The Kite
While in meditation with my Holy Yoga students God granted me the following glimpse. I was a kite, filled with beautiful colors and shaped marvelously for my intended purpose of flying higher and higher still into the sky. I knew what I was; I knew I was a kite. I knew what I was capable of because I knew my Designer. I knew how I was made and where I came from. And I could see myself flying high above the earth, enjoying all that had been given unto me; reaching my face to simply feel the touch that only the Son can lavish upon me. The warmth, the love, the awareness of His presence. When suddenly I looked down to see my string still attached to the earth, and I came crashing to the ground. As if my recognition that I was part of the world below me, was to my demise. I felt and thought as if I was defined by the world. As if I was part of all that it holds deep in the layers of its core; the darkness, the chaos, the forgetfulness, the doubtfulness, the fearfulness, the ugliness. And I fell. It was only for a moment. Then once again I rose understanding, a little better with a little more certainty and clarity, that I am both. I am part of this world and all it’s darkness and part of the longing that draws me closer to Him and all of His Lightness. I embraced that having one without the other would not work for a kite. Being tethered to the world, as I know it, would cause me to tumble to the ground and remain there with no hope of flying. I believe after some time I would even begin to forget that I could fly at all; not believing that the likes of me was ever created for such remarkable a thing. And if I ignored the earth below I would float carelessly around the vast expanse of the skies, with no regard for the men and women and the relationships God had made the content my life so full with. So I found the balance that only Grace offers, the balance that God says “I Am the Wind, I give you flight. You are correct that you are both parts my child, but lest you forget, I Am the Kite Flyer. With me you are safe to keep flying, higher and higher. Never forgetting where you came from or where you are.” And in that moment once again I understood I was Known by Him, I was meant to fly and He would always help me do just that! It was Love, Compassion and Grace that delivered the vision that morning. Nothing of me, but all of Him! God became the breath that is in the breath...for these precious few moments of exchange....
The Mother
So I was reading a book that shared a story of a young man who had lived a troubled life (I am paraphrasing the following retelling) He had been a gang member and had done many shameful things according to his account. He stood before the priest while still in prison waiting to be baptized. The priest began a conversation and the boy took over from within this man. He began to tell of his childhood, his father and all the abuse, the horrible abuse; weeping with each gasp for breath, for understanding, for life. These stories had obviously haunted him for as long as he could recall. Then he began telling of his mother, who stood not too far away, awaiting his baptism. He spoke again with tear filled words but now he said, “She has come every Sunday for the years I have spent in prison to see my sorry a@#.” He looked up at the priest and said, “Do you know how many buses she has to take to get here?” The priest just waited as the boy replied to his own question. “Seven, she takes seven buses every Sunday just to come see me; to bring me Love...”
All I could think was isn’t this exactly how God would do it? He will take seven buses to bring you His Love and Compassion, His Support and Approval...no matter where you are; in the darkest worst places your days have seen. He will get to you...to deliver His precious gift of Love. He came down here to get us once and I believe He does it everyday. That’s how I found Him...He came when my world had been so confused, when the damage I was doing was hurting me deeply and then overflowing to hurt many others. When I no longer knew right from wrong, or better, I had found a rationalization for all of the wrong I was doing. When I had no idea of why I was made or what I was worth; not truly. When darkness was the norm. When I was sure I had a handle on it all. When my reality was that I must fight to be worth something in the eyes of someone, anyone. He came as a child in my stomach to tell me I was worthy, I was chosen, I was loved...I was enough for Him to entrust another life to! Her name is Davyn, it means beloved....because this was the first time I could believe it! I WAS HIS BELOVED!!! And once I heard it, I would know it for the rest of my life! Everything changed for me in those moments. It wasn’t so much that I was acknowledging that I knew He loved me, it was more that I was acknowledging my role as His beloved. I had come to see I was His child and worthy of His love; no matter where I had been or what I had done. I knew He had taken Seventy-Seven buses to get to me....to bring me Love
The Reality
Sometimes, just sometimes I get to be the deliverer of this Love and Compassion, from God, into the lives of others. Sometimes we all do. Sometimes I get to reach down into the deepest, darkest places of another’s life and reflect the Light which has been shown to me. Sometimes we all do. And sometimes I blow out the candle on my way in because I think I know what is best for them, what they need and certainly that I am right about it all. Sometimes we all do this as well! Sometimes I think we reduce our reality by trying to exclude others from God. As if what they are doing sets them out of God’s reach, but truly that is where I was found; in the farthest reach I thought I could have been from God. Our attempts to do this only diminish the mystery of God into some sort of members only club; when the Reality is with God there are no outsiders. That’s right none! We were all meant to fly. True Love, divine love if you will, is ceaselessly restless until it has turned all of our wounds healthy, all our deformities beautiful, all our shame lovely, and all of our humilities laughable. He does not stop; He cannot, He loves you too much. “I have called you by your name, You are Mine.” As Isaiah confesses it... Behold the One who is beholding you and smiling...It is not His disapproval that He incessantly is casting upon you, it is His Love and Compassion and Grace. We are more the disapproving ones than God. Nothing you do is too dreadful for God to come to you in; if He has to take seven or seventy times seven buses to get there. It has been such a disservice to teach that God cannot look upon sin, when most of the time that is exactly where He shows up to get you....right smack dab in the middle of your sin. And you know what? He is looking right at you, with Loving eyes that adore you and say, “ You are my Beloved, won’t you come with me?” The instant we think we have arrived at the most expansive sense of who God could be and how much He can love us, He will break through our insufficient thinking and make Himself known, once more, in a deeper way than before. And all we have to do is be willing to look....to believe in a reality that says God is greater than even what our sense of Him has been and that this reality can and will grow as expansive as our God truly is.....as we all allow our reality to shift.
Thank You Lord for your Love, Compassion and Grace. May we all embrace this deeper still.....
