Where we go from here.... softness... time... being equipped

I was raised not in a culture that appreciated slow passing of time, lingering over each other and time and space was not the mode of activity or preference.

When I came into Christian faith I experienced not a culture that embraced waiting and the delicate and sweet passing of time and allowed for that ebb and flow.

It has taken me much time to come to this path and to embrace the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything and everything under the sun has its time.  I have participated and only known cultures that push upon the natural order and boundaries of things as to have their desires accomplished in a some what more harried fashion.

If something takes 10 years then every moment of those 10 years serve in whatever is being incubated.

I haven't liked that...

We, as the Western church expression of Christian culture have no liked nor embraced that reality to its fullest.  In not reaching for depth of understanding into this reality and  circumventing process, in not reaching for understanding or appreciating this reality I wonder about how many abortions or miscarriages of the works of our Lord upon the earth and the people we have participated within.  I have participated in.

I hear about this and that person falling away from faith and yet when I hear their stories or read their accounts, it is not God they are rejecting.. it is culture and religion.  I hunger to learn the immense difference in expression and have Christ made manifest within me in a reality that really represents Him.

Four days away from having said and given a "yes," to the Lord for 100 days... expanding it to a year... and to a lifetime...

The lessons being learned and the interior transformation are beyond my wildest imagination.


It has taken time and the passage of time, and letting each season come and go and come and depart... upon the waves I am being brought out into the depths and I will never be the same...

It started with trusting Holy Spirit when upon being asked to do that which is His calling, lead us into all truth, He comes and does it well.. does it very well...

May love encompass you and saturate your very being..
May you know you are loved
And may you learn to rest in that love...

Sometimes there is no title................. Maybe that's the most important lesson to learn after all

"I wouldn't diminish those who have actually had the experience by saying that I'm emerging from a cult, but what I would say is that in some aspects of my life it feels like it."

"Would your husband say the same thing?"

"Uhm... good question," I said back to my therapist. "No, I don't think he would use the word, cult, but we have talked a great deal about ghettos, in relationship to where we have been in organizations. And how we don't want to live that life any longer. "


This was part of a conversation I was having with my counselor as I was trying to process where I've been, where to go and where I am.

It is said of me I write raw.  I've been holding off on this piece well, because... I was hoping to have more understanding but this morning, I realized this is not a place to walk alone. The finishing sentence or neatly tied up concluding paragraph won't come, that the process is just that a process, a journey, a moment by moment discovery.  I haven't been walking this journey without help, I have welcomed in and sought after insight and wisdom from those that are upon my path and I have spent hours in silence and solitude.  Daily I pray for the Holy Spirit to do that which He was sent forth to do and lead me into truth.

But there are moments where I don't know what to think and I don't know what to do and I don't know the paradigm to sync my heart, my feelings, my thoughts to.... and I come back time after time after time to the prayer attributed to St. Francis... "God, who are you?  God, who am I?" 

 And I linger over Merton's prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me. 

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think I am following your will 

does not mean that I am actually doing so. 

But I believe that the desire to please you 

does, in fact, please you. 

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. 

And I know that if I do this 

you will lead me by the right road, 

though I may know nothing about it. 

Therefore, I will trust you always though 

I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. 

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I want to know Him.
I want to know Him as He is..
I want to be that which He formed and fashioned me to be...
I don't want to abide by some dogmatic this is who we are because I am a Christian and this is what I am to believe...

It grieves my heart at times when I see postings on social media that do not resemble the biblical Christ and yet with pride and certainty the poster pontificates their position.  Grieve is not an overstatement.

I want to touch the heart of Christ and know that heart beat. I want to lean upon Him and not my own understanding.  I want to trust Him when He leads me to the proverbial Samarias.  I want to be the good Samaritan not the religious fool who is in a hurry to get to some meeting or participate in that which they think "god" is doing and miss the very opportunity that is before me.

BUT I DID...

I was that fool... I did miss out...

