Dear Spiritual Companions,
This morning I was reading Neal Donald Walsch’s book “Home with God in a Life that never ends.” I came across these startling words from God in reference to Walsch’s words about leaving this earth once he finished what he came to do, “It’s not something you have to do, it is something you choose to experience.” I stopped and let those words roll over my spirit. I have come to this life to experience not to do. Could this be true? Let’s see where this may take us.
Sometimes I am so busy doing life that I miss the experience of living it. If I had a chance to experience the adventure called living what would I want to encounter? I like the sunrises on my morning walks. I love an opportunity to chat with someone as they meet their spirit birthing life. I enjoy listening to good music. I find great meaning in walking with the widow and orphan in God’s Service. I am moved every time I sit down to this keyboard and watch God create through my fingers. When I look at life experientially it comes alive with the Love of God. That Love comes through my heart to create what I have decided to live in this human lifetime.
But what about the experience of suffering and pain. Did I come to this time in history to encounter that also? Obviously the answer is yes because it has and is happening from time to time. I have met the disappointment of unfulfilled relationships. I have lived through the deaths of those I have loved greatly. I have seen cancer and illness as not the final word, but just an experience of being human. I have been frustrated by my inability to make things better for myself and those I love. I have walked with unforgiven people in the deepest parts of my being unable to let them go. I have met unjust comments related to my innocent words or actions. The underbelly of life is often the place where I experience God’s Love most powerfully. I have often been tempted to do something to make these situations better than what they are, but have been usually met with defeat. I have come to experience the wisdom of knowing this life is about letting it be what it is, not trying to fix it. As I do that than life encourages me to pray or listen to the estranged and lost. By doing nothing I find God’s Words forming in my heart to be spoken or lifted in Silence. That is an experience worth having once or twice during this lifetime!
Recently I read some words from a 94 year old person in the Upper Room Daily Devotional Guide. She said she was looking back over her life and asked herself this question, “When I die, will the world be a better place because I have lived or because I have died?” I was struck by her words. If I run around doing this or that, fixing this problem or that one – does that mean the world will have been a better place? If like the monks in monasteries, at least those who sit and experience life with God, will the world be a better place because they have lived? Or is sitting with God in or out of a monastery just a waste of time – does this mean the world is better because they have died? If you really want to jump off the bridge, is the world a better place when the real pains in the butt die? Or maybe they are the ones who help us the most to experience life in it’s fullest sense – meeting God in the worst moments of our lifetimes. Life would have been so empty without their endless invitations to center in God.
Maybe the answer to the 94 year old woman’s question is both. I think of Jesus. Certainly life became better because of what he taught through his being in our midst. Also his encounter of death, one of the most unjust dying experiences, has taught us so much about the fact dying for your enemy opens Love to its fullest definition. Truly being with one’s life and death reveals God at God’s most Powerful – a Being who dares to share our most fulfilling and challenging moments. Real doing seems to come from Real Being in God. Now that is something I hope to experience in the living of life. What do you think?
Peace
Gary