Recoknowing..or spiritual nigglings

Recently in a conversation with another person she came up with the word "recoknowing". What is this?  It is a brilliant way to describe the spiritual experience of knowing something on a deep or inner level and being mindful enough to recognize it as truth - truth from the Source.  Not long before in a conversation with a client we addressed the topic of "communication with God".  My client felt very frustrated that there was not/is not enough communication with God.  This of course brought up the question of how do we know when God is speaking?  How do we hear God?  (I have loved the UCC banner from a few years ago that says:  “God is not done speaking.”)

It became clear to me during the course of talking with my client that if we have a very precise, narrow or anthropomorphic idea of what God's communication is like, then a great deal of communication can occur that will go right by us.  It reminded me of the old joke about the person in a huge flood who goes up on the roof of their house and prays for God to deliver them.  First a person comes by floating on a big log and offers space on the log.  The person says no feeling the log is too small and too risky.  Then someone comes by in a row boat and offers help - no the roof dweller says, feeling confident that God will save them.  Finally a helicopter come by and lowers a rope, but the roof dweller again refuses feeling the rope and the ascent to the ‘copter is way to scary.  Eventually the person drowns, and when they go to Heaven they rather reproachfully say to God:  "I prayed for your help.  Why did you not save me?"  God replies:  "I sent you a log, a boat and a helicopter - what more did you want?"

I wonder if we do not often missed God's communication in much the same way, not seeing it in the "ordinary" or human language it may come in.  It has been both a joy and a frustration in my life to try to understand the synchronistic or metaphorical way God may sometimes speak to us.  But if you ask people to tell examples of synchronistic events that have happened in their life - often at very critical turning points, some of the stories will actually send shivers up your spine. 

I have always been both fascinated and horrified at the same time by the stories after 9/11 of people who were suppose to be in the Towers that day, or on those flights who weren't:  the person who didn't go to work that day because he was taking his son to his first day of kindergarten, the woman who broke the heel on her high heels and stopped to have them fixed, the person who went out on an errand, the person who was fired the week before  - or the person who "missed their plane" or more tragically the man who was on the plane because he rescheduled to spend the night before at home with his wife for her birthday.   Are these all simply coincidences or did Spirit speak to each of those people calling them to certain choices they made that day or week?

A friend of mine's young dog chewed on her glasses scratching them.  The only way she could get a new pair was to have another examination done, the first in four year - only to discover that she had severe sight threatening Glaucoma.  Coincidence, or Spirit speaking?  Another friend happened by a series of unusual turn of events to be at a meeting with a man who sold supplemental health insurance.  She heard his pitch for a special cancer rider which could be added to your policy which paid all uncovered co-pays and lost wages if you had treatment for cancer.  Something in her just nudged her to do it.  6 months later she was diagnosed with colon cancer; the policy made the different for her as a single person going through 9 months of chemotherapy.  Serendipity, or the Holy One whispering within?

Some denominations tell stories of the faithful following God's direction so literally that they would come to an intersection in their horse and buggy and wait until they sensed which direction to go next.  John Woolman,  a famous Quaker, journaled of feeling called to go to Barbados to preach against slavery, buying the ticket on a ship and traveling all the way to the port and then at the port getting a "message" that he had completed what God had required of him and turning around going home!  Madness or faithfulness to a message received?

Have you ever felt sort of driven to tell another person something?  Not because you were trying to persuade them of a given point or tell them what to do, but just felt it was important to communicate some information, inspiration or encouragement to another?  This is an almost daily experience for me.  Sometimes the words are sort of shrugged off with a sort of "oh right, whatever", but more often they are received with great gratitude and even sometimes with a "thank you I have been really thinking about this, looking for this communication."  This I think is an example of how God taps us on the shoulder and asks us to minister to each other, therefore using our mouths as the vessels that deliver the messages.

Courage or Serenity

Recently I finished reading the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flanigan, a Quaker woman.  It is a book about the Serenity prayer: 
     "God grant me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept
      the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference."  

One of the things that is very clear to me is that we are all "bent" one way or the other by our childhood experience.  Some of us always strive to change things, other anticipate accepting the situation as it is and "letting go" that which distresses them.  But for the most part on either side of this fence I think we do it as a secular activity.  By this I mean I think we do what we do as a pattern, barely considered, and certainly with no thought for the Divine Actor.

What if instead we were checking in with the Creator?  What if we learned to routinely hold the events of our life and are responses to them up to the guidance of the Holy One?  What if we really asked The Holy One to show us when we needed to take action and give us the needed courage to do so,  or to show us that we needed to be still and find peace and contentment with what is?  What if the Wisdom to know the difference is not something that our little brains figure out but something that the All Mighty shows us?

God Who?

