dailydatewithgod

Why do we always say there are two sides to every story?  Aren’t there more?  Is it that we can only imagine a limited number of possibilities?  Perhaps it is because our minds would probably explode if we were to comprehend the full spectrum of dimensions present in every experience.  It is much simpler to imagine the good side or the bad side, the upside or the down side of any given experience or decision.  An acknowledgment that God would encourage us to make is what is one dimension deeper than those sides. In the realm of decisions, is it a good side because of who is involved and a bad side because of who is not?  Is it an upside because of what it is we are able to avoid and a downside because we will not have a chance to learn some lessons despite what it is we avoid?  We will not truly be able to appreciate the dimensions of any given experience or decision until we are in the present moment in which it is happening.  Not until then will we be faced with the fullness of what we need to know to participate or decide what next step to take.  Being open to dimensions means not having it all figured out ahead of time.  The gift of presence comes in the awareness of the multitudes of dimensions impacting all our experiences. God wants us to experience the gifts of dimensions and invites us to be present as often as we can so we can experience them as gifts instead of disruptions.

The visual sense is the strongest for most people.  Like it or not we are impacted by how things look to us.  There is a reason why the cliché of things are not always as they seem.  Even with our visual awareness of what is appearing to us we still filter how we understand what we are seeing through the lens of our thinking.  In other words, the moment we go to describe the appearance to someone else or explain it to ourselves it has changed.  Couple that with the fact that we can only view so many dimensions and angles at one time, what appears to us is only part of what is actually occurring.  It is helpful to seek out guidance before we make assumptions and decisions based on only what appears to us.  God invites us to take what appearances we are present to from the eyes in our head to the eyes of our heart.  From there we can begin to get a fuller picture of what is involved in the appearances in our lives.  God has shown me on our daily dates when I involve eyes of my heart in what is appearing to me, my perspective widens and deepens.  I am able to embrace the appearance of many things that upon a first glance I may have determined do not need to be a part of my experience that day.  When I utilize the power of the pause God has taught me, the appearances to my eye have greater value.  The moment I take to breathe in and engage my heart, allows me to see the kinship with someone who by all appearances is different from me.

For some reason many of us carry around this idea that God is watching and waiting for us to do wrong.  We took our experience of human authority figures and slapped the characteristics onto God.  Even if we were not inclined to do that as children, the adults around us shared with us their perception of God based on what they were told.  In all my years of religious education there was a part of me that wanted to raise my hand in the classroom and ask how the teachers knew that God was the way he was described.  They would point to stories in the bible and historical religious traditions but strangely left out the part about how all of these ideas came through humans. Therefore the human element will always be present in those interpretations. My question is why do we look to adults to be the image of God?  Even Jesus pointed to the children.  Children are open and loving, the believe in possibilities, they see the good in things, they take chances on interacting with others and make observations without editing themselves.  They look out for each other and they play.  Perhaps God is more like children. On my daily dates with God I have learned to reconnect with that open, playful, in the moment, full expressive part of myself that I had as a child.  Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?  Maybe we could be pointing people to children when they ask what God is like. Then again, that idea came through me and I am a human adult. 😉

My daily dates with God have taught me the power of being in the moment.  I never realized how much time I spent thinking about the past or the future until I was willing to practice being in the here and now.  We all deal with this and it is not a bad thing that we are often not present in the moment we are in.  It is a function of survival to automate our experiences and orient them to what we know from the past or be on guard for the possible dangers of the future.  Learning to lean on God for my sense of self has enabled me to walk through life with much less fear.  It enables me to not have to be on guard in case I might get hurt.  I have been able to reconcile that like all human beings we experience things when we are most open and willing where we get hurt by our openness.  In defense we build up walls which look different for everyone but  at their essence serve a similar function.  The defenses protect us from further harm.  Unfortunately, they also keep us from accessing the depth of our hearts. Slowly I learned to trust that God did not see the harm the way I did.  I thought it changed the essence of who I am.  I thought my innocence  was stolen from me by my father.  God showed me that I just became blinded to it.  It had never gone away, I disconnected from it.  My father was a powerful man in my life as a child, but no human being can take away what God has created.  He was wounded and acted from his past experience.  He too learned it was not safe to be so open in the moment and never set out to allow God to restore his heart.  I became so broken apart by my addiction that I was more open than ever and this time I allowed God in. Instead of experiencing further disconnect from myself, God invited me to join in the process of reconnecting to who I truly am.

By default our minds will categorize things based on information it has from previous experiences.  It is although we have a little minion between our ears whose responsibility it is to play the match game with everything that enters into us.  We have so much coming at us all at once that it is a most necessary function of our mind to do this automatically. We would be completely overwhelmed and probably not very functional in the world if we had to have everything pass through our conscious awareness.  Yet our mind becomes so efficient it will also filter things we do experience consciously.  My daily date with God has brought me lots of practice opportunities to watch what enters my awareness.  God has shown me to observe with greater neutrality.  Before I make the distinction of something being right or wrong, God offers another lens.  The eyes through which God sees make one distinction.  Is love present or is it being called for? Instead of automatically going with the sticker of good and bad, God invites us to pause, take a breath and look at thing from the distinction of love.  When I am open to see as the distinction God sees my heart is equally involved with the consciousness of my mind and I have learned it is stronger and more capable than I ever imagined.

Sound is so amazing to me.  If I were to study a specific nuance of science it would be the science of sound if there is such a thing.  Sound is healing, rejuvenating, it needs no language, it is universal, and you do not even need ears to appreciate it.  Sounds have a way of touching our hearts energetically that seems to surpass the thinking mind.  Perhaps because there is sound within us.  I will never forget the feeling of being on a mountain top in the quiet of night when I could hear my heart beating, and the vessels pumping the blood throughout my body. The sound resonated all through me and I was awestruck.  Sound resonates within us and around us.  It moves our attention and reminds us when we need the silence.  It is such a touching experience that we use terms associated with sound that have nothing to do with it specifically.  We talk about how ideas resonate with us and why we found ourselves resonating with a group of people.  It was not the sound it was the energy behind the interaction. We know when we connect with something because it resonates with us.  To resonate is producing or being filled with a deep, full reverberating sound.  It is the reason we find ourselves moving to music, loving the sound of our name being spoken, and snapping our fingers to the drum beats in music and the city streets. God equipped our hearts to resonate with love.  It is why we are moved when we hear it spoken, watch it conveyed, and are motivated to take action in its direction.  Resonating becomes a way for us to know without always logically understanding when we are in the presence or absence of love.  God encourages us to pay attention to the resonating awakening within us in our various experiences.  If we can find the resonance of love present, we will see, hear, touch, taste, and feel the love of which we are made.  We are then able to share the resonating love as we move step by step through our day.

I do not think many of us view ourselves as healers. We leave that description to medicine men, health practitioners, doctors, nurses, and the like.  Yet, if we really pay attention how often have you found that laughter switches your heart into a lighter mode.  Couldn’t laughter therefore be the cure for a dark mood?  What about using our days to look for ways to connect with other human beings?  We may not think of it as a cure but know that when we have a conversation with someone who is truly listening to us, we feel a sense of restoration of our importance.  Curing restores our souls and reminds us of who we are at our core.  I would say that my daily dates with God are a daily dose of the cure for this wild and crazy world because it gives me the courage to remember who I am and what I am capable of.  If we find ourselves feeling life like an ailment because of all the noise and clamoring voices, then the cure would come from some peace and quiet.  Isn’t this how many describe what they want their vacations to be like?  What if God provided the kind of curing we need to restore ourselves to the truth of who God knows us to be through our breath?  This would mean we have the access we think others give us within ourselves any time we choose to pay attention to it.  I think laughter makes us breathe deeper. Perhaps there is a connection.

As a school kid, one of my favorite times of year was the beginning of a new school year.  I loved getting the new textbooks which had never been used and the blank notebooks just waiting to be filled with all kinds of information.  Plus who doesn’t love new pens, binders, and unmarked calendars?  Okay, so I was/am a bit of a nerd.  There was something about having a completely new slate from which to work that excited me.  Of course, the newness wears off rather quickly and the books become worn and used.  In college, to save money I bought used textbooks and pulled notebooks from the previous semester that still had blank pages.  Yet, even those I appreciated a great deal.  As a curios student of history I wondered where the books had been before and how what I learned the previous semester might apply to the current one.  I saw value in the new and the used.  The perfectionist in me wants it all to be a fresh new start but the realism in me knows that nothing comes from nothing and there is value in the history and knowing how far we have come.  I have learned that one does not negate the other because the option to start new is always present.  Newness from a deeper place of understanding helps create a potentially more meaningful experience.  I learned in recovery that once we make amends for our past actions where we have harmed ourselves or others, we do not shut the door on the past.  We use what happened and what we learned from it to change our way of operating going forth.  If I forget about it or do not look upon it to learn from it,  I am more likely to repeat it.  God has taught me whether an experience is new or used, it is about using it to grow in love.  Everything used was new at some point. The used version just has some battle scars.  Those scars are new to anyone who has not encountered them before and hold value.  Using our lives to be the creators and messengers of love in all areas, new and used, is living out from our hearts what we are designed to do.

We all have our likes and dislikes.  Growing up I was told what I picky eater I am.  Up until about 16 years ago I used to see that as a bad thing.  Now I recognize it as a proclivity towards certain foods and mixtures of ingredients.  I used to think in order to admit that I am drawn to one thing or another I had to have some clear explanation but the truth is sometimes we just find ourselves with preferences towards particular people, ideas, events, and the like.  Who we are as a whole human being is a combination of our different proclivities.  God invites us to connect with them and see how they shape the kind of life we are living.  We are encouraged to utilize them to be the messenger of love in those ways and experiences.  There is no place where God is not present so if you have a proclivity towards tattoos maybe it is because there is love needed in that community.  We have to be careful when we find ourselves using our proclivity to elevate ourselves above others or exclude an opposite proclivity.  Because we form communities and support networks often in alignment with our proclivities, the potential for group think sometimes leads proclivity to be used in a non-loving way.  Through my daily dates I am returned to the recognition that who I am is whole and complete.  There is an understanding that God can use me through my proclivities to grow love if I choose to invite him in.  When I remember this, I do not need to exclude or make wrong those who do not have the same proclivity because the eyes of my heart see the other proclivities as equally spreading the message of love.