Folks.. here, here is the truth... here is the confession... I spent 23 years in Christian ministry only to look back now and say many are dangerously close to coming face to face with Jesus and hearing that they were never known. I was there. I was there. Consumed with the doing and not stopping to listen, to be, to wait... Consumed with my own thoughts and vision and not pausing long enough to see that I left that which the Father is doing twenty miles back.

 Listen, I will give that I am in process.  I am processing through and in a great deal of paradigm shift.  I know not where this is going.  I know this I can't do that which I have done before.... Not the whole baby out with the bath water but the bath water must go..... It doesn't work...

I tried to keep up not wanting to be left behind or left out, and the truth of the matter was that in all that striving I have realized I did miss out on the most precious moments that can not ever be gotten back.  Ever so grateful for redemption and time now.

The fact of the matter is I love and hate that I have come to a place where I just don't know... I don't know what life with Christ is supposed to look like, the "guides" I have seen or followed said this or that and then some of them said we don't do this or that and others have said this or that is acceptable.  I think the fact of the matter is we don't know....  Liken unto Peter sitting on a roof top about to encounter the reality that it doesn't matter what food people eat. Liken unto the Judaizers who thought all needed to be circumcised to be accepted in. Liken unto those who were horrified that a woman was breaking a bottle of perfume and washing Jesus feet with her hair and tears. Liken unto the fact that He who cleansed the lepers, (on the sabbath), allowed women to be in His company, hung out with tax collectors, perpetually unclean in the eyes  of the religious; does things that the religious communities of every time say is heresy.  

That is the God I follow.  The One who did not come to abolish but fulfill the law is the One who time after time after time left the religious with their mouths on the floor as He left the people feeling and knowing God and His love.

There's a new song coming out by Bethel's Jenn Johnson and I couldn't ever be more grateful for the timing of a song.....  The lyrics are amazing...

My only prayer these days is that my heart would not faint and that courage would reverberate within me and keep me strong to walk this road, where the truth is I just don't know... But to sum it all up... I'm beautifully in over my head.... and that's ok

Then You crash over me and I’ve lost control but I’m free

I’m going under, I’m in over my head

And You crash over me, I’m where You want me to be

I’m going under, I’m in over my head

Whether I sink, whether I swim

It makes no difference when I’m beautifully in over my head

Whether I sink, whether I swim

It makes no difference when I’m beautifully in over my head

I’m Beautifully in over my head

I’m Beautifully in over my head 

It's going to take time Conversation... four...

Sitting in quiet and silence.               


My heart and mind going back over and over different times, different places.. faces, times, people, places...

Sweetness enters... His voice,

"It's going to take time."

"It's going to take time, give yourself time."

Time to unwind
Time to breathe
Time to learn
Time to unlearn
Time to grow
Time to heal

"It's going to take time."

In a culture such as ours what a luxury to hear upon the air those precious five words.  Their truth takes time to receive. Their depths take an intentional shifting of perspective.  Time.

He and I have all the time in the world.

Don't rush He whispers

Calm
Stillness

It is our desire that we would know Him.
Can we cease striving?
Can we be still?

If we can cease striving we are promised we will know Him...
If we can touch, hold unto ourselves stillness we will know Him...
If we can sit and let Him know us and enter into His peace, His shadow, His dwelling.. we will know Him..

I sat there.  There's so much I want settled.  There are so many answers I hunger for and feel like I need.  His stillness stands there as does His gaze and as He looks at me, I melt.  "You need time," He whispers, "Time to sit, and be still, and to know Me, let's not rush past these moments.  Let's, you and I, savor them. You display trust when you pause, linger, wait upon Me."

Rest
Relax

Sit with Him in quiet stillness and be transformed.

I believe more in what can be done through rest and a ceasing of striving then any following the perfect 5 year plan could ever achieve. I believe. I believe in rest. I believe in waiting. I believe in knowing Him. I believe in allowing Him to permeate and penetrate and go deeper and deeper still, bringing me deeper and deeper into a Heavenly stillness that knows no description.  Any attempt to try to use language to express what that place feels like, that saturated pause in Him... they don't exist.  You must simply, profoundly, enter...

