dailydatewithgod

I don’t know about you but sometimes I just need to spend a little time sauntering!  It’s an exquisite word that I rarely use probably because I don’t find myself strolling through life very often. Besides, who has time to saunter?  The fast paced life we live in leaves little room for ambling our way from one destination to the next.  It is incredible the capacity and draw we have to speed.  If you have ever spent time around a little child who is just learning how to walk it is fascinating to see how they marvel at every moment of every step. Do we get that same enjoyment out of our pace of walking through life? Whatever happened to skipping?  Is there an age restriction on that one?  I used to skip all over the place.  As a kid it wasn’t about the speed (okay, maybe just a little), it was about the fun of it.  God gave our bodies all these marvelous choices of how to take the journey.  The magnificent thing is the option to change multiple times during the course of a day.  Sometimes its a sauntering kind of day, other times it is just when I want to be more present to everything along the path I am traveling.  In the same way God gave our bodies multiple modalities of travel, our minds have multiple modes of presence.  Instead of deciding that we should only multi task or always put intensive thought into things, maybe there is room for both.  Maybe both ways are right.  Perhaps we are not being wrong when we aren’t intentional about where we are focusing our attention.  Perhaps it is a moment we need to saunter through our head about some other thought.  I have experienced on my dates with God the immense latitude and openness of Spirit to be accepting and forgiving of where I and my head are in at the moment.  Perhaps God is trying to teach me something about how to be with myself even when I am sauntering.

One of the more valuable tools that I have learned and continue to practice is in changing the evaluative conversation in my head.  As like all of us, I am full of judgments.  It is part of the human condition.  I am inclined to comparison of myself and other people, cultures, families, or coworkers in all areas of life.  Prior to waking up to a more compassionate way of living I was entrenched in the right versus wrong conversation.  I would aim to live rightly, but often felt like I was living wrongly or not enough or the best possible.  The variations of this conversation are endless.  They all stem from the fear of not being enough.  Learning to change the conversation from right versus wrong into works or doesn’t work is significant.  Does how I am being, thinking, relating, acting function as evidence of who I know myself to be at my core?  Do my decisions live out as a function of my role as a child of God?  Taking the sting of the judgment isn’t about getting myself off the hook but bringing it down to practicalities.  When I recognize making decisions from a place of worry or anxiety does not work to keep my heart open and expanded, I can make adjustments.  However, there may be a time when making a decision based on fear that does function for me, for example, when walking alone in a dark alley.  The potential for growth and learning the possibilities in the power of love come more readily when I am not in my head about how I am doing it wrong.  I can laugh at myself when I see evidence of the dysfunction I am seeing show up in my life.

I believe we all have several roles to play in our lifetime.  Sometimes we know very clearly what those are and we step right into them without much thought.  Other times we spend a good deal of time trying to figure what our role is.  Then there are the roles that we are placed in by virtue of our birthplace or society.  Somewhere in the quiet space of our hearts is the connection to our most vital role.  God invites us to connect with the essence of who we are and tap into the power of who we are called to be by virtue of our creation.  We can roam this earth playing all kinds of roles and miss out on the one that fills our spirits and ignites life in those around us.  We often don’t notice until the other roles we are in seem to either fall apart or not fulfill us in the way they used to.  Some people hear the calling from their heart and connect with it early on. Some of us take a while to even notice the heart that is sending the call.  I would fall into the latter category.  The good news is it doesn’t matter when you answer the call of your heart, only that you do answer it.  It is the role of your life and it is not a one time thing.  It is the role within a role which feeds the energy needed to keep showing up in our lives. God invites us to embrace the dance of living from the truth of who we are in every moment of every day.  It comes through the other roles we play and the ones we don’t think we signed up for.  It is about embracing the gift of our life and seeing what living from the space of truth in our hearts allows us to be present to this day.  God has shown me one moment at a time, I can reconnect with my heart and listen for the calling of love whenever I want.  I can also choose to ignore it or push it aside.  In the end I know which decision brings me a fuller sense of life.