What does it mean to live in relationship with God?

Photo by Jason A.

Recently, a student contacted me.  She’s doing research “that explores the different sects found within in Christianity as well as my own personal endeavor to understand how one builds a relationship with God.”

She asked me four questions.  Below are my brief meditations on her questions about what it might mean to live in relationship with God.  

1.      How would you describe your experience/relationship with God?

Deep.  Wide.  Vast.  Unceasing.  Like a deep, subterranean river flowing always at the core of my being.  Of course, I talk with God, but the relationship goes beyond words.  God is nearer than the beating of my heart, close as my next breath.  God is the Beloved, the Source, Substance, and Goal of All that is.  I behold the Divine splendor in every blessed thing—each face, each sound, every flower, bird, and stone.  In the taste of wine.  In the breeze blowing on the surface of my face.  St. Ireneaus once said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive."  My aliveness is my experience of union with the Beloved.

2.      Describe the moment in which you took control of your relationship with God?

“Took control” is an odd way of putting things when it comes to God.  One can never take control any more than one can hold back the crashing of an ocean wave or move the stars.  But I have taken responsibility for my relationship—that is, I have awakened.  But there is no single moment I can point to.  There’s the moment as a 14 year old when I realized there was something greater in the universe that all I see and feel.  There’s the moment when Jesus became more than a name for me.  There’s the moment I thought I was wise and understood God because I had become a professional theologian.  There’s the moment I realized how silly that presumption was.  And there’s the moment each day when I yield again the the unseen Presence and allow myself to grow in my awareness of my essential union with that Presence who is both Awe and Delight.  

3.      How did you go about taking control of that relationship and what was that like for you?

When in prayer, I grow still.  I become aware of the fire within me, my aliveness, the energy that shimmers in every atom.  I slip into the Mystery of the Divine and my union with God.  The Christian tradition describes this as “God in Christ and Christ us.”  And when I’m in conversation with another, I practice being present; I practice a “deep looking” into their eyes and I behold the presence of the Divine.  I realize that there’s no other moment, there’s only this now.  And I realize I am alive.  Here.  Now.  Nowhere else.  We spend so much time living in our heads—north of the neck—but never really present here, now, in these bodies of ours.  I can’t meet God in my thoughts.  God is not abstracted into some doctrine.  Doctrine, ritual are all derivative—they find their source and goal in the encounter with that which cannot be described or controlled.   So, whenever I draw myself into the moment, when I'm present fully, I am with and in God.

4.      What do you consider most important when understanding God?

That I can't understand God.  And I’m so grateful for that.  God is infinitely beyond.  God is expanding always, along with the always expanding universe.  And yet, God is dynamically present, down and in all things.  So, God is both transcendent and immanent.  Unfortunately the vastness of God, the transcendence of God often takes over in human imagination.  And for much of history, this view of God-as-up-and-out has dominated human civilization (especially in the West) and kept people from experiencing the tender presence of the Divine that runs through all creation.  Kings, and anyone in power, have promoted the transcendence of God because it justifies hierarchy, and hierarchical structures keep much of society in tiers of oppression and suffering.  But God is not separate from nature.  God is in and through it.  God is.  I am.  And I am of God.  God is everywhere.  Up.  Down.  In.  Out. Therefore, all things, all people have a God-breathed dignity that cannot be taken from them.  This, I think, is the answer to so much that divides and wounds us on this planet.  I recently wrote a poem that reflects this.  It's a form of the historic Christian Sanctus that's chanted during the Eucharist or Holy Communion.  I sing it myself each morning as I enter prayer and contemplation.  It expresses what it means to experience God.

Holy, holy, you are holy; 

Lord, your grandeur knows no end, 

Yet in humbleness you’re tender, 

holding every infant’s hand.  

Holy, holy, we are holy, 

vessels of the Luminous; 

bless the Christ who helps us see the 

light that dwells in all of us. 

Holy, holy, all is holy, 

nothing sep’rate from your love. 

Help us to behold your splendor, 

filling all—below, above. 

SPIRITUALITY AND JUSTICE: Cultivating the Inner Courage to Change the Outer World

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Photo credit: Eric Sallard, Wikicommons

A weekend exploring the Celtic Vision for Personal and Global Well-Being with John Philip Newell
Poet, Peacemaker, Scholar

Explore a spirituality that is intimately linked to the natural world, open to the treasure of all wisdom traditions and grounded in the daily practice of prayer and meditation.

Friday and Saturday, February 12-13, 2016.  Davis, California

For details click here.  