Enter...
Enter

His rest..
His pause
His life...

Conversation ... Three

I sat in stillness and all was quiet.
I let my body sink into the cushions of the sofa and I just sat...

All was still..
All was quiet..

"You don't trust yourself..."

"You don't trust yourself... " and He began to express His heart upon the matter....

The words of a man who is incredibly intuitive once said, "I know far more than you want me to and far less than you think I do."  Those words also rang in my head....  and the two statements began to play upon my heart.

There was something very specifically that I needed to see and to touch and to acknowledge.  I knew to do so would have ramifications and so I would rather say to myself, "I am wrong."  But how many times in my life had I said that already?  How many times had I actually then been right? How many times had I swallowed what could have been said? What should have been said?  How many times in not wanting to see and not wanting to hear and not wanting to know I remained silent? BECAUSE... but of course I can't be right!  

But of course I must be wrong.....

Only to have had correct discernment....

"You don't trust yourself..." And as Jesus wept over Jerusalem I could feel Him weeping over me.... Imploring me to touch this reality and to grow away from it... But then came more words and more words and that is what brought me to my laptop upon this frigid morning...

"You don't trust yourself..."  and then,  "They don't trust themselves..."

And there was no chastisement, just sorrow....

Have I.. have we been taught not to trust ourselves?

I realize that I am probably touching the first season of twenty-four years of full time Christian service where I am not looking for another human being to express to me what I should or need to believe..... I am touching moments liken unto one evening not too long ago where I sat in stillness and quiet and received strength and courage to believe that as I do seek, and as I do sit and as I do pursue I will know... I will know Him.. I will know myself more..

I have sat with Him more in stillness.. in quiet
I have sat with myself more in stillness .. in quiet

In the beginning it can be a terrifying exercise. Every day it can be a terrifying exercise...
Bit after bit and moment after moment it becomes the most intoxicating times though.. still terrifying .. but I have prayed for years, "know me... I want to know you.."  But didn't quiet myself, didn't linger over Him or my being, didn't pause, didn't cease... 

To know, really know one is to spend time with one.  To allow things to not just be a 15 second sound bite but to allow moments to penetrate, to reverberate, to capture your attentions and change and alter your appetites... To let the Spirit hover over that which is chaotic and bring order ... beautiful, incredible higher order....

The man, St. Francis of Assisi, is attributed with the prayer:  "Oh Lord who are you? 
 Oh Lord who am I?"

Pray that prayer with quiet reverence for a month or longer and watch ...

I am learning to trust... I am learning to lean more upon Him and in so doing He is leading me in a way and instructing my heart to trust more and more that which He placed in me when He sung over me and knit me together in my mother's womb...

Be well... Be very well....

And know in the depths of you that that which He placed within you can be lead and be guided and molded and that He who is asked for bread will not ever give a snake....

That which makes for greatness....

A pile of sun scorched dry bones lying in a valley becomes great.....

What do those who were once not even skeletons know deep within those bones?

They know what got them there.
They know what that place feels like.
They know His grace beyond any effort they could ever put forth.

What makes for greatness?

"So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.”’” So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army." Ezekiel 37


They know the sounds of rattling deep within all that they are...
They know the sensations of coming back together in right order and alignment...
They know what it means to have no breathe left 
They know the song of the four winds...
They have tasted of the driest of dry
They have tasted death after death 


What makes them exceedingly great?

The depth of understanding that reverberates into every form and facet of their being, every part of their psyche, their ego, their entire make up understands the reality that but God ....

But His breathe
But His wish for their life
But Him and His desire

They would have been left upon a field NOTHING more than a pile of dry bones...

I would have been left upon a field as a pile of dry bones but His wishes.. His desires.... His  passion.

It is a song that has been left within my being.  The sounds of rattling, the sounds of wind, the sounds of  breath... I have been branded by their songs ayd their sound.. They propel me into understanding and they cause me to bow and bow low.  They have taught me my place in the created order and have settled my soul.  I am no more and I am no less then that which I exist in His heart song. I have touched cease striving and know Him as God, receive breath back into your being and know Him as God and in so doing I have touched a most awe inspiring fire that will never be consumed but consumes all in its path.  And it is well with my soul.

