Video: |
Meditation:"If I were a preacher, I would preach nothing but the practice of the presence of God. If I were a spiritual director, I would recommend it to everyone. For I believe there is nothing that is so necessary or so easy." |
Transcript:
In our first meeting my spiritual director asked me what came to my mind when I thought about the word ‘warmth’ and then asked me to describe my first memory of this feeling.
When I was young, like four, almost five years old, I had a fort deep out in the woods that I used to go to. I called it my honeysuckle fort. On my walk into the woods, I picked wild blackberries and popped them into my mouth; and then once I got to the clearing where the big rock was covered with honeysuckle, I’d climb on top of the rock and bathe in the sun and breathe deeply the smell of the honeysuckle. I felt perfectly content, and perfectly me. I didn’t feel my age, or my gender, I didn’t even feel like Kelley—I felt connected somehow to something much larger than myself.
I realized that this was the first time I experienced the “presence of God.” I was only 4. I didn’t know then what it was, of course, but I can look back now and see - wow, Yup, that was God. There was no theology, no language, no deep intellect or even longing. The only way my little four year old self recognized and acknowledged God was to eat the blackberries and breathe deeply the honeysuckle; to lay on the rock and feel the sun against my skin.
I consider that moment the beginning of my spiritual journey. Not the day I prayed the “Jesus come into my heart” in Vacation Bible School. I really just wanted the shiny white Bible they were giving away if you said the prayer. All the moments on my fort I felt the presence of God most viscerally in my bones and I’ve been trying to find ways (some good and some very misguided) to stay in that presence ever since.
Now before I move any further I want to make clear - this presence isn’t some ecstatic feeling. And what my sense of it is might be very different from yours. But I do know that the sense of God’s presence at the core is a sense of warmth, of being held. It’s also not something we have to find. It’s already there, we just have to become aware of it.
One of my best friends, David, never wanted anything to do with any concept of God. For him, God was church and church was a group of people that told him that being Gay was an abomination, therefore God thought he was an abomination. Nope not for him. Until one day he got sober and gave his life over to a power greater than himself. When he told me he was going to rehab I said to my husband, “I don’t know how the whole God thing’s gonna go over.” But when he got back, he was changed. Not just changed, deeply transformed. I asked him, “so… the God thing?”’ He told me he was outside taking a walk and sat on a bench and just prayed, “show me.” And just then a breeze blew and he felt it - presence. He felt that sense of being held by a force of Love and Compassion and Strength and he knew he was going to be ok.
Today David has a committed centering prayer practice but he says at any point, he can feel God’s presence right in his solar plexus. He describes it as warmth. When he has trouble feeling it, he says all he has to do is imagine his mother’s eyes and there it is. Understandably, church still feels dangerous to him, but his commitment to living in the presence of God makes the whole world his alter.
So for this lesson I’d like you to spend some time thinking about what the word warmth means for you. It might mean very different things to you than it does to anyone else. That’s ok. That’s good. After you articulate whether in conversation or in a journal what those elements of warmth are - then try to think of the first time you felt that kind of warmth in your life. It might be very early on, it might not be. Tell the story of your first encounter with God’s presence in as much detail as you can, again, either to a friend or group or in a journal.
Next for your call to action.. Haha .. action to Presence. Do a little google search on the term “hygge.” You might have already heard this century old Scandanavian term for “well being.” To practice hygge is to create a space for comfort and warmth. This might be similar to what you think of when you think of “self-care” but there’s some nuance here. Think of it as anything that brings that sense of warmth to your solar plexus. Anything that settles you into the presence of God. And you don’t need theology or language around it. You just need to eat the blackberries and smell the honeysuckle. God is there.
In our first meeting my spiritual director asked me what came to my mind when I thought about the word ‘warmth’ and then asked me to describe my first memory of this feeling.
When I was young, like four, almost five years old, I had a fort deep out in the woods that I used to go to. I called it my honeysuckle fort. On my walk into the woods, I picked wild blackberries and popped them into my mouth; and then once I got to the clearing where the big rock was covered with honeysuckle, I’d climb on top of the rock and bathe in the sun and breathe deeply the smell of the honeysuckle. I felt perfectly content, and perfectly me. I didn’t feel my age, or my gender, I didn’t even feel like Kelley—I felt connected somehow to something much larger than myself.
I realized that this was the first time I experienced the “presence of God.” I was only 4. I didn’t know then what it was, of course, but I can look back now and see - wow, Yup, that was God. There was no theology, no language, no deep intellect or even longing. The only way my little four year old self recognized and acknowledged God was to eat the blackberries and breathe deeply the honeysuckle; to lay on the rock and feel the sun against my skin.
I consider that moment the beginning of my spiritual journey. Not the day I prayed the “Jesus come into my heart” in Vacation Bible School. I really just wanted the shiny white Bible they were giving away if you said the prayer. All the moments on my fort I felt the presence of God most viscerally in my bones and I’ve been trying to find ways (some good and some very misguided) to stay in that presence ever since.
Now before I move any further I want to make clear - this presence isn’t some ecstatic feeling. And what my sense of it is might be very different from yours. But I do know that the sense of God’s presence at the core is a sense of warmth, of being held. It’s also not something we have to find. It’s already there, we just have to become aware of it.
One of my best friends, David, never wanted anything to do with any concept of God. For him, God was church and church was a group of people that told him that being Gay was an abomination, therefore God thought he was an abomination. Nope not for him. Until one day he got sober and gave his life over to a power greater than himself. When he told me he was going to rehab I said to my husband, “I don’t know how the whole God thing’s gonna go over.” But when he got back, he was changed. Not just changed, deeply transformed. I asked him, “so… the God thing?”’ He told me he was outside taking a walk and sat on a bench and just prayed, “show me.” And just then a breeze blew and he felt it - presence. He felt that sense of being held by a force of Love and Compassion and Strength and he knew he was going to be ok.
Today David has a committed centering prayer practice but he says at any point, he can feel God’s presence right in his solar plexus. He describes it as warmth. When he has trouble feeling it, he says all he has to do is imagine his mother’s eyes and there it is. Understandably, church still feels dangerous to him, but his commitment to living in the presence of God makes the whole world his alter.
So for this lesson I’d like you to spend some time thinking about what the word warmth means for you. It might mean very different things to you than it does to anyone else. That’s ok. That’s good. After you articulate whether in conversation or in a journal what those elements of warmth are - then try to think of the first time you felt that kind of warmth in your life. It might be very early on, it might not be. Tell the story of your first encounter with God’s presence in as much detail as you can, again, either to a friend or group or in a journal.
Next for your call to action.. Haha .. action to Presence. Do a little google search on the term “hygge.” You might have already heard this century old Scandanavian term for “well being.” To practice hygge is to create a space for comfort and warmth. This might be similar to what you think of when you think of “self-care” but there’s some nuance here. Think of it as anything that brings that sense of warmth to your solar plexus. Anything that settles you into the presence of God. And you don’t need theology or language around it. You just need to eat the blackberries and smell the honeysuckle. God is there.
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