As my friends will tell you, for years I have suffered from what I call "God Who?"   This is a state of forgetting God when the chips are down.   It is not, as is the case for some people, that I doubt the existence of God or have any sort of faith crisis.  No in fact if someone would ask me while I'm in a state of fear or anger if I believe in God I would say "absolutely".  But in such states I forget all about God; I'm knocked off center and living in a soup of miserable emotions.  My brain is busy trying to figure out what to do and why things are this way, and "blah, blah, blah."  When something reminds me of God again, whether it is someone else's statement of faith, a sneeze (which brings to mind "God blesses you") or my next faith experience - I'm very quickly "righted" like a partially capsized boat, and brought back to center.  Then I can relate to God and draw upon my faith in dealing with the situation at hand.

Some years ago I came to understand why I have this affliction.  The greatest crisis of my life occurred when I was 11 and my mother died.  I had not been raised with faith and had no particular conception of God.  I think this is true for most children and their childhood crises even when they are raised in a church.   So I had no where to turn - just lost in my pain and fear.   So even now as I feel pain and fear I return to this state where I do not know God.  I thought realizing that would help me not go into "God Who?" mode but it did not help.

I have spend a lot of time sort of beating myself up about this, wondering why I cannot stay in a state of remembering God and trying to figure out how I could not fall out of knowing.   A few years ago I had the helpful realization that throughout time humanity has struggled with this.  This I think is part of the meaning of the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall - we fall out of that wonderful place that we dwell with God (in that case through pride or shame - I imagine different emotions can take different people out of a state of unity with God.)  I realized that this is the human spiritual condition and the reason for the practices of so many religions -to bring us back to a state of awareness and connection to God.   So I decided then that when I noticed with dismay that I was out of connect that instead of judging or berating myself I would simply notice that it was the first step of my returning to God.  That has helped it to be less painful- I don't think it has decreased its frequency.

For a while I was trying a practice of spiritual journaling as a way to try to not "forget" God.  But what I found was that when in a state of anger or fear I did not want to write in the journal because I tended to just write about what was making me feel that way and the feelings.  So I have now decided to try a new path - it is the path of regular contact with spiritual inspiration.  I have resolved to do some spiritual reading each day as a way to connect with God regardless of my emotional state.

What is your experience with God Who?

Why God Why?

Recently at my place of worship we had a worship sharing for the adults.  What this usually means is that there are queries (questions which have no correct answer that are philosophical in nature) which we examine together and share with each other the answers we each find.   So usually the group is given the questions.  But the topic was "Why God, why?"  addressing the angst we all feel at times in our spiritual life, the puzzlement, frustration and confusion we have about why God is apparently the way God appears to us, why religion says God is a certain way, or why we cannot seem to get on the same page with God.  So this time instead of doing things the way we usually do people were given slips of paper and invited to write their "why God Why?" questions down to preserve anonymity.  People wrote them down they went into a bowl and were ceremoniously read.

The questions were, not surprisingly, the same ones that theologians and philosophers have asked throughout the ages.
Why does god allow suffering?
Why is there so much violence and war?
Why do I not have enough time to do all the things that you have asked me to do?
Why do I attract people to me who seem to bring suffering?
How do I know what you want me to do with my life?
How should I respond to the suffering that I see around me?  Why am I fortunate?
Why are there things that seem to remain in mystery not for us to know?
What happens when we die?

Long ago I lead a workshop called: Patchwork Faith.  The idea of it was the recognition that those who live a spiritual path but do not just embrace the theology of a given church must work out for themselves all these kinds of theological questions and that the answers we find our often a patchwork of faith beliefs.  In the coming year I will be taking some of these questions and writing about them.

I invite you to send the questions that pull at you.  I invite you to send the answers that you have found.

My apologies to my readers that I was quiet so many months on this blog.  I got very caught up in matters of the Occupation Movement and also my family.  My intention for next year is to return to monthly postings.

 

Manifesting Things

I started with manifesting people.  I had just opened a private practice, and I had a small support committee.  One of the people on it also had a private practice.  She told me when she started that she had had a safety net: she delivered newspapers for a year.  But she also told me:  "don't worry the clients will come.  Just visualize them coming.  I do.  Just imagine their feet walking into your office."  This seemed like weird advice, but I was worried enough to try anything.  I tried it; nothing happened.

But then after about 6 months when things were going a little better, I had some middle of the day spaces that it seemed no one wanted.  I thought:  "I wish maybe a low income client who is not working and available in the middle of the day could come then."   Within an hour two low income clients available in the middle of the day called.  Wow!   Well coincidence....but I thought: "I would like to see a couple; I wonder if I could manifest that?"  By the next day the couple had scheduled and come to see me.  For months I wondered if it was a coincidence, but pretty much within days, any time I tried to think who I would like to see (including issues they might bring) it would show up!  I have for 10 years now had a busy thriving practice.  I wondered why the advice of my collegue had not worked in the beginning and then I realized.  She had said: Visualize shoes walking in".....well I had absolutely no interest in seeing shoes!  I wanted to see people.

