For months I did not share the words that I had heard with anyone. This was Spirit’s work, not mine. But when the year was nearing its end, I told my husband what I had heard. He was not sensing anything of like kind in his quiet.
For the next six years I journeyed with Mystery learning how to traverse between two landscapes that I knew well, the metaphorical desert and the concrete day-to-day. I found that in going back and forth between words and impressions, I ultimately opened to the wisdom that allowed me to navigate through the unknown.
In the beginning, I prayed frantic, anxious prayers as if it were up to me to make this illumination come to fruition, which led me to finally admit how much I depended on answers rather than living from a simple trust. But in time, my praying turned to breathing.
I breathed…inhaling Spirit and exhaling all else. And as I breathed, rather than talking my prayers, I found my faith shifting from a wordy, heady faith, down into the resting place of my heart.
It was in that peaceful heart place that I found Spirit, the great “I Am” and the accompanying undertones, I am enough. There, in my breathing prayers, I Am provided a resting place to let it be and to keep me open to surprises, even to seeing gifts being birthed through hurt and rejection.
I was traversing between:
The metaphorical desert and the concrete day-to-day
Respecting my journey and my husband’s correspondingly
Speaking words and breathing prayers
Seeing the metaphorical desert and the concrete day-to-day as equally real
Reveling in the enlightenment, while considering that I had possibly slipped over a line that delineates positive mental health from negative
All of this time, while traversing between many paradoxes, I was privileged to be a part of an extraordinarily fulfilling ministry, in a beautiful part of the country surrounded by stellar people. Why would I want to leave?
In the tug of the both/and, I learned to trust the questions, not just to trust God in the questions, but also to trust the questions as actually being Mysterious God. As enlightening as the cognitive information and knowledge had been, I discovered a reverence that took me beyond both and further into faith.
To be continued…
Sacred Ruminations*