhors a vacuum.  While it seems somewhat contradictory given that the universe seems to be full of open space, it is the perception based on the human eye.  Perhaps it is less about what it looks like and more about what is actually existing.  One thing seems to be clear,  God’s intentional nature.   God does not create things randomly although life sometimes seems to be random.  We are called to have the same level of intention in our own lives.  We too are creators of our experience.  We may not be the origin of the experience but it is always up to us how we want to handle an experience.  In the grand design there is room for everything.  We tend to think that if something goes away it must be replaced by something else.  Perhaps God who makes room for all experiences is calling us to replace something with nothing. Maybe what our hearts desire more than anything is a time and space of nothingness.  It is the breathing room needed to make sense of the constant onslaught of information and experiences.  It is about having a way of allowing ourselves to ingest and grow.  It is like the naps children take frequently throughout the day while they are learning from everything.  We may outgrow the need for the frequency but anyone who has had a good cat nap could tell you the refreshing nature of a break and a new start can be invigorating. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one to jump on in between time or rest, but my heart has shown me the benefits of allowing room for the breath to awaken me to the beauty of life.  It is almost as though our hearts know deep down the value of integration.  We so often rush to replace one idea with another and not take the moment in between to determine if it is the most fitting for where we are going next.  Replacing something with nothing before another something is what God is calling us to in order to bring our hearts in alignment with how we can grow in love from what we are experiencing from day-to-day.

When we think about people or situations that we hold in high esteem they are the same ones we are mortified when they are not given the respect we feel they deserve.  We voice our opinions, we put policies in place, we encourage everyone to take notice of what has been treated with dishonor.  So how is it that we are okay with treating each other without honor?  If I am created by a loving God who desires me to live out the truth of who I am which is an expression of love, then so must everyone else who is alive.  If I treat myself as less than such a creation, I am not honoring both my design and the designer.  I have often thought that perhaps the common expression of treating others the way you want to be treated is being lived out. In any given situation I have been inclined to be very hard on myself, to lose my voice, and to be harsh in how I speak to myself.  How we treat others may be more of a mirror of the lack of honor we give to ourselves and our divine design than we realize.  Perhaps if we start by acknowledging and letting the core of who we are be our truth, we would be more inclined to honor others.  God has shown me on our dates and through my daily life that when I cannot muster up the energy to honor myself because of the truth of who I am, I can lean on God to show me.  God, I do not see me the way you see me right now. I know it is what is keeping me from being able to honor myself and those around me.  Help me to know in my heart what you never forget about the truth of all your children.