We take time
From wherever we are,
to create a quiet moment
Praying in an unusual way: contemplative questioning.
We gently put aside what we know, perceive or think,
right or wrong, good or bad, about the world around us.
It can be intense and painful and overwhelming
even joy can turn into a self-consuming fire.
We look out and see legal systems fail our expectations, community lynchings, political animosities, pandemic after affects, high prices, low wages, business struggles, relationship deserts, noisy neighbors, etc.,
and we decide something about ourselves - we are naked, ashamed and we go and hide.
We heard of an injustice of such egregious proportions
That we wept and angrily gnashed our teeth
We gently put aside what we know, perceive or think,
right or wrong, good or bad, about the world around us.
We are creating a space where we can just listen for and hear the Voice of God, feel The Higher Power - moving in, through and around us.
In the book of Genesis, if you remember, Adam and Eve, after an interesting discussion with the serpent in the garden, ate fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil triggering a chain of events:
Their eyes were opened (but they already could see so what did that mean?)
They saw that they were naked (They were already naked so what changed?)
They became ashamed (weird since they had been naked together and with God since well... forever)
They took fig leaves and made coverings for themselves (effected their own solutions?)
They 'heard' the voice of God and hid
Out of this God gently asks Adam an important contemplative question:
Genesis 3:9:
(JPS Tanakh 1917)
And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him: 'Where art thou?'
Adam, Where are you?
Would God, The Higher Power, not know where Adam was that He would need to ask?
Think for a moment of all the roads you've travelled, the dark and nasty corners you found yourself in and yet here you are in the sunshine of the spirit today - where is it you went or could have gone that God was not?
Or did the question come from a different understanding?
Perhaps "Look at ‘where’ you ‘are’, "Who is with you"?
What thoughts does this inspire for you?
Sitting in this quiet moment - hear the loving Voice asking you "Where are YOU?" - not the world or others in the world , but "you".
As I think about this, I think of some of the places I have come from:
- almost drowning,
- almost being consumed by addictions,
- physical, mental and emotionally violent interactions on my part and the part of others,
- hungry,
- homeless,
- broke,
etc and yet in spite of this, in spite of me, I have been carried beyond my wildest dreams. Some Divine interventions that took me where I, based on my actions, did not deserve to be.
So, for me, as I hear God asking me the question "Michael, where are you?" I am pulled out of the mental mess I was in and given the chance to take a grateful breath and say "Here, God, with You. I am in Your hands, I am walking on Your footprints in the sand, in the Garden of my life."
It is said in “A Course In Miracles”:
T-31.VIII.
Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. 3 It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. 4 Would you be this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this:Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.
For He has come, and He is asking this.
(A Course in Miracles – Chapter 31 – VIII. Choose Once Again)
This is choosing once again to take our place in the Kingdom of Heaven or back in the illusion of our minds - because remember Adam did not say "with You Father" - he said where he thought he was from the perspective of one who has fallen - (JPS Tanakh 1917) "And he said: 'I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.'"
That perspective triggered another chain of events - for another sermon prayer for sure.
So all this to say and bring to awareness (eyes) the opportunity to re-orient our perspectives, to choose once again, to a more true HP perspective, spiritual north,
- in spite of what the world may be trying to say to us it has not the power to change who and what you are.
And in our moment of contemplative questioning prayer we affirm that to be true.
Aho. Ase. Amen.