He may consume all that He desires and yet He leaves me more and more whole. 

Close your eyes
lean back upon the wind
Hear its singing over you 
It is calling the you who you really are to emerge

Stand in the fires of Heaven not for service but for life....  it will propel service but seek it not for service... seek the fires that burn away all the dross within our thinking and receive the ways that are so much higher then...

Pause

Wait for it
Silence yourself and wait for it

What makes for greatness?

A heart submitted to breathe, to life, to Him.. a life lived acknowledging it is under His gaze in which we live and breathe and have our being...

Forgetting greatness and laying it all behind .. He considered His equality with God nothing to be grasped but laid it down...  For the joy that was set before Him...

Forgetting greatness and embracing Joy and a life of light and peace and gentleness and strength.. a life in Him...

 The breathe of God courses through my being..The songs are rest, quiet, silence, returning over and over again to Him..enjoying and delighting in Him as He delights in me and us and all creation...

God desires pull us into a life and existence in our wildest lives we would never even imagine... my mind was too small and my focus too on the ways of man....  He took my chin and settled His gaze upon me and lifted my head and caused me to get lost in His eyes...

He has settled our souls once and for all...   and it is good as it was in the beginning .. it is good.... it is very good.

Conversation .... Two

As of late I have kept some of my personal practices private and to my own heart.

Too often I have jumped the gun, shared too quickly, about the intimate workings within my relationship with the Spirit, with Father, with Christ.  Too often I took intimate moments with our God and spread them out for all to see instead of letting them do their work and saturate and strengthen my soul.  It was as if I went to all my proverbial girl friends and shared  the intimate details of making love to my husband.

God loves us so personally and intimately and is the Lover of our souls. I have seen how He responds to respecting that relationship. It has caused me to awaken to His desire for close and personal, intimate moments with His own. 

It took me a long time to realize that these precious moments between us, were meant for us... He and I, and at times only He and I. Most times only He and I. A safe practice to have is assume 98% of that which happens between you and God is for and between you and Him.  That is a safe assumption. It will not lead you wrongly.  As I embraced those truths, I put into my life practices and disciplines as to empower me to revel in the beauty that is ours to have with Him.

One such practice that I have done now for 29 days is pray a prayer found in Jeremiah 33:3

Call to Me
 and
 I will answer you,
 and 
I will tell you
 great and mighty things, 
which you do not know.’

But it wasn't things I wanted to know. 

I wanted to know Him. And so when I began I merged that which the Lord spoke forth with a prayer that is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.  "Lord, who are you?  Lord, who am I?"

It wasn't "things" I wanted to know.... It was Him.  "Show me about yourself," I would pray.  Show me great and mighty things about you which I do not know.

I was driving near my home  and there was much upon my heart and mind.  I had concerns. I wasn't praying.  When that all too familiar beautiful sound filled my heart; His voice... His whispers.. Him.

"I am not punitive, Mims."

and again He would say," I am not punitive, Mims."

Punitive: Intending or inflicting as punishment.

Our God isn't the yin/yang or karma related.  While we do reap that which we have sowed, it isn't vindictive. 

"There is no fear in love;
 but
 perfect love casts out fear, 
because 
fear involves punishment,
 and
 the one who fears is not perfected in love.
 
1 John 4:18 

Those moments were sweet, as if gentling streams of living waters cascaded over my soul healing every raw wound or past infliction.  I've known lots of punishment at the hands of men, inside and outside the church.  There is fear in my heart in regards to relationship at times.  I've all too often seen relationship crumble and ministry take precedence. 

In this moment, He was expressing His heart as if He was saying, "I'm not like that."

"I'm not punitive, Mims."

And in that moment

  I knew 

great and mighty things!

Conversations ... One

It was as if I had poured out my heart and after listening the response was just simply, "blue."

That was how taken back I was...

