Always With Us

Whatever we call IT

Even if we don’t call IT anything

Even if we don’t believe in IT

God

Brahman

Yahweh

Allah

Big Daddy

Lord

Mother God

Father God

The Great Creator

The Soul Force of the Universe

Divine Beloved

The Energy of Truth and Love

The One…

IT is always with us.

 

I remember being in Israel, an adventure to celebrate my 40^th birthday.  Standing at the Sermon on the Mount, I silently read the Beatitudes carved into stone up near the Monastery.   When I came to:  Blessed are those who mourn for they shall know God, I experienced those words viscerally as they pierced beyond my intellect which longed to make sense, slice and dice what it was time for my heart to absorb.  Tears welled up in my eyes and I felt dizzy, intoxicated by the beauty of this wisdom.  I had no idea that even though I had mourned the deaths of many loved ones, just 2 years later I would mourn my beloved husband, John, and know God in a way I never had – beyond concept, beyond dogma, beyond interpretation, beyond my ability to language but try I must. 

In my darkest hour, something held me in my shatteredness; something breathed into my body keeping me physically alive; something ushered me into chambers within my heart that I could never have entered left to my own devices, my need to control my experience; something showed me all that I am and have always been; something whispered lovingly within me encouraging me to make this pain sacred, be present to it and allow whatever comes to come; something brought clarity helping me reframe the belief:  If I feel it, it will kill me into If I don’t feel it, it will kill me, freeing me in ways I could never imagine and fortifying my sense of Self.  And I came to know that all of those times in my life when I debated what to call it, when I wondered what it was, It mattered not as It, that which I call God, The Great Creator, The Universe, among other names has always been here with me, within me. 

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall know God…became clear to me in my deficit, in my raw wounds, open and vulnerable but God is ever-present all the days of our lives.  And mourning is not exclusive to those who experience death – we mourn the loss of our health, our jobs, our marriages, our relationships, our homes, what was – the life that used to be but is no longer. 

While at the houseboat, I got to visit with a friend who has an illness that has forever changed him, not just physically but how he views the world within and without.  He spoke of God letting this happen to him because he had been living without God all of these years.  I listened to him try to apply logic to that which can only be reconciled by the heart.  I smiled with understanding because I too have been there; and assured him that God was always with him even when he didn’t acknowledge this or know this.  The gift of the illness is that he now sees what always was and always will be – he gets to walk the rest of his days conscious that God is always with him.  It is Amazing Grace:  “…I once was lost but now, I’m found…was blind but now, I see…” 

I am constantly in awe at the miracles that bloom from the devastation, the tragedies we experience on this human journey.  From this higher perspective, we can be grateful for even that which we curse.

The invitation this day and this lifetime is to recognize that there is a benevolent force within you and within all of creation, in partnership, ever-guiding, breaking you open to free more of you, holding you through whatever life brings your way, urging you to stay the course and believe in the beauty of your life and all life.