dailydatewithgod

The freedom of our inheritance with God is expressed in our lives in ways we cannot imagine. When we are not bound by the rules of the world, we can live freely from our hearts without concern of what the world thinks. Our liberation is how God invites us to grow and expand and be the presence of love in the world.  The great irony of our time is that many of the rules of political and religious institutions created with our supposed safety and morality in mind are the very rules that keep us bound in our hearts.  It may not have been their intention but without freely and clearly stating the intention from which they were moving, they left us to interpret on our own.  We misconstrue things in our minds all the time.  We like to make up stories and rationalizations for things we do not understand instead of asking questions.  Especially when the institutions carry the attitude of expecting us to know why without asking.  Historically many institutions made it criminal to ask questions. Some still do. I often think that if Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, or Siddhartha, were around today we would not find them in a church, mosque, synagogue, or temple.  They would probably be in the streets living in liberation from an institution.  All the great spiritual teachers have tried to convey to us that God is not bound by human intellectual constructs like rules and buildings.  They can provide a guiding post but they are not the end goal.  We are invited in our breath with each new moments to discover what it means for us to be a liberated expression of God.

When we use our voices to engage with life we are choosing the vibrations we send out into the world.  Every syllable has a sound current that travels from our bodies into those around us.  When we call something or someone by their name we are inviting that vibrational energy  to us. Naming things creates an energy signature that allows us to connect to it or to them without even saying anything out loud.  Once the naming has happened, just bringin the name to mind allows us to be present to its energy. It has been said that people love the sound of their own name.  It resonates deep within us because we have been hearing it and feeling it for a long time.  It is a sign of intimacy when you call someone by his or her name.  It vibrates a connection of knowing and being known. No wonder scripture stories from various traditions tell of God naming things at the beginning of time.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       My prayer for us today is the willingness to be known by God and listen as she calls our name today.

We open ourselves up to God in the hopes of feeling a connection to something greater than ourselves.  As a spiritual seeker I invite the mystery with the hope that it leads me to a place of light and love beyond my understanding.   It is a risk walking in relationship with God.  There are twists and turns and in the moment it seems as though I will never find a spiritual home for my deepest longing, God is there reassuring me that my path to wholeness lies within the hearth of my heart.  The home I am seeking will not come from outside of me though living in this world with my eyes open creates the pathway to my own soul.  When I show up in the world and face the day-to-day circumstances learning to do so with the heart of love and the recognition of the innocence of myself and others is no small task.  God wants us to know the deep warmth of the hearth of our own hearts and so she invites us to wake up each day, take a deep breath, and be willing to be.

We all have experiences in our lives that cause us to put up walls within ourselves and towards life outside of ourselves.  These thorns we often think are coming from other people.  It is something they did or an event in life that cause us to have to put up our defenses.  When we are left feeling as though no one is going to come in and save us or protect us we develop very deep thorns.  I know I had many and am continually uncovering more as life goes on.  What I do now instead of hiding them is reveal them to God.  I dispel the shame I have about carrying them and lay them out to be looked at with light.  God shows me these defenses are only painful because I think I need them to remain whole and safe.  She invites me to look at the thorns as my chance to get close the rose of my heart.  He wants me to sit and just look at what they are doing for me and what they are doing to me. There may be some I want to keep but when I see them in the light I notice the stem on which they are growing is distancing me from the love within my own heart.  The spiritual path is harrowing and painful at times because darkness and shame can have a strong hold.  God gently leads me with my breath to get close to the thorns, see how they feel, notice how they are shaped, and allow her light to penetrate their core.  If I decide I am ready to let go of the thorn, I can do so with honor and be touched at an even deeper level with the petals of love which will grow in its place.  My daily date has taught me to be patient and curios about any wounding from thorns present in my life and see them as an invitation to bring light and beauty like a rose into formerly dark and shameful places.

The presence of God is everywhere and everything because we are all part of God’s expansiveness.  We are here in physical form and are called to be the eyes, ears, hearts, arms, legs, and voices of God. When we take the time to connect to the expansive truth within ourselves we can resonate the fullest expansion of love.  We see it when people lend a smile or a hug.  When one person looks with kindness and compassion at someone having a rough day.  God is present in the person who lets you go in front of them on the road and in you when you stop and let the person cross the street. When you catch yourself from cussing someone out who is bothering you, God’s expansion is present in you.  We walk around somewhat oblivious to this expansion in ourselves and those around us because we are looking only through our human eyes.  God invites us to get quiet and go within to see the expansive light flickering brightly where we think there is only darkness.  She wants us to know that all the ways we are running in the world will not shake the expansion of God’s presence in us.  He invites us to pause long enough and hear the still small voice saying: I AM Here with you,  I AM here within you. I AM here, are you?  

