When I receive God’s love, I am opening to a mission, a purpose, a destiny that is mine alone. My whole life becomes a response to this gift, a rising to this challenge. That love becomes a movement inside me, urging me on, sending me forward into my unknown. When I can say “YES,” to each moment, whatever it is, my life becomes a dance of unfolding. God’s love is always flowing to me AS THIS MOMENT. Every day my work is to soften my resistance to that flow, to allow the unfolding, to surrender with grace to WHAT IS.
In receiving God’s love, I am also opening to the Reality of the glue that connects all of us to each other and to the cosmos in its wholeness. My mission is always connected to some larger mission or purpose. When I am doing my little part, I can receive inspiration and beauty from every part of that Wholeness. And perhaps the deliberate and joyful doing of my little part might inspire others to do their part, while feeling sweetly connected to the Wholeness of Life. In that sense of connection, hope is born.
Recently Rachmiel and I spent a long night in the Emergency Room. I was suffering with an insistent, sharp pain in my belly. All night long, I could sense fear at the edge of my consciousness, and I was somehow able to NOT go down that fear road. I found that just the act of staying present, kept fear from taking hold. I kept saying to Rachmiel, my loyal, sleepy husband, “Are you enjoying THIS moment?” And the question itself made me smile. Each moment gave me an opportunity to soften, to surrender, to open in trust to WHAT IS.
God’s love flowed to me in the form of Rachmiel’s gentle attention, of the care and kindness of nurses and doctors, and the shared human predicament of the other patients in the waiting room.
I receive that Divine love with responsiveness and responsibility rather than passivity. Awake to what each moment requires of me. I will respond in gratefulness for the opportunity that is being presented, and with the growing responsibility to listen carefully to THIS — this stiffness, this pain, this impulse. Responding in gratefulness and in fearlessness to whatever God/the Truth of this moment presents.
The morning came with the possibility of surgery to remove my stone-filled, irritated, inflamed gallbladder. And I said “YES.”
I like to imagine that I’m doing my little part in reducing the gall- the irritation, outrage, insolence, impudence and anger in this world. Perhaps removing these stones can represent the possibility of softening hard edges and being humbled for the possibilities of greater love.
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