Warning! I like to talk about God.


Good morning friends,

It's a rare Tuesday that I'm not working at the artisan studio, social networking like a fiend. So I thought I would blog for a second. I know that this may not be the most popular topic - God, spirituality, and the like. But if you've ever read my blog, you know me. You know it pops up. Let's collectively breathe, open our minds, and move on.

I took a moment to check my Mom's blog today, Stephanie's Bible Blog. She is writing a Bible devotional book that focuses on the usage of different thematic words - soul, heart, body, mind, etc - all pertaining to the human body. So each blog entry is a different devotion on a theme. I came across this one today: Monday, June 14. I'll quote it below:

"Soul

And the Lord shall guide thee continually,

and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat

thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered

garden, and like a spring of water, whose

waters fail not.

Isaiah 58:11



Meditation:

What are the circumstances of my life that feel dry and unfulfilling?


Affirmation:

The Lord God is the ONE who ends the drought.


Prayer:

I surrender every detail of my life to the reign of your Merciful Love, Oh God."


It makes you think. What areas of my life are flowing, like a spring? What parts feel dried up and sad? It really has been my experience that God - or spiritual connection - is life's sprinkler! When you surrender the drought to God, or the Universe, or whatever you call it, a little green starts poking up. IT'S WILD. I know this from experience. A few things in my life that seemed completely unmanageable about 2 months ago....I surrendered them at this weird lecture given by Marianne Williamson, author of Return to Love, down the street. I just let them go. "Whatevs! These areas are dry and scratchy and sucky, and I've done everything in my power to fix them, and I can't. So God, maybe you can take over." All of a sudden, a month later, two months later....I'm in a freaking oasis! NOT EXAGGERATING. I feel like a watered garden right now.


Just think about where our human plans get us! Look at this mess in the gulf. Look at the state of our planet right now. I think it is because of what my Mom used to call a 'crisis of imagination.' Whenever we used to complain that there was nothing to do around the house! "This is the most boring day, place, thing, etc." She would say we were having a crisis of imagination. Inevitably we would concoct some creative, hilarious cure to our boredom. I believe that creativity comes from the source - the source of all good, the source of love. When our best plans are getting us nowhere...we need to connect with the source of creativity and imagination. There is often a fabulously creative solution to our problem - but without surrendering - we often do not find it. Soo often, my BEST idea is a million times worse than God's plan.


It feels counter intuitive, doesn't it. So let's say there's a drought, literally. What do we do? Do we just sit around and hope that God makes it rain? Well, probably not. People will start looking for water sources, making plans to save and ration what we have, sticking straws in cacti, and things like that. We will exhaust all of our human efforts to fix the drought. And yet...it's still not raining. When we surrender and allow God into the situation, I believe our feet start moving in the right direction without us even knowing it. We are somehow propelled forward toward the good - the love - the creative solution. And just as we stumble across a huge source of water in the desert, it starts to rain. FOR DAYS. The answer is always so much more miraculous than we could have imagined. That's how surrender and faith work. Our own imagination and problem solving often misses the mark somehow without it.


Last night, my friend Drea came over to have a little art project time. Our goal? To make the best vision boards in the world. Now, 'vision board' is a trendy term these days. Especially in LA. Everyone heard about the book "The Secret", because Oprah liked it. Well a lot of what the Secret talked about was visioning your life, and manifesting it. They call it the Law of Attraction. So if I am feeling really skinny and being really happy about being skinny, I will eventually be skinny. That's the IDEA. Well, I sort of came and went through my secret phase awhile back. I guess my reason is that I think God has much bigger plans for us than we could imagine - and much different ones too. How many vision boards are there out there about helping other people? Some maybe. But most of them have cars and pretty places and houses and money and success and love on them. Our ideas of what an abundant life on earth entails are sort of...shallow and short sighted. But I never give up the opportunity to make a collage! This is one of my favorite things to do. So we chatted and listened to music and cut out shit for our vision boards and glued them on the canvas, and it was a ball! And it made me feel fabulous! And I looked at the board, and thought, "This looks pretty good! I could handle all of this stuff in my life. That looks happy."


But in the back of my mind I'm thinking, what does God's vision board look like? Because that's the one I want to be a part of, and i know it's a gazillion times more interesting, beautiful, detailed, loving, and miraculous than mine!


See, we can make plans till our last day on earth. But eventually, we're going to use up all of the water. We're going to use up all of the oil. We're going to use up our material resources and tap out our human abilities.


It's time we connect to the eternal life source. That sounds soooooo Avatar, doesn't it. It's like we need to stick our ponytails into the earth. haha! But seriously. There is an overflowing well of happiness and light and joy - the kind that enriches and enlivens the SOUL. You find it by continuing to search for God and surrendering your life on a daily basis to this grand universe we live in. At least, that is my experience.


I know where the drought is. I've lived there. I've lived in the desert. And I've tapped out a lot of my resources and plans. I'm pretty much over that.


So anyway. THANKS MOM. For this wonderful blog post. It brightened my entire day! It overwhelmed me with this spiritual balm I will carry with me till my head hits the pillow. LOVE YOU!


"My Life is in Your Hands" - Kirk Franklin


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