Finding God
There are times when finding God - or experiencing God is more accessible - such moments arrive as unexpected gifts in our lives...
There are times when writing is much more fluid - when thoughts come unbidden and the urge to record all of them before they evaporate into thin air is excruciating...
There are moments when insights come to us at the speed of sound and break like waves against a cliff - scattering everywhere - escaping so rapidly we never really have a chance to grasp even a figment of the resulting spray or hold on to so much as a droplet...
There are minutes that pile upon hours and days - irreversibly lost - they evade any attempt at the slightest retrieval - and we can only lament that they are gone forever...
There are times when heaviness saturates everything and we explode from the sheer will to try to hold space for everything and every one and a million prayer requests, despite the fact that we are not meant to succeed...
In those moments we do well to withdraw and nourish our souls, and just simply be...
That is when we realize we must let go of agendas, and pre-conceived notions - and just simply "listen" as I advised my yoga students this morning - or just stay in the present with whatever is - as the gifted rector of the small community I gather with for centering prayer reminded us. She who stands in the center of so much and must be all things to all people constantly asks us to consider - where is God is all of that? Simply, in all of our quotidian experiences, in our challenges, and in the many tasks that demand our attention.
Yet, that is the challenge - to find God in all things... Even when S/He seems evasive, non-existent and unresponsive...
The events of the last couple of weeks - a government shut down and other factors, seemed to suck the very life and energy out of me. But even in the midst of all of that, I reconnected with an old friend I had not seen in 24 years, and was able to have a joyous experience where so much anxiety and gloom and doom had presided over the nation and held court in my heart and soul.
I pushed myself out the door for a walk one day, and finally, on my gifted craniosacral therapist's table yesterday, began to open closed off channels and and walls I had erected within myself, eventually leaving with a lightness of being I had not experienced in a little while. It had been time to turn the tide...
Where is God? Where we least expect Divine Presence...
I read this poem by Mark Nepo this morning, and revisit it again this afternoon. It arrived as a balm soothing me into another plane of existence - coaxing me out of the stupor that has held me captive. May it knock you out of yours!
Way of the Dolphin
Standing in the harbor, these slick
wonders slip their fins in and out
of early sun. I close my eyes and re-
member being wheeled into surgery
all those years ago; believing my job
was to meet my surgeon at the sur-
face, so the rib he had to remove
would slip out, like a dolphin of
bone, as soon as he would cut me.
I've learned that everything that
matters goes the way of the dolphin:
drifting most of the time out of
view, breaking surface when
we least expect it.
And our job - in finding God, in
being God; in finding truth, in
being truth, in finding love, in
being love - is to meet the world
at the surface where Spirit slips
out through every cut.
~ Mark Nepo
There are times when writing is much more fluid - when thoughts come unbidden and the urge to record all of them before they evaporate into thin air is excruciating...
There are moments when insights come to us at the speed of sound and break like waves against a cliff - scattering everywhere - escaping so rapidly we never really have a chance to grasp even a figment of the resulting spray or hold on to so much as a droplet...
There are minutes that pile upon hours and days - irreversibly lost - they evade any attempt at the slightest retrieval - and we can only lament that they are gone forever...
There are times when heaviness saturates everything and we explode from the sheer will to try to hold space for everything and every one and a million prayer requests, despite the fact that we are not meant to succeed...
In those moments we do well to withdraw and nourish our souls, and just simply be...
That is when we realize we must let go of agendas, and pre-conceived notions - and just simply "listen" as I advised my yoga students this morning - or just stay in the present with whatever is - as the gifted rector of the small community I gather with for centering prayer reminded us. She who stands in the center of so much and must be all things to all people constantly asks us to consider - where is God is all of that? Simply, in all of our quotidian experiences, in our challenges, and in the many tasks that demand our attention.
Yet, that is the challenge - to find God in all things... Even when S/He seems evasive, non-existent and unresponsive...
The events of the last couple of weeks - a government shut down and other factors, seemed to suck the very life and energy out of me. But even in the midst of all of that, I reconnected with an old friend I had not seen in 24 years, and was able to have a joyous experience where so much anxiety and gloom and doom had presided over the nation and held court in my heart and soul.
I pushed myself out the door for a walk one day, and finally, on my gifted craniosacral therapist's table yesterday, began to open closed off channels and and walls I had erected within myself, eventually leaving with a lightness of being I had not experienced in a little while. It had been time to turn the tide...
Where is God? Where we least expect Divine Presence...
I read this poem by Mark Nepo this morning, and revisit it again this afternoon. It arrived as a balm soothing me into another plane of existence - coaxing me out of the stupor that has held me captive. May it knock you out of yours!
Way of the Dolphin
Standing in the harbor, these slick
wonders slip their fins in and out
of early sun. I close my eyes and re-
member being wheeled into surgery
all those years ago; believing my job
was to meet my surgeon at the sur-
face, so the rib he had to remove
would slip out, like a dolphin of
bone, as soon as he would cut me.
I've learned that everything that
matters goes the way of the dolphin:
drifting most of the time out of
view, breaking surface when
we least expect it.
And our job - in finding God, in
being God; in finding truth, in
being truth, in finding love, in
being love - is to meet the world
at the surface where Spirit slips
out through every cut.
~ Mark Nepo
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