Keeping Our Center ~ Day 122

Here’s my question of the day: How do you experience God? Note that this is a completely different question than who is God to you? The second question is easily answered by regurgitating all the things we’ve ever been told about who or what the Divine Essence is. When I asked this question of a college class, most of the responses I received were obvious recitations of belief learned by rote in a mostly long forgotten confirmation or Sunday School class.

On the other hand, experiencing God requires awareness, recognition, thought and response. It amazes me how many people struggle to answer this question. But, then again, the church hasn’t been great at encouraging its people to think for themselves and trust their own connection. Instead, the institutional church has historically assigned Jesus, Mary, priests, pastors, and saints as go-betweens. If I only had a nickel for every time someone asked me to “talk to the Big Guy” because I supposedly have a closer connection, or more pull, or something. Now that I think about it, I’d need more than a nickel as I didn’t get asked that often.

How we experience God is a mystical question asking us to risk sounding a little wacky by verbalizing something intangible: we feel God, we hear God, we see God, we know God.

Everyone’s answers will likely be different because the Holy One can be experienced in an infinite number of expansive, generous, ineffable, ordinary and extraordinary ways. But don’t take my word for it. Contrary to popular belief I do not have a red phone connected to the Divine on my office desk. You are your own conduit!

Listen for the sound underneath the sound, the invisible waves that touch all things, connect all things and create a harmony with the most unlikely contributors. Jackhammers and birds and dogs barking and planes and whispers all become expressions of the One sound that vibrates through all of life.

In stillness feel below the surface of the everyday. Close your eyes, relax your body, open your mind and your hands and feel into the gentle, yet incredibly strong stream of love, peace and compassion that gives us the courage to be true to our deepest, most authentic selves.

Know that you are loved fiercely by the very Essence of Love. How else could you have known how to love as fiercely and give as fully as you have in your life? Look deep within, past the bumps and bruises, past the fears and insecurities, past your skeptical, critical, cynical self, and know that you, YOU, are Beloved. This is the best experience of all of God. 

Love & Light!

Kaye