I’ve often asked God for instructions. I even tried using one of those newfangled discernometers. Here’s what happened.
[youtube id=si8m4mjoMOQ]
I’ve often asked God for instructions. I even tried using one of those newfangled discernometers. Here’s what happened.
[youtube id=si8m4mjoMOQ]
Heh heh, yes, I have often had the same problem. And when I did get a specific, sit bolt upright in the night Word, given, I might add, though with clarity, also a tinge of reluctant, “this is really just to shut you up because you keep asking” parenthood about it, it turned out to be something I couldn’t do. Couldn’t get there, couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried. A deep lesson on worldly “failure” which I’ve never forgotten. The stuff I feel made to do has come more softly, more gently, nudgings, heart lifts, soul-knowings…. Thanks Adam.
Thank you for sharing that deep lesson.
This is one!
Hi Adam . . .
Thank you.
I have been walking a labyrinth every Thursday-at-Four
in Northport for twenty weeks.
This week
well,
it’s the last walk planned for 2016 . . .
you know . . .
before the winter . . .
before the snow.
God herself . . .
God himself . . .
doesn’t talk to me
on Thursdays at Four . . .
but a couple of leprechaunish
medievalist
angelish
beings-of-belovedness
do . . .
and . . .
quite often
really.
Their names are Thor and Agnes.
They take me by the hand,
and sometimes by the elbow,
as I walk.
We visit
the places of strife and suffering and lament and heartache in the world.
They tell me we can’t end the suffering. . .
but
can be/need to be/must be
present to it.
At the labyrinth’s center
they invite me into a grand cathedral
with the sky as the ceiling.
I face first to the east
and then the north
and then the south
and finally the west.
In each direction
there is some hint of belovedness
and
often
some precious tidbit of wisdom.
And
as I walk out
they tell me
of each of Patricia’s and my children
and our grandchildren all.
And
then
I am in the world again.
What is left within me from the labyrinth . . .
and from Thor and Agnes . . .
is something about
“the path” . . .
“your path”
“walk it”
“we are with you”
“remember”
“you too,
even you,
are beloved.”
hmmmm, keep on dear merry mystic,
you are warm and warmer and warmer yet . . .
but then you will cool a bit and then a bit more and then even more . . .
and then after a while you will warm and warm and warm yet again . . .
and it will be new and fresh,
as Borg said often,
“again, for the first time”.
it is a song . . .
this path . . .
a promise . . .
a lament . . .
a hope . . .
much joy . . .
and
it led me
to listen to you
and respond.
Thank you.
Your Northport colleague for the journey, phil
Amen, brother, and thanks for sharing your journey.
Yes. So, I think I once mentioned that after urgently pleading night and day with God for an answer I was once given the undeniable stop-you-in-your-tracks light-through-the-clouds Monty-Python-voice-from-above answer of a rose bush in bloom. It was a red rose, I believe, on an odd street corner that kind of leapt into my way while I was on a walk. Absolute certainty that this was God’s answer, but not exactly a clear set of instructions.
And, now for something completely different… a recent systems engineering article noted that human being are really *terrible* at knowing what to do – we are just not wired for discerning the absolute right answer out of a cloud of possible options. We pretend to do this, rationally laying out all the options, all the ways to score the options, and calculating which option is best. But studies shows that this is really just a cover for our mind’s attempts to skew data, ignore what it doesn’t know, and rationalize choices it wanted to make anyway.
On the other hand, we are apparently highly evolved to choose better or worse. We engage some kind of internal discernometer that fuses both rational and irrational knowledge to choose, move forward, and assess the next two options (including the option to admit we were wrong and backtrack). So maybe the hot, warm, cold thing is more or less God’s way of speaking to the kind of creatures we are! Like the labyrinth that someone else mentioned, pointing to the center is not so much what is needed as encouraging us to take the next step along the way.