I had been sharing my heart, my longings, my struggles...
And when His response came, it was so other than anything I could have ever anticipated that even my body reacted, as my head shook back and forth trying to get an equilibrium.. trying to take in what He said and in seconds receive that which was transacting.

"I laughed more than people think."

It hung in the air.

I had just borne my soul out to Him and that is what He said, "I laughed more than people think."  It felt like (while not truly possible) that He had gotten distracted and focused on His own thoughts and out of His mouth just flowed in line of what He was thinking, "I laughed more than people think."

But it caught me so off guard that it pushed me out of where I was and I cocked my head off to the left and fixed my gaze on His felt presence.  And sat there quietly.  Looking into air but knowing His presence and knowing Him.  Knowing that in that silence and in those words there was much to be unlocked.

I have learned that patience, quietness, waiting, stillness are some of the best practices and atmospheres to cultivate when one wants understanding. So I waited.  I was still. I was quiet.  We were quiet.  He was reflective. I was waiting.

In all that transpired more ..
so much more was communicated in the stillness, in the silence that flowed between us... A strength, a solidness.. a joy...  and I went from a place of heavy heartedness into a quiet place where interior rivers flow and my sorrow and my questions and I floated down with it and Him.

One of my favorite verses in all of Scripture is found at the very end of the gospel of John.

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written."
John 21:25

Jesus at the wedding
Jesus holding the children
Jesus resting by the fire with John and the other disciples
Jesus walking with and among the people
Jesus in His quiet away times with the Father
Jesus with His mother staring into her eyes with the grandest of affections as infants do
Jesus with  Joseph touching wood, learning about tools and how to craft
Jesus with His siblings
Jesus as a baby, The Word wordless ....cooing
Jesus as a toddler, Creator learning how to walk
Jesus..
Jesus in all the places He traveled, amongst all the throngs of people that pressed into Him, LAUGHED....  and laughed more than we could ever imagine.

As I have let the words sink in and the idea saturate my being.. I have contemplated the essence of solid joy.. of delightful peace .. irrespective of situation or circumstance it is a state of being that glows and emits warmth and comfort and presence.  It changes all things and brings forth lightness and light.

"I laughed more than people think."

Oh my sweet sweet Lord, I get it... you thoroughly did.... and you still do...

The truth is I did die....

The truth is I did die..........

How else does a pile of bones become a pile of bones?

I died a million deaths.  Each too small for me to recognize. Unbeknown to me the path was a slippery slope, to all else it looked beautiful.  Trajectory looked set...  GenX couple, gifts, talents, favor... Perfect package.  So incredibly wrapped and decorated with the perfect bow. Ready! Set! Success!

I died a million deaths before I realized I had ceased to breathe.  I had held my breath for far too long and had lost not just the lyrics but the entire melody to the song, that had been placed within me before the foundation of the world. 

I had died a million deaths and peered out of lifeless eyes, played too many parts ... all thinking I was serving You.

I died a million deaths but a death would come whose sting I didn't back away from, whose victory wrecked havoc...  flat lined... deceased... decomposing... pile of dry bones.

I touched pain and sorrow, loneliness and fear and I let them touch me, clothe me and pass through me .. It was the day the first sinew was put back upon my skeleton. It was the moments when my lungs would be touched and breath would be put back into them.  It was the moment where the remembrance of my song didn't depend upon my own strength to be sung.  It was the moment where I let silence and space and darkness hover and encompass me and in that valley kept my eyes open though I could see nothing.  It was as Holy Spirit hovering over immense chaos right before the moments where Creator sung from the depths of eternity the most majestic four words ever spoken, "Let there be light."

I ran from pain.  I hid from fear. I would see it coming from over a mile away and I would run the opposite direction.  Or if it caught up with me I became a master at learning how to disappear.  I cowered before loss, I trembled before loneliness, I crumbled before men.

When loss screeches forth its eeriest cries and robs the soul of that which was once precious one flat lines. What one does next that becomes the story.

Tonight I have wept.

Different tears.

Tonight I have stood exceedingly vast.

I didn't realize how I had stopped running.  I didn't realize that I turned and faced the darkness.  Liken unto the moments that preceded the million small deaths, and the one true flat line; I didn't know what I was doing when I turned to face it all.

There are so many fancy ways to negate death in the Western world.  We dress our corpses up pretty and we go buy more things, distraction lives in every nook and cranny, noise and sound keep our hearts occupied so that we forget what breathing sounds like.  And when pain raised its head I became the expert at anesthetizing.

What we don't know about death is killing us...

Touch the pain, let the nails be beaten into flesh, let the thorns pierce the scalp, let the splinters rip open the heart and the spear penetrate the side....  let the death come.. It will come anyway, whether it is wanted or not....  That is just part of the story.

There are experiences that alter the course of a life.  In moments recently past I lifted my eyes up and saw how the truth is I died a million deaths for some of the most ridiculous reasons that were never ridiculous at the time, I suffocated myself, I bent myself backwards and tied myself in knots.....  But what I have learned recently is that you can release the bind and let oxygen and blood come rushing back in....  I have seen how instead of running the other way, one can stop and pause and breathe.

It is upon the moments, where the howling of the night terrors press in upon the glass, that I have learned to sit in the dark and listen to the noises and sit and feel the trembling of the window panes and the rumbling of the atmosphere and my own heart, and I have learned to sit and I have learned that it all passes. It all passes.  The storm passes.  The loss passes. The fear passes. It all passes. That which I was so filled with terror over I have watched dissipate as  I have sat and watched the first rays of morning sunshine erupt into a rainbow.

It is His promise to the pile of dry bones... It is His promise that we will walk again with breathe poured back into us; knowing and standing and be exceedingly great......

.... That you may come alive

Joy enveloped me and such a deep sense of well being captured all my attentions.

I have been living in two places lately..

Samaria

and

Ezekiel's Valley of Dry Bones...

The most amazing places to live....

Their terrains have taught me much these days and as I transverse their grounds my being grows and I touch His likeness, His heart and stand in awe and wonder....

Their terrains are teaching me well, healing my soul, and launching me into depths of freedom...

It is the fulfillment of the 37th chapter of Ezekiel.  In verse 5 we read, "Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life."  The verses continue and talk about adding back to the bones; adding sinews, adding flesh, covering with skin... and putting in the breath.. so  that those will come back to life.  WHY?  WHY?   Why does He?  ...."and you will know that I am the Lord!"

AND...

When breath is added and comes back into the bones, what happens?  Those that were once dry bones, those that received the breath "stood on their feet!"

Maybe that is what has been happening in these days, in my life...

I have received breath
I am knowing the Lord
I am standing on my feet

And I, who once was a pile of dry bones, breaths and stands and knows...

I had bought into ideas and concepts of what walking the Christian life was about and some of that resulted in me becoming that pile of dryness.  In focusing on doing I withered and withered further and further away.  Once I ceased to strive I was born again into a life in the Spirit.

I could care less whether my exterior or outward behavior is pleasing and acceptable, I can "play" the wrong kind of games for a very long time.  What has captured my attention, what has set me ablaze, what has brought me to life is the flow into what Brother Lawrence speaks of ..."In these times of dryness and unclearness which bother our souls, there needs to be fidelity to Him."  In those times when I was but a pile of dry bones, a deep inner longing filled my gut... I read that quote and all I heard was "interior fidelity."  The words kept singing in my heart.  "Interior fidelity,  interior integrity."

But how...

Because this place of breath touches our deepest origins, our actual beginnings... When we were but clay and our Creator scooped dirt into His hand and breathed His Spirit .. His breathe into us.... This is the restoration...

As the words, "Interior fidelity," made their way deeper and deeper into the core of my very being, I could hear the songs of longing.. It was my very being hungering to be pulled into who I really am called to become.

These days have found me not living within an experience but living a life. A life pulled into His nature and His character.. A life breathing in and breathing out His breath...  Touching His essence and being changed from the inside out.

