dailydatewithgod

Growing up in the desert, one becomes acquainted with the rate at which a number of items can melt, especially when sitting in a hot car.  It is amazing how something so seemingly firm like plastic and turn to liquid.  The softening that occurs is symbolic of the way in which our hearts operate.  They are strong and with a definite shape but when we warm to something in our hearts we just melt.  Love is the great light.  Love is the power of the universe and unlike anything else it melts our hearts.  If we learn to look inward and pay attention to what is melting our hearts we will come to know how the creation of love occurs.  When all resistance is melted away we can create something new.  This is the process of generation of love in our hearts.  We are melting at our core so we can shift and change the presence of love in our lives.  First we must be touched by the light of life.  We resist it because the heat feels to intense or the melting is scary.  However, it is the melting away of the previous shapes and confines to which we assigned love that opens us up to shaping love in a new way. Only the melting can bring us to a state of openness to what is possible.

How long would it take you to list the gifts in your life?   How long would it take you to list the burdens in your life? I keep coming back to this idea that perhaps they are the same thing.  Two sides of the same coin.  The events in our lives which bring us pain and anguish are the same ones that cause us to redefine who we are and what we are capable of.  If this is the case then maybe the things we see ourselves as saddled with and simply gifts in disguise. The difficulties we find burdening end up being our unburdening.  I am reminded of a scene in one of my favorite movies, “Crash.”  The scene where the policeman who violated the wife of the man he pulled over by unnecessarily groping her when patting her down to check for weapons is the same one who is there to rescue her from a burning car.  In that moment the man who was had betrayed her is her hero.  I think of this often when it comes to my father.  I do not know just one experience of him.  It is part of what makes being an incest survivor so difficult.  He was a loving father who took care of me and taught me many things.  He was instrumental in initiating my perspective of seeing Jesus as a friend instead of some distant God in the clouds.  Yet, he is also the man who betrayed me by sexually violating me at a very young age.  It was the dark side of who he is.  I do not know what he was saddled with as a child, I can only imagine as one does not do these things out of the blue.  For whatever reason am the first to speak up and say something.  He is not able to speak of it or claim responsibility.  It saddens me as I always thought he was my hero.  We are saddled with the same burden but I have found a way to make use of it.  In my relationship with God I have found a way to be freed of it so I need not check out, forget, or most importantly not continue the cycle.  In trying to outrun my saddles, I dove into a food addiction and body obsession.  When I was in enough pain from that and searching for a way to break through it, I found myself at the path of the 12 steps which opened up my understanding of God.  The process of embracing the saddles of my life has granted me the freedom to open up to the truth of who I am and what love is.  It is on the saddle I would have picked but it was the one placed on  me. My daily dates with God which are the breadth and depth of my life force would not be happening on a daily basis to the depths they do had it not been for the burdens saddling me.

God longs to stick close to us.  To abide in our presence.  He has no time agenda, not even a spacial one. She simply wants us know as soon as we turn towards her we will be aware of love’s presence.  Why else would the core of who we are hold within it the capacity to create more love? On my daily dates God draws my attention to my heart and encourages me to cultivate abiding in it.  By allowing us to sit with the truth of who we are, we can become willing to let go of the built up outside exterior and come closer to understanding the profound nature of love.  It is from this love we were formed.  It is in this love with live and have our being.  It is a powerful presence that abides in us and we do not need to seek it outside of ourselves.  We will look outside ourselves and it is okay.  God understands. God simply abides in our presence.  He is there for the moments we are broken apart and feel we cannot go on being disappointed by the world’s expression of love. She is the constant reminder that we have not lost the core of who we are we just got disconnected. It is hard living in a physical universe and believe who we truly are is not our bodies, our thoughts, or our feelings.  So we engage in the dance of life and find ourselves by abiding in the hope that God is who God says God is because of love not because we understand the true nature of love.