Within us exists a reality tapped into love.  It is a deep reservoir that never runs dry.  its Source is the Source of All That Is.  It is open to be bathed in and soaked up so it stays present in our minds as we go through our day. When we give ourselves permission to stay one minute longer in God’s reality we are choosing to stay one minute longer in the truth of who we are.  Our human experience allows us to be present to many realities and it is easy to be tantalized by the physical ones in our body and the outside world.  It makes sense to be with what we can know with our senses.  We are taught from a very young age to depend upon this reality.  But there is a deeper source of energy that is beyond feeling and thinking.  God’s reality extends beyond our physical senses and the known.  She invites us to connect with and stay with this space through our breath.  He knows when we pause for a moment and connect with our hearts, it is right there for us. It is up to us if we feel like staying.

We tend to walk around with a fixed set of ideas about how things will be. Our brains are conditioned to look for and assimilate the familiar and reject the unfamiliar. When our expectations are not met we find ourselves disappointed, bothered, and maybe even angry or frustrated. We become so comfortable with our illusionary ideas and interpret the unfamiliar as discomfort and call it pain or a problem.  What if it is just growth? Anyone who has grown physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually (in other words anyone alive) will tell you that preceding the growth was a period of discomfort.  We know in our souls that an encounter with unfamiliarity or discomfort is not something to numb, run, or avoid.  It is a gift to be embraced. Convincing our mind of our soul’s perspective is half the battle. Encountering discomfort is tolerated by our minds when it makes sense or has a foreseeable outcome. But we do not always have the reasons. Every day discomforting encounters are usually met with distaste and frustration. Our feelings are not wrong, but they are not the whole story.  On my daily dates with God when I am uncomfortable, God shows me how to stay with myself. She wants me to notice the discomfort and stay long enough to find the gift.  Only after years of this practice has my initial numb or hide response dimmed.  I have experienced enough uncomfortable encounters to trust it is not the whole story.  When I want to numb, hide or run I lean into God for the strength to find myself in the encounter.

There are many moments in our lives that catch our attention. Whether they catch us off guard or we are prepared for them we find ourselves drawn in.  The same happens when God calls but the answering is from our souls and so sometimes we are able to ignore it.  We downplay the call or rationalize our way into thinking that there is no calling from God or the universe.  We like to pretend that we only answer the calls that come through our phones or direct human contact.  But our souls will tug at us from within when they hear the call.  Intuitively we know answering a call from God will open up our experiences to being present in a complete and whole new way of being.  It is what enables us to live in the truth of the love we are.  When we let go of what we think the call will look like or even how we answer we are free to experience God as she is in the moment.  He call to us from within and outside of ourselves.  Our souls know deep within when it is time to answer, it is our work to pay attention to the movement of our souls and act accordingly.

We like to make things complicated.  I think on some level it makes it more dramatic and we love to be the center of our own play of life.  Mostly I think  our minds don’t like to rest on the simple answer.  If it is too accessible there must be more to it we are not seeing.  Sometimes we need to dig deeper but sometimes when we do that we are just making a bigger hole.  I think I pass on the most accessible option because I miss it.  I am too busy looking for the more in-depth reasoning or justification.  This creeps in when I hear other people explain why they do something I don’t understand.  It is often the most accessible option for them, but I could not see it because I am not them.  I am busy conjuring up a big story as to someone’s reasoning for doing something and I have it all wrong.  I have learned over the years to ask God to remove my stories and give me a listening ear, an open mind and a kind heart.  Whether a person does something l like or not, I am not inside their head and have no idea what is most accessible to them when they make decisions.  I believe people do what they know, why would they do anything different unless it does not work for them?  On my daily dates with God I am invited to check in and ask, “God this is what is accessible to me, is this how you see it?” My greatest power comes in remembering that God is always the most accessible.

My prayer for us is the willingness to notice what is accessible to us and check in to see if it is the path we are called to by God today.

Through the practice of my daily prayer and meditation date with God each morning I have noticed the awareness of the small things of life.  These seemingly inconsequential moments in which profound exchange of life and love happen.  It can be a look from a man to his daughter in the grocery line or a grandmother who helps her grandchild who ran off put her shoe back on.  These are small little events which speak to the power of love and care that we have for one another.  In a world where the media focuses on tragedy and terror it is easy to forget that the small moments of life are always present.  One might think we are all at war with each other but the small moments tell a different story.  I would not be aware of these small experiences if I did not have the practice of tuning into such moments within myself.  God shows up in the smallness of life to show us the profound nature and power of love but we have to be awake enough to see them.  It’s in the smallness of the kind driver who patiently allows me to back up again because my parallel parking skills need some work, the laughter that you hear from across the street, and the wiping of tears from the face of a friend.  God is ready to show us all the smallness of love if we want to see it but she cannot force us to breathe and pay attention.  He always has on hand multiple moments of smallness when we want to open our eyes.