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Longing/Waiting...we CAN see the face of G-d and LIVE...

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Questions of a Thousand Years...


  • Can we see G-d before our spirits leave our bodies? If so...

  • ...will this be with our eyes and/or with our spirits?


The seeds for this post were sown during our December Men2Men circle in Brentwood, when Don, our presenter, offered reflections on "longing" - a predominant Advent theme. "Waiting" is another. Well, some of these seeds fell on "good ground"...

...BUT, like things in a garden, they had to develop and that took time.


I've been in Earth's garden now for 78 years and, as a result of life experiences, the intentions I've made and the people I've chosen to spend time with, I am seeing and understanding things in new and evolving ways. This is both exciting and challenging...as light and dark do their work...in helping my transformation...


A key decision has been my intention to see my relationship with my Higher Power as just that: a RELATIONSHIP. It's part of an overall OVERHAUL of HOW I'm choosing to live...FIRST, with myself...and then, with everyone else.

  • One of the fruits of this decision is a RENEWAL of the love relationship between Eileen and I...Now in it's 47th year.

  • Another is my awareness that I don't have to wait until my spirit leaves my body to "see" G-d...I can see G-d NOW...This is in spite of passages like the following that claim we CAN'T see the face of G-d and live:

"The LORD replied, 'I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will call out my name, Yahweh, before you. For I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose. But you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live.'" Exodus 30:19-20


But First, Here's a Musical Shortcut Thru This Post


If you're feeling like the refrain in this first song...continue to the second...










PART 1: REFLECTIONS ON LONGING...WAITING...SEEING G-D


Here's the poem Don shared with us:



A few days later, during the weekly Monday night meditation and contemplative prayer online session offered by the Cathedral of the Incarnation's Center for Spiritual Imagination in Garden City, NY (click link for info)....

...a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke "Go to the Limits of Your Longing" was offered.


Click the next link to hear the poem read...


Go to the Limits of Your Longing

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke               

Translated and read by Joanna Macy


God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.


These are the words we dimly hear:


You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.


Flare up like a flame

and make big shadows I can move in.


Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.


Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

--Book of Hours, I 59



"A picture's worth a thousand words"


"God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night."



"G-d knits us together in our mother's womb" Psalm 139



"Embody me."



Embodying God: What It Truly Means

Embodying God means living as the living expression of divine presence on Earth. It involves allowing God's presence to fill every cell, every breath, every choice until there is no longer a gap between who you believe yourself to be and Who I Am within you. This process is not about striving for perfection but about surrendering to the divine and allowing grace, joy, and truth to flow through you. It is a journey of wholeness where spirit and flesh no longer oppose one another but dance as one divine rhythm.


"Nearby is the country they call life."




While the song referenced in Don's handout - "There is a Longing" - isn't online, here's another by the Monks that expresses "longing":




Dancing is Embodying...


Many years ago, Eileen and I and friends would drive up to Weston, VT to spend time celebrating with the Monks. On warm days, they would open the barn doors and dance in the spirit as they sang. A fine example of embodiment.



Here's a nearby place where we practice the Gentry's "Keep on Dancing"...At the Baha'i Cultural Center in Valley Stream NY.






"There's a Grateful Dead song for every occasion."


The words from Rumi lead us here...



The quoted title of this section are the wise words of my friend Steve - as we surfed and listened to the Dead in many wonder-filled places and states of mind....


I picked this particular video because the thumbnail image featured Bob Weir's countenance. He left these worldly plains on Jan.10 to join Jerry, Pigpen and Phil in the "house" band in the sky. Here they are together at NYC's Radio City Music Hall.






PART 2: "G-D" IS ALREADY..."HERE"..."THERE" & "EVERYWHERE"...


Waiting for "G-d"...as we understand "G-d" (AA)...


For the thoughts and experiences that follow, my hope is that we'll realize that "G-d" (as we understand "G-d" [AA]) is not far away but... rather as...


