dailydatewithgod

Feeling cold
and all alone
Sad in the heart
Falling apart?

Turn on some music
Light a candle
Figuring a way
to get a handle

Moments like these
Is there a way to be?
Or is it an invitation
to be closer with me?

A part of me
Lesser-known
Deeper down
Into the unknown

Still a heart beating
A change in my breathing
Searching for a voice
Wanting some meaning

Not allowed before
It doesn’t look good
Something about no room for that

Scared and afraid
With no one to tell
Is it enough to tell me?

There, there little one
I promise you true
I hear you loud and clear
I’m here now
Nothing to fear

It is over
It is done
Never again
We’ve managed to overcome

We made it out
We have a voice
There is room in our heart
For whatever part

The sadness part
The fearful part
The excited part
The aroused part
The confused part
The curious part

There is room at the inn
The inn of our heart
At this inn
Truth plays a part

No matter what happened
No matter what may
You are always more than just parts

There is room at the inn
The inn of our heart
Truth is in charge
Courage plays a part
It opens the door
Giving the strength to walk out

Step into the light
Our soul at the helm
Aware of the plight

Riding bumpy waves
Can seem to overwhelm
With Heart and Soul
We navigate to the whole

More than the moments
More than the parts
More than the memories
More than the circumstances

More than we can imagine
Is what ignites
Holding God’s hand
Being guided to the light

Light from within
Which never goes out
Holding steady
Riding the waves
Staying the course
Like riding a horse
Strong and bold
Galloping the landscape
Truth of us as whole
With room for all the parts

There, there little one
I’ve got you in hand
We only got off course
and temporarily forgot

We are always more whole than parts

Do you revere?
Or are you revered?
Are you pure?
Or looking to be purified?
Are you chaste?
Or do you make haste?
Do you do piety?
Or lean towards brevity?
Would others call you venerable?
Or merely gullible?

Pretell dear friend
where are you
on the holiness scale?

Are you Hanzel and Gretel?
or the big bad wolf?
Could you possibly be
the boy who cried wolf?

Are you keeping count of the wolves?
Or the innocent revelations?
The faulty deeds
Or seraphic means?

Are you fooled by your eyes?
Or open to the unseen?
How do we explain
the sacrosanct?

Does it matter
all that much
Or is it just fluff
Like all that emotional stuff?

Could it be?
Do we dare to believe?
The holy is what lies
beyond what is seen?

Felt in the heart
Not measured on a scale
Holiness is who we are
When we step outside the tale
The one from the world
saying only “this” is real

To go away from the known
Is too scary to own
So we push it aside
and bring back the scale

Good or bad
Right or Wrong
Sinner or Saint
Only one shade of paint
or way to value time
What if God had something else in mind?

There is a flow that comes from knowing
Weaving in and out of interactions
With others
With things
With feelings
With thoughts

At what point does the weaving get sown
Sown into your being
Impacting your feelings
Impacting your thoughts
Impacting your knowing
Showing up with others
With yourself
With your sense of being

When does it stop?
Does it have an end?
Is there a limit?
Is it when we’re dead?

Growing and changing
It’s fun in the beginning
We are praised and hailed
Everyone applauding

Later it’s more tricky
Is there still room?
No longer the empty vessel
We are full

Full of experiences
Full of ideas
Full of emotions
Full of ourselves

To get back in the flow
We must learn to let go
Do the weeding
And the pruning

What if we resist?
What happens when we persist
At being what we know
Holding to the familiar
Fighting off the change?

Does our fullness harden?
Do we become stubborn and stiff?
Or just sturdy?

How do we get back to the flow
and learn to let go?
Trusting infinite design
has something in mind
Something unfamiliar
Something new
Something borrowed
Something blue
(Oops, I got off track!)
Silly me!

Then again . . .
maybe laughing is the key
The salve we need
To see ourselves
through eyes anew

I must admit
It is hard to be stiff
with a belly full of laughs
A mouth taking in new breaths
A heart-pumping faster
Kickstarting the flow
Which changes the know

Such simplicity
Could it possibly be?

The method we need
To get back in the flow
Explore outside the known
And continue to grow

Stop taking ourselves so seriously!

Friend or Foe?
Who’s to know?

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real?
. . .

F&@%
Everything
And
Run?
. . .

Face
Everything
And
Recover?
. . .

Future
Events
Already
Ruined?
. . .

Fighting
Ego
Against
Reality?
. . .

Finding
Excuses
And
Reasons?
. . .

Feeling
Excited
And
Ready?

Clearly here to stay
Built into the design
Almighty had something in mind
Serves a purpose, yes it does

Yoda calls it the path
to darkness and suffering
The Dalai Lama invites it to tea
. . . yep, seriously.

Does it stop you?
Does it keep you stopped?
Where do you feel it?
Where do you not?

Does it rule you?
And take the reigns?
Reigns of your mind
Or of your heart?

What stops it in its tracks?
What keeps it in line?
Or cause you to discover
about your design?

False Evidence Appearing Real?
. . .

F&@% Everything And Run?
. . .

Face Everything And Recover?
. . .

Future Events Already Ruined?
. . .

Fighting Ego Against Reality?
. . .

Finding Excuses And Reasons?
. . .

Feeling Excited And Ready?

Friend or Foe?
Only YOU know

Make a peep
Dare to squeak
Jumpstart the mumble
Participate in the yammer
Start the chatter
Hone your inner gabber

Whether you prefer
to blab the yakety-yak
or pop off a shout
Take a chance
and verbalize your stance
Articulate your view
Express your attitude

Whether a whisper
Or a scream
State your view
and spill your beans

Vocalize your piece
Share your assertion
State your murmur
Publicize your sound
Give your spiel
Expatiate your utter

Deliver your address
Chew about your known
Voice your lip
Assert your declaration

But wait dear one
There is more

More within you
More than what rolls around in your head
More than the familiar
More that speaks the truth
of who you are

If you dare to hear it
first, you must pause

Breathe deep
and strong
Tap into the courage
and pause

Hearing your heart
is no small task

Breathe deep
and strong
Tap into the courage
and pause

Allow its sound inside you
Invite it to the table
Let it spill over your known

Breathe deep
and strong
Tap into the courage
and pause

Make room for its beat
and discern
for yourself
when your heart is
what needs to speak

So many messages!
Big one and small ones
Loud ones and quiet ones

Its the emails and the voicemails
The IMs and all DMs

From the Instagram
To the twitter
From Facebook
To WhatsApp
I don’t have time to TikTok
No more time on the clock

Don’t forget the face to face
and ones without words
The hinted and the subtle
We don’t even know are there

Where do they all come from?
Where do they go?
How much can we absorb
Without bursting in two?

Intentional or not
comes the energy
threading its way through
at speeds beyond comprehension
it’s enough to create suspension

I just have one question

Which ones are God’s?

I am not sure where they come from
Our imagination, I suppose
Did we build on something we had seen at some point in history
Or is it something that came from within?

Were they designed from our desire
To create warmth in a cold world?
Did they come about when we were delirious with fever
Or tripped up on a shroom found in a forest?

Maybe it was a nightmare
Or a crazy idea made up by two young kids
after debating philosophy in their dorm room all night

An interesting configuration
Part lizard
Part beast
Part terrifying
Part fascinating

I suppose most things in life could be described by the last two lines
But not everything in life has the fire

It is the distinguishable element
And perhaps the key
Maybe we just desired it so much
We started to wonder what kind of being would possess it

Materialists assumed it was only something they could see
Mystics trusted it to be a mirror of what was felt within

We thought the trees held the secret so it had to be hiding
We were drawn to go looking
But dare not in dread
So we banned them into caves

But they seeped out through our nightmares
Or dreams depending on who was telling
Based on a mixture of visions from the shamans
and giggly tales of children
Storytellers elaborated on what they heard

We are left without a trail
And too many configurations to count
But one thing is threaded into each account

The one thing which without it
Would be called something else
Whatever our picture of it is
It must have this essential thing

The thing we can neither live with
unless we know how to contain it
and certainly cannot do without

The thing we are drawn to
and repelled by
it’s the fire
It’s their fire
But is the fire we desire
Only possessed by dragons?
Or have we simply forgotten how to connect to it from within?

Are we really still believing all of this
is actually about fire-breathing dragons?

I am not sure this going to work.
What if it doesn’t?
What if it does?

What if nothing comes through?
What if it doesn’t make sense?
I am not the best with rhymes
Who has the time?

An expression of what?
This is a blog about God
God who has used many a writer over time
To share messages of all kinds
Even poetic form

But not sure that is me

I cannot resist the pull
Maybe because it’s fanciful
Sure, I have written a few
But less than 10 is hardly a trend

I am more comfortable with free-flowing prose
Poems feel more constricting like a foe

I know God to not fit within one description
So perhaps the same goes for poetic expression

It is about exploring and trying
Experimenting and growing
Learning and stretching to see God in a new way

The fluidity of words can capture a heart
Beckoning like the rhythm of a dance

God knows I love to dance

Who will put up with this?
I mean read this?
Does it matter?

I am here
God is here
God is everywhere

Maybe even in this poem

One of the beauties in the reality of being human is our ability to change our minds. We do not always use this capacity to its fullest because we have become accustomed to our routine way of thinking and thus seeing life. Why fix it if it ain’t broke, right? From my experience in recovery both personally and as part of the recovery community, it is often not until we break that we become open to changing our thinking. The new way of thinking, however, is about a shift in thinking about our thinking. In recovery, we are broken open first to the inadequacy of our current thinking and the desperate need to change our approach overall. It is not about finding a new way of thinking and never adjusting it. It is about finding a way to continue to think differently. It is through questioning our thinking that we continually break ourselves open to making room for our hearts. We develop the skills of a stunner who seeks the awe of life. A stunner is one who has the awareness of things that lay outside what our minds can comprehend. A stunner is resonant with the strings of the heart to expand our perspective and be breathed by what is more than we could imagine. Sometimes the stunning comes as a slap aside the head or a misstep in our footing. The stunner is God’s way of reminding us as we are awakened to taking a deeper breath of who we are, which requires us to tend to the sensations of our heart. God is inviting us to resonate with the vibrations of life one note at a time.

Are we willing to embrace a stunner as God’s gift of opening our hearts to the music of life today?

It happens to be raining and raining hard on the day that I write this. I have a love/hate affair with the rain. Actually, that is not true. I love rain and used to dance around in it as a kid. I love the musical classic “Singing in the Rain” with Gene Kelly. The only time I am not a fan of the rain is when I am driving in it or I am wearing something I do not want to get wet. I love being curled up on the couch in a warm blanket with some hot tea and listening to the sound of the drops hitting the window and whatever other surfaces stand between the drops getting from the clouds to the surface of the earth. I love the cleansing nature that being awash with water represents. On some level, I always imagine rain representing an opportunity to release and move forward. I am most likely impacted by being raised as a Christian and a decent grasp of the sacrament of Baptism. Also growing up in the desert allows for the presence of water on any level to have a greater impact. When I witness the rain pouring out of the sky with no end in sight I feel the effusion of energy from the heavens. It kind of reminds me of when I have one of those epic cries only after which I feel like I can breathe. I imagine the earth has a lot of tears to shed or perhaps it is giving us as humans permission to grieve. (something we are not very adept at). There seems to be an inherent fear of effusion, regardless of whether the emotions expressed are good or bad. Honestly, it is hilarious that as emotional beings we fight our very nature so much so that we classify effusion as something best kept in artistic expressions like stories, art, music, or poems. Somehow it is okay if we want to dance for joy upon hearing a song or cry bucket loads of tears after watching a touching movie. But if we find ourselves effusing emotions randomly we are somehow out of control. Maybe it rains consistently as part of the earth experience because God is trying to invite us to accept our nature. For that matter, maybe that is why waterfalls are so awe-inspiring. One cannot get more effusion than seeing a cascade of light-filled water come over a mountain. Maybe we could all benefit from embracing the effusion of life and what it means to be alive and not worry so much about how it looks to those who are still stuck in the denial of being an emotional being.

How might we open ourselves up to allowing the effusion of life to spring forth from us today?