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I FOUND JESUS AT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER

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Clean your finger before you point out my spots.

Benjamin Franklin

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I’m bearing witness to how I can trick myself out of miracles by imposing rules or limits on my Higher Power to appear “appropriate “or holy, not being flippant or disrespectful.  If I have free will, doesn’t God? Won’t he show up where and when it suits him best?

I spent years in an Old Testament box awaiting punishment, because I put God in a box, and refused to believe he was big or limber enough to find me outside of that box. I wanted everything about my faith and my relationship to God to be intellectual and complicated. If it is important, it should be complicated and difficult, right?

If there is one thing on which those of us who believe in a Higher Power can agree it is this: whatever we choose to call this divine being, it is omnipotent, infinite, omniscient, and omnipresent. For grammatical simplicity, I choose to use the pronoun, “he”.

His holy presence is everywhere and cannot be labeled or limited in any way. A host of amazing things follow from this:

Miracles are possible anywhere, anytime.

Sanctuary is too, because it isn’t a building. It is the presence of grace.

Spiritual community can happen anywhere, because true community is about joy and the freedom from fear and shame.

I used to think that thinking was the highest function of humanity. Now I know that loving is our supreme function, because it can transform both those who receive it and those who give it.

Through love, my faith has become about freedom, not labels and limits. Through the eyes of freedom, life becomes a simple adventure: I ask for help, blessings, and even miracles, and then just let them fall on me like summer rain. They happen when and how God wants them too. They don’t and can’t look the way I forecast them in my head, because my imagination is too small.

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Lift up your eyes all around, and see;

they all gather together, they come to you…

Then you shall see and be radiant;

your heart shall thrill and exult,

because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you.

Isaiah 60:4-8

So, why wouldn’t I be able to find my God at the Jewish Community Center, regardless of whether or not I am Jewish? There is such warm and loving acceptance of individual beauty there, such a beautiful spiritual atmosphere that is spacious and has room for me; I am immediately receptive to divine guidance, love and presence.

I swim laps outside, and, more often than not this winter, I have literally been swimming through clouds. Tell me, that isn’t 3 steps from Heaven! The warm water carries me and I don’t have to struggle or fight or try. It’s literally a communion between nature, spirit and body. That sounds like sanctuary and spiritual community to me.

Don’t I believe that God loves me enough to reveal himself to me in a way that I can see and understand? You bet I do! I’m not going to cheat myself out of another miracle.

This blog was partially excerpted from my book, Undamned, My Escape from the Old Testament, which just happens to be 61% off March 7-10th. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_6?ie=UTF8&k=undamned&sprefix=Undamn

Happy Spring:)

 

 

 

SELF- AWARENESS SUCKS

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grasshopper on top of world Anything that is both absolutely essential and inherently difficult, by definition, sucks. Mindfulness, the most important tool to emotional and spiritual healing, growth and wellness, can be a graduate level S&M course from which one never graduates. So why bother? The pay off is worth it. Of course, to find out what that is you have to read all the way through to the end 🙂 But, first a few reasons why it really sucks:

 

1) Self- awareness sucks because I can’t be a pernicious pain in the ass provoking mass flight from friends and family, and then blame said flight on said friends and family. Unfortunately, self awareness requires an hourly examination of my true motivations and an assessment of whether I am being truly loving to my fellow man or fake- loving to get them to behave in a way that makes me more comfortable or directly benefits me in some way.

 

2) Self- awareness sucks because I can’t blame disappointments, hurts and failures on

“ my enemies”. I can no longer do this because I know my true enemies are my thoughts. Fear, guilt, self- condemnation, arrogance and insecurity are the line-up that will cause me to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory before any living person can truly have power over me. It sucks because I have to ask myself, does my attitude match the facts? I should have been born centuries ago during the time of the Huns, because I am always girding my loins in preparation for Barbarians at the Gate, most of whom never arrive except when I invite them in, which leads me to number 3.

 

3) I have to ask myself “ what would I do if I weren’t afraid?” about every 60 seconds, because I am aware of how fear is the prism through which I often choose to view my world. It is my fall- back position. Self- awareness requires me to act the opposite of what my mind is telling me to do, which is “ batten down the hatches!”

4) Self- awareness sucks because it isn’t flat. It’s a multi- level high rise, and it’s about progress not perfection. If I am self- aware, I can no longer hide behind technical truthiness.

I can have awareness of something in my mind, and it may be the literal truth. From my mind, awareness then travels to my heart. This is a deeper level of truth for me. This is where denial begins to fall away and those hurts from way back when begin to surface. It is painful, but it passes to the next level after the tears have been shed or the anger has flared, and it reveals a still deeper level of truth—the emotional truth.

I never felt anger until I finally got to this level and, as a consequence, I had no idea what a boundary was. I was trampled and resentful and had no idea why. Once I tended these truths begging for my attention, I discovered boundaries, and stopped being a professional doormat.

It’s at this point that my higher power shows up because I’m hurting and I ask for help. A more accurate statement would be I’m suddenly aware of his presence, because I start looking for it.

Then, my awareness reaches the cellular level and I am sitting atop the high rise. Fear is no longer present. I am not attached to an outcome, the past or the future, and therefore, my vision is unimpeded.

This is the only point at which I literally hear the deep and unabashed truth coming out of my own mouth. In the long run, it is always kinder.

 

So, what on earth is worth all of this self- vigilance, you might ask?

Here is the big payoff:

 

I don’t need to blame God for ignoring me because I am aware that I have ignored him, and that he has always been there. I know that he is not too busy to help me: I’ve been too busy to ask, and I know I can rectify that oversight at any time. I don’t have to lose my peace or obsess about if I am in his will because I know that so long as I am in the presence of my loving creator, I cannot really avoid being where he wants me to be.

I get the true humility that comes from knowing the whole truth about myself and speaking it.

I get courage, if not the freedom from fear.

I get success, fruitful relationships and spiritual transformation.

I get to finally close the door on the past, and let happiness and blessings happen, instead of vigilantly watching for them, with firmly clenched fists.

I get true abundance, as my eyes are opened to miracles and blessings falling on me like rain.

 

“ My God with his loving kindness, shall come to meet me at every corner.”

Psalms 59:10.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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