..."We open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing – closer than consciousness itself." (SOURCE)


 





Francis of Assisi saw God everywhere



Francis was praying alone …, uttering a mantra in the form of a question: “Who are You, O God? And who am I?” [1] The more Francis wandered into the fields of nature, the more he wandered into the fields of his own heart. The outer world invited him to enter his inner world. There he encountered the mystery of God who was at once, Most High, and yet infinitely near; more intimate than his own self....The more he found God within himself, the more he saw God outside himself where every detail of nature spoke to him of God...It was love that moved Francis into other worlds: the world of the leper, the world of the poor, the world of earthworms and wolves, into the world of everything, because only in the world is God born through love. However, one must be able to see and listen to the sounds of divine love crying out in the birth pangs of the new creation. Francis set his heart on God’s passionate love, his mind on knowing this love and his eyes on seeing this love.  

[full article at next link]



Is there any place we can go where G-d isn't?


Psalm 139 The Message

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?

    to be out of your sight?

If I climb to the sky, you’re there!

    If I go underground, you’re there!

If I flew on morning’s wings

    to the far western horizon,

You’d find me in a minute—

    you’re already there waiting!

Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!

    At night I’m immersed in the light!”

It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;

    night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.


Mountaintop experiences...

If you're like me and grew up with Hollywood's portrayals of Moses on the mountain, we were shown that only a select few ever had this experience of closeness. Worse, parts of scripture paint a fearful image of what can happen if we desire face-to-face intimacy:


20 But you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live.”

--Exodus 33:20 New Living Translation (SOURCE)


Street level (ordinary time) experiences... 

All her life, Mirabai Starr wanted to be one of the “God-intoxicated ones” as she calls them—the kind of spiritual person who exudes stillness and embodies equanimity. The type of person who might chant all night in a temple or know the Beatitudes by heart.


And then, she didn’t want that. Instead, she wanted to walk the path of what she calls the ordinary mystic—someone who’s able to be present with what is, whatever that may be.

Starr wants that for all of us, too.


“I want you to be exactly who you are: a true human person doing their best to show up for this fleeting life with a measure of grace, with kindness and a sense of humor, with curiosity and a willingness to not have all the answers, with reverence for life,” she writes in her new book, Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground. “Say yes to what is, even when it is uncomfortable or embarrassing or heartbreaking. Hurl your handful of yes into the treetops and then lift your face as the rain of yes drops its grace all over you, all around you, and settles deep inside you.”


The Sunday Paper  caught up with Starr after her book reading in Boulder, Colorado, this week to ask her how we might get better at saying yes to what is, find more love and grace in the everyday, and walk the path of the ordinary mystic.


"G-d loves things by becoming them."


Speaking about Bono's affection for Richard, Oprah says:







[from the video's description] In his new book, "The Universal Christ", Father Richard Rohr writes: "God loves things by becoming them." Here, Father Rohr shares with Oprah why "Christ" is another name for everything and asks us to discover God's presence in everything and everyone around us.


PART 3: FOR THOSE STILL UNSURE..."Go to the limits of your longing..."


BLIND FAITH - "Can't find my way home"







U2 - "I still haven't found what I'm looking for"


"I have climbed highest mountains

I have run through the fields

Only to be with you

Only to be with you


I have run, I have crawled

I have scaled these city walls

These city walls

Only to be with you..."






[from the article that follows] “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” tackles, in touching fashion, the struggle to maintain faith, when the proof of divinity can’t ever be pinned down by us mere mortals. In every verse, the narrator describes his efforts, taking him through all manner of obstacles. And every time that refrain (But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for) returns, a fresh pang of anguish hits once again.


Even when he does make some progress, it’s contradicted by another feeling. The healing of honey lips and fingertips only serve to foster more longing within him: It burned like fire / The burning desire. His search engenders loneliness, when he imagines himself the only one left on the outside of heavenly love: It was warm in the night / I was cold as a stone.


For all these bumps in the road, he holds fast to his beliefs, as the final verse makes clear. He anticipates a paradise where all the colours bleed into one. Perhaps it’s telling that “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” went to No. 1 in just one other country besides the band’s native Ireland: the U.S. U2 officially earned their American roots-music stripes with this soul-stirrer of a track.




YUSUF / CAT STEVENS - "On the road to find out"













 
 
 

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