And here's why I think you ought to make plans now to attend:

You know how it is. People come from all over the world to see the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands or stare up at El Capitan in Yosemite, but when was the last time you took in these local wonders? We often tend to snub the riches that are right around us. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty common human trait. We’ll travel halfway around the world to see what locals there ignore.

I hope you’ll not ignore something going on here in Davis this February that’s really quite amazing and important. In fact, I know people from across California, and as far away as Utah, who are coming to Davis Community Church on the weekend of February 12-14th for our Spirituality and Justice conference with poet, peacemaker, and scholar, John Philip Newell.

I hope you’ll be there too.

I know it’s in your backyard. I know that the name, John Philip Newell, isn’t new to many of us. I know many of you have read his books. All of this can create such a familiarity that you might easily find yourself doing something else that Friday night and Saturday morning in February.

But I hope you won’t. I hope you’ll plan now to attend and that when you’re done reading this, you’ll go online and sign up.

Look, it’s been a rough decade for humanity. And this last year capped it off. What’s more, there’s no indication things are getting better. The violence, political division, economic challenges, and environmental problems we face will require not only a better human response to it all, but a more robust Christian discipleship, a more embracing Christian view of God and the world, and a more daring capacity for us as Christians to bring the blessing of God to a troubled world.

Many of you have asked me questions like: “What can I do in the face of this violence?” “How can I better steward this fragile environment so there is a future for my grandchildren?” “How can I be a faithful Christian when religion seems so toxic?”

When we gather in February, here at the center of Davis, and with people from across the western US, we’ll wrestle with these kinds of questions. John Philip Newell is a friend and global Christian leader who’s at the forefront of a passionate advocacy for the wholeness of the planet. He builds bridges between religious people of different faiths, and teaches a way of prayer and meditation that empowers a robust engagement with the rigors of real life.

On Friday night, he’ll speak on “The Sacredness of the Earth” and help you consider the ways you, as a person of faith, can help honor and conserve the vast resources of our planet. The bottom line: Friday night will help care for the planet, our common home.

On Saturday morning, John Philip will speak on the wisdom in other traditions and how Christians can remain fully Christian while also finding the good in other faiths. This is sorely needed in this world of such tragic and painful religious divisiveness. He will also lead a late morning session on “The Way Forward” where we think together about what we can do concretely to bring healing between people of various faiths.

Then on Sunday morning, he’ll preach both services at Davis Community Church on the “Power of Blessing”—that is, how we can, with our words and actions, become agents of hope in our world, neighborhoods, workplaces and families.

This conference is incredibly relevant now, and remarkably practical to us who seek, from a Christian perspective, to offer our lives for the common good.

It would be easy to miss it, to plan something else, or figure we can figure such things out on our own. But that would be like living all our lives in the valley without ever seeing the ocean or gaping up in awe at Half Dome.

This conference will help you immensely. And it will help us find a way to collectively bring spirituality together with justice for the healing of the world around us.

Please don’t miss it. Sign up now.

When I really get honest

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Image by fotogjohnh!!

Some days I can get clear-headed enough to express what I really want.  Other days, I get muddled.  What hounds me then are the things I think others want of me.  Here's a poem, an intention for the day, I set for myself a few months ago.  I want it again today . . . regardless of all the things others may want of me.

As If I Were Blind

I want to touch each thing 

as if I were blind—

that lovingly, 

that aware.  

And behold the whole world with

w

o

n

d

e

r

.

How the sea rebalances us: "The Heron Who's Practicing Zen"

For many of us, the sea works a deep grace into our often weary souls; it washes mercy over our harried lives and moves us into a new rhythm.  Here's a poem that came to me after a few days along the Big Sur (California) coastline.

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The Heron Who’s Practicing Zen

The sea draws me—

The ceaseless movement of the waves,

rolling without end,

relaxing my taut mind 

toward nature’s rhythm and rhyme,

and away from the doggerel

of digital devices,

asphalt,

clocks and calendars,

fluorescent bulbs,

meetings,

to-do lists,

and freeway gridlock.

Even the smaller birds—

who seem,

at dawn,

always in a hurry,

as if breakfast 

is quickly coming to an end—

their hurry is not the same

as the worry I carry 

in my uptight frame.

And there’s the Heron,

who’s practicing Zen,

balanced atop her cushion of Kelp,

a slender Buddha,

who knows nothing but what is

n

o

w

What is time out here 

among these ancient rocks

and rolling sea,

the Heron lost within eternity?

I seem the only one aware 

of the tick tock of the clock,

that seems so foreign here.

Perched upon my cushion of sand,

time and eternity blend

into the now that knows no end.

There’s nothing here that cares

about the broken rhythm and rhyme

I’ve left behind

—beyond myself.