To my good friends–
Last night these words came to me: It’s not out there; it’s here. Seek not what you already have. Instead, meet.
I hear in them echoes of Jesus’ gospel: this is the stuff of G?d. I want to explore these more deeply. People seek for the future; they seek even apocalypse. Yet Jesus was standing on firm ground and wanted others to touch it too. This is the ground of history, of creation, of the beginning, of the stream of G?d running from the birthing to the birthing. It was already present, among us. Even closer than a parallel universe. Within the horizon he saw the now and here and over the horizon was more of G-d: more abundance, celebration, diversity. We have what we need. We have an imminent G*d. So don’t seek for “it,” meet. Head on, openly.
When we think we have things figured out, when we think we have G?d figured out, we do not have: we only have our figuring. When we meet, when we let things and others and G?d be a puzzle to us, then we have them. When we let us be a puzzle to them, even to G-d, then we are had. We live in the mystery and the open, expanding, wonder of each other.
When we leave things unsaid, when we shed the shells to allow ourselves to be a mystery to us, when we drop our pretenses and our wishes for the future, then we are had, then we are held, then we are. Real: that is what is necessary: to be real. When we live in the future or in the past we are unreal: we do not exist. When we turn our eyes and our hearts to who and what meets us, then we exist, they exist, the One exist, and real life begins. Life abundant, no thought for the morrow, of those times only the One knows, the first last and the last first: all these and much more wrapped in these. What else is there?
G?d is not out there but here. G-d seeks you as a father after a lost child: turn your face and meet, truly meet. Do you think you know your father or mother? Do you think you know yourself? You cannot know, for there is no fathom line that drops deep enough. Meet and meet again.
The problem of the hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis: the sun and the rains come upon each equally. Is G?d absent, not holding them back? There may be good to come of it, yet that is not the reason for the tragedy. They are however opportunities for us to meet, in all pain to meet. To meet our lives and life, to tear the crust off the top and find the flesh of life. To understand this mystery deeper, we are not given. We can meet.
What of evolution? Is it hubris to think we can influence it, can help choose its direction? Is it living in the future? It may be living in beginnings and birthings that are still going on, of leavings home for homecomings. Of embraces left to be met again. Of turnings to what is real. Of embraces including more. Embraces within embraces. Wider horizons. Birthings!
:- Doug.