But one of my best examples of manifesting things occurred around this same time.  I wanted to get a favorite board game I remembered from childhood for my daughter.  The game Masterpiece has cards with famous paintings on them which people bid for and try to win the most money - but it has the great educational value that you familiarize yourself with great masterpieces.  I looked in several stores for it, but I could not find it.  Finally, I looked online for it and discovered to my disappointment that it was no longer manufactured.  Drat!  Why do they drop all the good ones?  So how was I going to get this game?  Ahh I thought, maybe someone with grown children will have a yard sale and they will be getting rid of it.

Shortly thereafter, I was driving home through the alley behind my Condo with my daughter in the car, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big box was sitting next to someone's garbage with apparently some board games sticking out.  I stopped the car immediately and hopped out.  And there it was: Masterpiece!   But even more mindboggling when I got it home, was it was in mint condition!  It has never been used; the money was still in the original plastic bags.  This sort of event is so precise that it defies (at least for me) any thought that this is just a coincidence.  That incident made me a true believer that you can manifest what you want in an abundant universe.  I eventually even manifested a husband this way, but that is another story.

Redemptive Possibilities

In May, I went to see the Rev. Jon Nelson.  Jon is a 78 year old retired Lutheran minister, and he also has a heart of gold and the deepest, most life embracing laugh I have ever heard in my life!  Jon is a fighter of the good fight:  he has had a prison ministry for 40 years, he helped create a black studies program in a small town in Missoula, MT and also low income housing, he rowed out in a boat into Puget Sound with his 80 year old mother to block the nuclear submarines and committed other acts of civil disobedience as led by God.  And with his loving wife they parented 14 children: 3 of their own, the rest foster children who they cared for and adopted (and all of whom he considers equally his own).

Jon and I were talking about an organization we started together several decades ago, and my own wonderment about whether it really made a difference or not.  He said:  "Ahh, but you planted 'the seed of the Redemptive Possibility'- the rest is in God's hands."  There is probably no better summery for Jon's life.  He did so much, but never with a concern for the outcome - just with a deep and abiding belief that God works through us for Redemption, and that the very possiblity of that is what it is all about.   Redemption of course is an idea at the very heart of Lutheranism.  I'm not a Lutheran, Jon and I are an odd pair in that regards.  Yet he testifys to me, by his life, what deep and true Christianity really looks like.

I comment to Jon that he has channelled father energy through out his life - that between his 14 kids and the myriad of prisoners who have loved him and were so underparented in their lives that he has held up for others what a father's love is.  Jon simply smiles and says:  "To those who much is given, much is required."  He explains how lucky he was to receive the deep love of both his parents and that he feels that simply filled and prepared him to give to others.  Jon is this sort of "pay it forward" kind of guy.  And again models what is possible when we live in the Redemptive possibilities.

I ask him for some parenting advise as I struggle with one of my teenagers and he has parented 14 kids - some of whom were in a whole lot of trouble.  His wife sagely says:  "Don't let them define you, and don't let them dictate your happiness."  But Jon laughs and says: We have always gone at this so differently, and then soberly says to me:  "Lean into the pain - yours and theirs - it is where the redemptive possibilities are."  Here are two people who have been married to each other for 53 years and it is not hard to see why- there love bounces off each other creating more love.

As I drive away I am a bit sad because Jon's health is failing in a variety of ways.  Ironically, this man who has the largest heart I have known is suffering slow heart failure. So I have this sense that I may have seen him for the last time.  I turn on some music and Carrie Newcomber is singing.
                       "Leaves do not fall, they just let go....
                        to make room for life to grow.
                       A seed contains a tree to be.
                       Death is Life's refrain."   (from the Song: Leaves do not fall)
Now I am at peace for I realize that even death carries those Redemptive Possibilities.

Post Note:  Jon died July 23, 2011

The Idealist's Agony - a poem

                         Striving for the highest good

Home sick for a land we’ve never been

Hungering for an oasis just beyond reach

Disappointed by the fall into humanity

No perfected man.

All, washed in the pain of pride, greed, fear, inertia,

apathy and coldness.

So much good achieved…always flawed.

Try. Try again. Better luck next time, version 2, second try, practice, improvement, set back, try, disappointment, try, hurt, keep trying.

Always trying.

Wired for optimism they say. Darwinian edge to hope, to keep trying,

To not give up.

Oh, my imperfect love, how can I keep from cheating on you

with my visions, my dreams  for more, something more

complete, more whole.

Closer to Divine?

Oh, my broken, tarnished neighbors, how to not turn on you in wrath

and frustration, disappointment that you are not

my beloved community.

Oh, my Enemy, what power I give you by believing you are separate

from me, from all of us. By making you a receptacle of all our exiled parts to hold alone.

How do I walk among the half-done, the sweat, the broken promises

born of good intentions, the synchronistic moment, the passion,

the misguided attempt, the accidental success, the small kindness, the dropped ball, the over-engineered, the forgotten good idea and the lingering sweetness

                     ….into the fullness of life.

         No judgment; just is. Now—this moment.

         No expectations. No preconceptions.

Just is; Now—this moment—the fullness of life