I’m a person of faith. But here’s the thing: while I believe deeply in some things, the beliefs I hold most firmly aren’t statements of religious dogma. Even with my theological education, when I think about dogmatic statements, I generally scratch my head and wonder, “What’s the point?”
Among the beliefs I hold as foundational is one about the purpose of life: my life and your life. It’s a belief that answers the questions, “Why are we here?” and “What’s it all about?” I believe that our purpose in life is to grow so fully that our lives are transformed into the life of the Divine. Along the way, we have moments of union and communion with the Source of All That Is, but ultimately, who we are and who God is becomes one. Perhaps a metaphor conveys it best: the drop of water is in the ocean and the ocean is in the drop of water. It’s something like that.
I find a great sense of wholeness and comfort in my belief that our purpose in life is to grow toward communion with the Divine. Often, when I speak about it to others, I can tell from their reaction that it resonates with them. But there’s a problem with this belief: while I can affirm it, it’s very difficult to live in a way that affirms it to be true.
When I think about what I do each day, I know that my life is filled with mundanities. I get up each morning and complete routine ablutions. While I may sit for half an hour of prayer and meditation, it’s not long before I’m caught up with responding to email, planning dinner and making a list for the grocery store, reviewing documents sent to me by my students, and some days cleaning toilets. While some tasks may seem more noble than others, they are all essentially the mundane tasks of each day. While there is often time for meditation each day before or after going to the gym, becoming that drop of water in the ocean seems more conceptual to me than real when I’m in the midst of my daily activities.
To be honest, I often put more value on other things than my belief about growing toward living in communion with God. I want people to like me. When I spend a few hours reviewing some work a student gave me to review, I want the student to appreciate my feedback. I enjoy writing a great deal. I want you, the reader, to find something that inspires or resonates with you in what I write. In taking an hour or so to make dinner, I hope that my partner enjoys the meal I’ve prepared. The desire to be appreciated and affirmed for my efforts somehow seems at odds with the belief that my life is about being transformed to being part of the life of God.
Here’s part of the problem: we’ve been conditioned to conceive of the Divine as somewhere out there and in a different realm from us. But that’s simply not true. Heaven isn’t up in the sky. That’s because heaven isn’t a place and God doesn’t need a throne to sit on. Instead, as Augustine wrote centuries ago, “God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.” The Divine Life of God is in our every breath. The presence of wholeness and holiness pulsates through us just as our blood pulsates through our bodies bringing oxygen to nourish each cell. For truly, as Meister Eckhart preached centuries ago, “God and I: we are one!” The Divine presence is within and around us. But we become distracted by the mundanities of life. Because of that, the heart of spiritual practice boils down to the practice of the PRESENCE of God as French Benedictine Brother Lawrence wrote. We commonly refer to this practice of the presence of God today as mindfulness.
It’s not that the mundane activities of my day take me away from the Source of All That Is. No, the Spirit of Creation is encountered when I’m cleaning the kitchen, getting stuck in traffic, as well as talking with people who have become frustrated with me. For truly, God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. The Divine is in the midst of all these activities.
What about those preoccupations about being liked, affirmed, and appreciated? Perhaps they are best viewed as distractions from being aware of the life of the Divine which is within and around us. Afterall, a flower blooms and shows forth beauty whether or not someone admires and appreciates it. So it is for us: our growth in transformation isn’t dependent on others. But we do grow further in transformation when we are aware and mindful.
Yes, I am a person of faith. An essential aspect of my faith is that we have the ability to become more than we can imagine. Our life’s vocation is to become simply Divine.
Photo by Dane Vandeputte on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA