When life shows up....

Sometimes it's subtle.
Sometimes it's overly avert.

Sometimes it's a shock.

Sometimes it's been there all along....

Photo of artwork in a coffee shop, name unknown, message received.

Life brings us so much each day.  Just sit, quiet and look.  Can't see anything?  Close your eyes and look within. It is in the moments when you think God has forgotten to deliver that He is doing his greatest work within you.  Be sure to pay attention to these quiet moments because they are preparing you for the moments that will arrive around the corner when everything you need outside of yourself starts to show up.  Your tools, your relationships, your challenges and your opportunities.  All yours.  All for your work in the world.  It all shows up for you to use in delivering upon your unique, divine mission in life.  

Don't miss it.  Odds are that it won't look like what you expect nor arrive when you're ready, but it all comes.  For you.  And only you.  Are you opening the door?

Don't try to read between the lines...

Sometimes the message is not between the lines, but among the lines.

And sometimes, the messages you need to receive find magical ways to reach you.

This was the message I received today.

Open yourself and forgive.

You gotta have faith (ah-faith-ah-faith)...

No, not for the reasons George Michael sang about (though that's good too), but for the purpose of getting through.  It seems that we spend so much of our lives getting through something.  An interview, a breakup, a project, a period of change....  We spend very little time in the static space that must exist between one thing and another.  Between achieving/winning/surviving/overcoming one thing before another pops up in our lives.  That between time is as rare as the half of a day when all of your laundry is clean and there is none in the laundry basket.  It's a small moment, it's there, but it's always quickly replaced by a new and growing pile of laundry to be done.  Again.

Unlike the ever-present chore of doing laundry which is mundane, mindless and entirely nonthreatening (save for the part of you that just doesn't want to do it), our ongoing process of getting through something in life just seems to keep coming in surprising ways.  Sometimes we find ourselves getting through something that crept up on us, completely unexpected.  Sometimes it comes as a shock.  Sometimes it's welcome and lovely and you don't mind it at all.  But life is always a series of one thing after another that we are going through.  Or, as you might say, one thing after another that we are living.

Tonight I'm focused on having faith for the getting through.  I'm not talking about the kind of faith that we call upon when we find ourselves in sudden and desperate communion with God.  Not the impetuous kind of begging for the strength to get through something that happens when we are in crisis or hurt or in survival mode. Rather, the kind of faith we have that allows us to move from one phase of life to another.  From letting go of and moving beyond something we know well and moving into the great unknown of the future - having faith along the way that all will be well and banking on it being better than we can imagine in the present moment.

That kind of faith that we humans manage to have in the getting through-ness of life is the kind of faith that is an intimate conversation between ourselves and the higher power that allows us to get through anything. And I do mean anything.  And as humans, across the great span of human history, we have gotten through so much and most of the time we have done it not realizing just how strong we were while we were going through it.

So here's to having faith... and getting through.

The moment before serendipity happens...

What does it look like?  

What does it sound like?  

Does the world get brighter?  

Do your ears buzz a little bit?  

Do you get hints?

I'm left asking myself all of these questions today.  Serendipity happened last night.  Divine intervention happened last night.  I was sent to a place to meet a person I'd never met who was sent to give me some very important information.

Where and what don't matter here.  But because I am human - and you are too, and because humans are curious and need context for a story to take root, I'll give you a bit of the story.  I will tell you though that what I am truly in awe of is how and why it happened as it did.

Yesterday afternoon's much awaited sun beckoned me to go for a drive - a drive which took me to one of my favorite places on the planet.  I wound up at my friend Corey Tevan's art studio - a lovely, imaginative human being who, when I'm in his presence, always brings me a sense of love and magic - and who opens a part of me I didn't realize needed opening.  Upon entering his gallery, he poured me a glass of wine and we began to talk.

I thought nothing and everything of the things of which we spoke - our conversations are always esoteric and like a dance without choreography but with a rhythm all their own.  This was mentioned, that was mentioned.  A person I'd never heard of was mentioned - and as such, I thought nothing of it.

My friend Corey Tevan and his art.

That person I'd never heard of and who my friend mentioned off-handedly, just happened to be the person I was meant to meet last night.  I drove an hour to have a poignant and incredibly serendipitous conversation with someone I never knew existed.  Someone who, most significantly, had no reason to show up unexpected as he did.  In fact, he had reason not to appear on this day and time as he did.  The list of evidence that shows that we were meant to meet is astounding - and terribly personal so I'm going to have to leave it at that for now.  But this person I'd never met is a messenger and a man of God - and he had a very important message for me - a message I had been seeking with great intent in recent weeks.

So you can imagine that I'm now asking myself what happened - what existed in the moments leading up to this providence that I can recount?  Is there something palpable in that space that I can use to be more aware of an impending kismet moment in the future?  Or is serendipity so magical precisely because we never know when it is going to happen?  Or can there be both?

Thinking back on my drive North, my mind was full of questions and my body was full of emotion.  I felt as though I was shedding something I no longer needed - but in order to do that, I needed it to all bubble to the surface.  Every song on the radio spoke to me.  The ride seemed both longer and shorter than usual.  My mind was elsewhere - I don't know where it was but it was not freely open to the unknown as it might have otherwise been on a random afternoon drive.  It was processing something and I now think that it was processing and working through things that needed to be brought to a level of consciousness as I grew closer and closer to my fateful encounter.

Somewhere between my divine thought of "Hey, it's so nice out today, let's go for a drive" and the moment my answer arrived in the form of Reverend Joe in his big black coat... somewhere in that divinely choreographed afternoon was a moment of "before" my serendipity and I am beyond curious to find it and recognize it for future use.   I am wise enough, though, to know that the mysteries of the universe are far greater than my linear, organizing mind is capable of understanding, so I am comfortable with the the reality that I may never be able to satisfy my curiosity.  But there's something to be said for being aware of the wonder that comes from a glimpse of divine magic when it happens.  It is that which I revel in at this moment.

My messenger, Rev. Joe.