When we hold on to something with a tight grip we are not often aware that it has as much of a hold on us as we do on it.  Whether it is a physical object, idea, person, or expectation the things we are bound to are binding us.  Sometimes an opportunity to slacken is presented but we do not how to loosen our grip.  We cannot imagine seeing things differently.  We are sure the other person is wrong and we are right.  We are afraid if we let go we will lose control.  We forget to breathe when we are bound. Slackening begins with the breath. When I find myself in this situation I can sense God encouraging me to slacken.  It sounds counter intuitive from the perspective of the world that uses the term slacker as a crude way of labeling someone who does not accomplish anything.  Yet if we are not allowing God to move through us and in us because we have such a tight hold on something, what exactly are we doing. God invites us to take a breath, slacken our hold, and connect with our hearts.  Love does not bind.  Love makes room for slackening so mystery and the moment can be present.  God desires for us to know the mystery of love which lives in our hearts.  It provides the breath and life from which the truth of who we are draws our energy.  When we are slackening our hold on how things are supposed to be we can be present for the truth of life.  It can be scary and unsure which is why placing our trust in God as One who sees us in the beauty of life’s presence is essential.  I can easily correlate the areas of my life where slackening is not present as the areas in which I am bound by a previous or fixed idea of something. Those same areas if I pay close attention are also areas I am not breathing through.  Love has the power to change life.  If I trust the creator of life to be with me in the present moment I can begin slackening and trust whatever happens will not undo me as perhaps it once seemed to before.

It is amazing what a difference a letter can make.  If you exchange stroking for striking you get two different realities. One is inclined toward soothing and one is inclined toward harm.  Yet how often do we use our language to strike at others and ourselves instead of using them to stroke?  These days we are quick to strike out at each other instead of stroke each other with kindness.  We take pride in being able to shut someone down quickly.  We call it being quick-witted or clever.  Don’t get me wrong, as someone historically inclined to keep her mouth shut and not say anything I often admired people who could just strike out with what seemed to be the right thing to say. It came across as powerful. Yet I wondered if striking had the a lasting powerful impact I was looking for.  I sense that much of what we are witnessing when we see each other striking with words is evidence of what is happening inside our minds.  How often do we pause before striking at ourselves with what is going wrong, how things are not the way we would like, or a list of all the problems in a situation?  Why is it easier to join a group striking at the problems of life by complaining instead of stroking out the possible solutions?  Stroking requires a pause. It calls upon to consider what it is we are touching upon and utilize a tactic enabling it to come to life.  When we hold life with great value we are inclined to caress it with care not cut it off at the knees.  God invites us to pay attention to our language and notice if we are using it to strike or stroke the love and light of life.

In a hurried world with a long list of things to do, God stands clear and instructs us to be still.  In the book of psalms God through the words of David shares that he will be exalted when we slow down and recognize the truth of who God is.  God encourages us to do the same.  If we spend all our energy reacting to life around us we will not know who we are.  We will simply be someone based on what happens to us.  When we get still and listen the voice of our hearts we being to know the core of who we are.  This may not be easy and we may be afraid to find out what will speak to us in the stillness but if God can go there so can we.  In my experience of our daily dates when I garnered the courage to get to the core of who I am in stillness I found God already there.  It was if he said to me, “Good, glad you are here.  Now we can get to work.” God is not afraid to get down and dirty in the muck I have placed over my heart because she knows the truth lies underneath.  He is not afraid because he knows I am not what I have done to my heart, I am my heart.

We can be physically present and mentally and emotionally absent.  It seems as though the world predominantly values being physically present.  It is harder to be aware of the other ways of being present unless we choose to pay attention to it.  Plus it is different for every person.  Beneath it is in the availability of our hearts.  Our hearts will beat so we are able to show up physically but if we are in the mental and emotional space of needing protection we will be guarded and less available to what the heart wants to teach us and share with others.  There is time and space for all experiences so it is not as though it is only valuable when we have more availability.  It is the courage to know for ourselves what the availability of our heart is.  If we pause and listen to the rhythms of our heart we can tend to it.  We can know we are in a space of less availability of our heart to the world but more availability of our heart to God.  God alone can restore us to the recognition of the fullest capacity of availability of love in our hearts.  Our creator designed us and knows the longings of our heart before we know them for ourselves.  On my daily date with God I have been given the gift of learning to tune into the availability of my heart.  It enables me to take care of the core of who I am.  It encourages me to show up and be available to the lessons of love and the opportunity to give love.  It grants me the curiosity and self-compassion to be less available when I know it is time for restoration of my heart by God. Through the process of our daily dates, I am able to show up physically, emotionally, and mentally with an aligned availability of being.

