dailydatewithgod

It is so touching to watch others embrace.  It is as though you can see the warmth emanating from one person’s heart to the other.  I remember many years ago coming across a set of green copper sculptures at this gallery in Tubac, AZ.  They were both of a couple’s embrace. One was a man and a woman facing each other with her face at the nape of his neck .  The other was him standing behind her with his arms wrapped around the front of her body and her leaning back into his neck.  The tenderness of the emotion conveyed in the embrace was profound.  The owner of the gallery stated there was a woman who had come by a few days before and stood for hours looking at them and asked the owner if the sculptor was married.  Our embracing of one being to another has the capacity to be profound when it comes from the heart.  If it is forced or obligatory the experience is not one of actually being embraced.  It is much more than the physical motion. It is the intention and the feeling behind the action.  When we think of how God embraces us, do we conjure up ideas of something as intimate as the sculptures I described, a grandmother who has cupped the face of her grandson in her face, or the way a child holds on to the neck of the mom who has bent down to hug her hello after being away?  Perhaps it is none of these because while sometimes we like the idea of God with skin on, even we cannot measure the embracing God has placed within our hearts.  God’s embrace which lives within us needs no arms, faces, or bodies.  God made sure we would be able to connect with it when we open up to the idea of God embracing all of who we are in this moment.  The moment we take a breath.  If we are busy keeping part of ourselves out of God’s reach then God’s arms of love cannot profoundly embrace us.  We will be lacking in the experience of love’s embrace not because it does not exist for us but because we do not think we deserve such a profound experience.

We live in an energetic universe as energetic beings.  Every cell in our body is an element of energy. We convert our food into energy cells so we can use to keep up the biome which allows us to show up as this whole person.  We are responsible for making sure we take care of the vessel we are inhabiting.  Otherwise, whatever else we want to do will not happen.  This includes making sure we are charging our system on all levels. If we are not able to be present as a form of energy in the universe we cannot provide the charge we have been granted to give to life. God has charged us with being the messengers of love.  The manner in which we are to do that depends upon what our gifts are.  Those gifts need to be nurtured and supported.  They will have no impact, no charge, to their presence if we use them aimlessly. We like to think it just happens automatically but that has not been my experience.  God gives us the vessel and the system in which to operate.  What we do with it to share the message of love is up to us.  The options are limitless but we will know which we are inclined to by the ones that charge us up.  When we engage and participate we are charging ourselves and those around us. The influx of energy from the charge spurs others on to be the messengers of love they are created to be.  If we find ourselves involved in something that causes us to become weak or worn down too easily, it may be that it is not what is meant for us or we are not allowing ourselves to be charged up before proceeding.  The level of energy present is an indication of life-giving presence.

We pay a lot of attention to the nourishment of our bodies.  In the most literal understanding of nourishment this makes sense. Yet, we limit ourselves if we do not consider the nourishment of our hearts and minds as well.  I find it funny that at the gym we are all there nourishing our bodies by getting our blood pumping and taking care of ourselves and splashed across the screens are scenes of devastation and people arguing with each other.  Something is amiss here.  This is why I do not watch what they display on the screens.  I use the time instead to read books and I have a series of affirmations I read through.  I recognize the importance of nourishing my mind while nourishing my body.  We are whole human beings. There is no sense eating well and exercising only to be telling yourself all day long what a piece of crap you are and putting your attention on all the despair and hopeless things of the world.  We do not want to ignore the things that are not working well in the world, but we want to be able to bring some heart and peace of mind to them. How else will things change?  The information we allow into our minds is our nourishment.  The relationships we cultivate nourish our hearts.  When we pay attention to those levels of nourishment we allow ourselves to grow and flourish in the same way the plant is nourished not just by the attention of the gardener but by the light of the sun and the rain of the clouds. God is the gardener and if we allow God to oversee the growth of our hearts and minds, would he have us take in the nourishment we are taking in or would she weed some of it out?

Years ago Apple,Inc. was running an ad campaign, “Think Different.”  They had posters and ads with the faces of great thinkers of our time like Einstein, Jim Henson, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Amelia Earhart, Martha Graham, and more.  I remember overhearing someone criticize the campaign for incorrect language.  The correct English would have been to say, “Think Differently.” The point of the campaign I presume was to see it differently and to do so the alleged incorrect grammar garnered more attention.  When we think differently what we think about is different.  On my daily dates with God I am invited over and over again to think differently.  God encourages me to come at an experience or a fixed perception from an angle I had not even considered.  She is ready to show us love differently than we are used to seeing it. Where I see black and white, God sees a whole rainbow of colors.  Where I see options A or B, God sees the whole alphabet.  In order to think differently, I have to open my mind up and let go of my fixed way of seeing things.  I am not able to allow the experience of differently to occur if the eyes of my head and especially the eyes of my heart are blocked by what I have determined is love or not love. God invites each of us to open the eyes of our hearts and heads to see the evidence of love all around us.  God sees love differently. If we are convinced that there is no love present in what we are seeing or thinking about, we will not be open to the presence of love showing up in a different fashion.

There are many times when I question whether or not I am on the right path.  Over the years I have warmed up to the idea that it is not about a right or wrong path.  The perspective I have adopted as a result of my daily dates with God is looking at it through the lens of whether or not I am actually on the path I am on.  It sounds funny, but I am sure I am not the only one who has spent time thinking, “this isn’t how it is supposed to go” or “why did this have to happen?” or ” I think I am doing this wrong because it is not working out the way I hoped it would.”  My willingness to trust in God’s assurance of my capability have lent me the vision to see that I am capable of more than I thought I was.  The courage in my heart far surpasses what I knew to be present within me.  God assures me often on our dates that if it is in front of me, it is most likely meant to be there.  I actually sometimes embrace when things do not go my way as a sign of letting go and trusting in God’s assurance.  Through it I will develop my own assurance of what my heart and mind can do.  It is an assurance that the world holds within it so many possibilities and ways for our growth in love. So even if it looks like dealing with an angry roommate, being stuck in traffic, or learning to love my body just as it is today, I can be assured that when I keep my eyes on God it will unfold exactly as it is meant to.