When it is written, Cease striving and know me as God; we are given a key to fulness. But we must have the courage to cease striving.  When it is written, Unless the Lord builds the house the laborers labor in vain, we are given another key.  It is the Lord that builds His house.. His house... We are His house... He builds us up.. He promises.. It is His promise to us to build us and complete His work.  We need not strive but receive...

A story and then this post will end.. But upon this topic we visit daily.. there are 1000s of practices to discover.. practices of rest, of silence, of joy, of delight.. Practices of breath, of creation, of song and of dance....  We will visit them all... But the grandest practice is of Freedom and of choice.. and I will get into that more and more...  You have freedom to discover which "practices" work and how they work for you.. You need not be told.. You need only to learn to listen to the song that reverberates within you...  He promises to lead us into all truth and He has placed a magnet into the depths of you and me that hungers for its matching attraction.. The song that is into the depths of the core of you, knitted within the depths of you ...

Here is my story...

I sat with my spiritual director, as I brought up the scripture of "Unless the Lord Builds the house,"  and as we talked and allowed Holy Spirit space to lead me, I saw myself as a house the Lord was building.  I am one who when falling in love with a subject wants to know all about it and so books and videos I watch and read.  Except in those most beautiful moments  I realized I was a house He was building and I could cease my striving to become more like Him and become more like Him...

What I want more then anything is for the depths of my insides to reverberate with His song. Interior fidelity isn't something to be strive after, it a life to be lived upon His breath and the joy of the Lord courses through me with such a magnificent strength.

Pause, reflect.. stand still and know... REALLY KNOW HIM as God....

More tomorrow.. and tomorrow after that.. and the tomorrow after that.. for that is the journey... it pulls us into Him if we will let it....

What the adding of sinews is like... a practice..

I do believe it is human nature to want to make transformation complicated.  I am not under some delusion that it doesn't take hard work.  What I have found is some of the hardest work is letting it go.  The "it" for all of us will be different.

Last year I was in a horrible car accident that placed me in bed for ten weeks and had numerous consequences that lingered. March 11 was the date of the event.  On March 27 I made a decision away from bitterness that had been encroaching way before the accident occurred.  There was only a very small amount of things I could do during those days, and as I lay in bed with noise and light of any kind being a problem I remembered..

Him...

I had read Brother Lawrence and his writings on practicing the presence of God back in 1991 and had loved my copy well.  I returned to what I had known.  Unable to do much I could invite and linger within His presence.  I would be introduced to Frank Laubach and his, "Game of Minutes."  I would begin to "play" on March 27th 2014.

Frank Laubach had once said, "All who have tried that kind of abiding for a month know the power of it -- it is like being born again from center to circumference."  Those words, "from center to circumference," resonated deeply within me as I stepped (laying flat on my back in a dark and quiet room) into a journey that would forever change my life.  It brought me back to the center. It realigned my course. It reminded me of who I was.. of who I am.  Laubach's challenge to "Fill every minute with the thought of God," was something I could do.  And that coupled with Brother Lawrence's quote, "In these times of dryness and unclearness which bother our souls, there needs to be fidelity to Him."

None of that hit me with religious overtones, it was a Lover's pursuit to come away from all else and be with Him. 

From March 27th to April 27 of 2014 I, to the best of my ability,  invited God into every moment that I could remember to do so... and within a month I felt from center to circumference different... It wasn't some magically expression of any sort of given words, it was a practice that I worked on every day.  As going to the gym daily builds physical strength this practice was strengthened my spiritual core.. my center. 

Pile of dry bones meets sinews... pile of dry bones encounters breath. Pile of dry bones arises and remembers what it is like to stand not as a pile but as a creative creature who can breathe.

This practice is one of thousands out there.  It happens to be one that has transformed my life.  As I have at other times I invite you to journey into center to circumference living and touch its capacity to change and birth and resurrect life.  Not just the good moments but all moments inviting Him in and asking Him to abide with you as you abide with Him.

Let's stay in touch and let me know on February 1st or any day in between ... I'd love to hear about your journey....