We are called to travel the road between our hearts and minds and while it seems as though it should be as simple as walking the path we do not know what we will encounter. Sometimes the fortress around our hearts is much like the one Prince Phillip encountered when he reached the bridge to rescue Sleeping Beauty from the castle of her sleep.  He needed to cross the bridge before he could rescue her.  The bridge was covered with thorny bushes and was guarded by the dragon Maleficent.  He had to find a way to bridge the strength of his mind and the courage of his heart to cross the bridge to his beloved.  It means creating a bridging within to complete the distance.  The beauty of our hearts is that God has provided the materials to build the bridge.  The bridging is God’s hand in helping us to open the door to give and receive love.  If we rely on the tools God provides for us we will have what we need to complete the journey.  The dragons and the thorns fall away and we are able to open up the entrance to our hearts.

It doesn’t sound very pleasant when someone says they are biding their time. Who likes waiting? I remember hearing a statistic once that human beings spend three years of their life waiting in line.  I proceeded to look at time in the post office or the grocery store line as racking up my time in line instead of it being fruitless.  Sometimes it helps to tweak the perspective and give it purpose.  If we were to imagine how much time God spending biding for us to accept his love we would find our time standing in line to be minimal. How much time do we bide in the hopes that someone will change their mind or circumstances to change?  The question is not do we spend time biding.  The question is what do we do with our biding time? God doesn’t just do nothing while biding his time.  She continues to be the fullness of creation.  Time does not stop, systems of nature do not go away, and we do not crumble to pieces.  The moment of our awakening we get an inkling as to the potential of God’s love to open us to a multitude of possibilities of love’s presence.  God is building those possibilities while biding.  When we are waiting for someone to love us, do we bide our time by loving us or them?  When we are biding our time do we model ourselves after the One who is growing in love for us with each passing moment. God does not love because we respond to God’s love.  God loves because of who God is.

We all try really hard to put on a good face.  I am not sure exactly what it is that drives us to think that we need to cover up our flaws.  It seems like so much more work.  We only allow certain parts of ourselves to be seen and yet we seem surprised when we find out things about other people that we never knew.  No one can keep up the facade forever.  If we all have flaws, what makes us think it is so important to hide them?  Perhaps it is the judgment we see for those around us who are not able to hide their flaws so easily. We fear we will experience the same thing.  Yet how many of us have grown because of our flaws?  How many of us have found ourselves in situations we would not have planned but turned out to be presented with an opportunity we would not have imagined otherwise?  We don’t think of these things when we are busy covering ourselves up.  I am guilty of this just as much as anyone.  I do not walk around touting about being an incest or obesity survivor.  I do not broadcast the fact that I almost failed out of college at the end of my freshman year.  I certainly don’t tell the people in my yoga class that I can’t hold the poses using my abdominal muscles for the length of the exercise.  It is actually quite comical that we spend so much time working to cover things up only to have them revealed when we least expect it.  Depending on what we consider our flaws to be we then have to go through the process of  admitting them to the people close to us.  The real kicker is that most of the time they already knew what our flaws were to begin with!  It seems like a waste of energy.  God looks at our growth process.  God is not concerned with how many flaws we have, though she doesn’t see them as flaws.  He wants us to use the all the gifts we have been given to grow in love.  Even the gifts we call flaws.  Deep down even we know they are gifts.  Why else would we spend so much time wrapping them up?