Our lives reflect the state of our minds and hearts.  When I stop to take a look at my life I can see how it is a portrayal of things that are important to me.  How I spend my time, who I surround myself with, what types of information I surround myself with and in what format.  We can see the portrayal of our lives as though it were a story being played out on a movie screen.  The portrayal is the end product, it is the summation of the whole.  Yet it is all the elements leading up to it that provide the complete project. It is in the elements where we can make the changes if the portrayal we are watching does not seem accurate.  It makes no sense to walk up to the movie screen and start telling it to change.  We have to go back to the script writers, the directors and the set designers.  Most importantly, we have to recognize that we are the primary actors in the portrayal of our lives.  If what we are watching is not what we want our lasting legacy to be, then we can put forth the effort today and make changes.  I sometimes wonder what those who have had their lives portrayed on the big screen would think about what kind of story it tells about them. We do not need to wait for the end of our lives.  Each day we have the opportunity to adjust the portrayal.  We can determine at the close of each day if it showed a measurement of our hearts or our heads or both.  After a time we can look back and notice how many of those days were an accurate portrayal of how God sees us.

I have always sensed a certain fire within myself.  I do not presume to think of myself as so unique that I am the only one who has this fire.  I believe it is the life breath God placed within us at the thought of our creation.  It is fervor lighting up the desire to claim the truth of who we are.  I have walked through some harrowing experiences in my life as many of us have whether we realize it or not.  It has not all be rough going, there is good and bad in all of life.  It is fervor guiding me in walking through what still holds me back from claiming the truth of who I am at my core. Without this earnest intention to be connected to my creator I would have given up a long time ago.  It is fervor that sustains me when I feel overwhelmed and want to throw in the towel. When coming face to face with what feels like a demon in the clothing of a familiar friend , I wonder if it is worth it.  To wake up spiritually and stay awake takes vigilance and fortitude.  If there were no fervor in my heart I would close my eyes and go back to sleep.   I believe it is the Spirit of God connecting with the fervor of my heart that keeps the fire going and makes it possible to show up this day.  I wish I could say the spiritual path was some sort of lofty and ethereal experience of fairies and flowers all the time.  NOT! It is my experience is sometimes it feels more like trudging through mud.  Like the Zen Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hahn, says “No mud, no lotus.” So on days where all I am experiencing is the mud, the fervor of my heart holds a space for the lotus just about to bloom.

The reality of a physical universe creates the perception of things inside versus outside of ourselves.  We understand ourselves to be having an internal and an external reality.  Yet it is our internal reality which sets up our perception of the external.  We all know this in some sense. If we have information in our minds, we connect with things we see in the world because we have a matching context.  When we are in a good mood, the number of things irritating us goes down.  It is more of a porous existence than we like to think.  One distinction made with humility is our ability to control what happens externally versus internally. Anyone who has ever tried to change another person or prevent rain knows the limits of capability in changing the external world.  What is in our control is in what we think about what is happening externally.  We can utilize our internal power to choose to focus our minds in one way or another.  We can decide to make it a good or bad thing out of it raining. We can choose to accept another person exactly as they are or wait for them to change into what we would like.  God invites us to acknowledge the personal power we have in our capability to change our internal perception  to dictate our external reality.  She encourages us to leverage our power by taking responsibility for it.  When we understand on a deeper level our ability to shift our perception and bring about our own peace of mind, the possibilities are endless.  It is easy when it something we do not mind shifting, it is harder when we are certain what is happening outside of us cannot be perceived differently.  In those times, I reach for the hand of God and ask, “Show me how you see this.  What might my heart be trying to open the eyes of my mind to see in this external experience?  Seriously!? How can this be anything I can perceive as differently?”

When we get stuck in our automatic modes of behavior and allow ourselves to operate without being present we notice the interferences in our lives. Our initial irritation is sometimes ignited because we are being called to pay attention where we predetermined we would not need to do so.  Our brains require energy when we are present and if we are used to attending to something without thinking about it we do not need as much energy.  Our brains wiring for survival is in complete alignment with out tendency to be bothered by interferences which cause us to be present.  God invites us to step into his lens on the interfering experiences of life as gifts. She wants us to embrace the seemingly bothersome interfering of life as an opportunity to grow in love.  It is contrary to our survival mode but if we trust in God to be in charge of our survival, we can step away from the fear and frustrations which seem to show up when life is interfering with our plans.

Within each one of us is the light of God.  It is the underlying energy which supports the truth of the love we are.  When we are not able to see the light in ourselves or others it is not because it is gone out but simply because our perception is blocking it. I have had many a time when I felt dark and burdened and laughed at the idea of the existence of luminosity in me.  Yet God does not yield to our misperceptions.  The moment I am willing to consider the possibility of the light of love existing with me, God is ready to show me.  Many times when I perceive it outside of myself and allow it in, it opens the door. We are luminous because it is part of our design, not because we have earned it or we are feeling happy.  It is an innate part of who we are and we cannot change what God has created.  Sometimes we need others to remind us of what we are not able to see.  I am grateful for the people in my life over the years who have seen the light in me and reached out.  I hope I have not passed on the opportunity to do the same for others.  When we recognize the luminosity in another and connect with them to let them know we see it, we do a great service in lighting up the world.