My Child, I Love Thee

"What is grace?" I asked God

And He said:

"All that happens."

St. John of the Cross*

 

This is a transcript from my journal from August of 2013. This was a private conversation which I thought was meant for me alone. Yesterday, as I looked back on last year’s highlights, I became aware that I can share this with you. Perhaps there is someone in this cold winter that can benefit from the sweet mysterious conversation I had during the peak of summer. I don’t mean for this to be ultimate truth. It was my truth at the time. I hope that the loving wisdom I experienced can inspire you to have your own conversations with what/whom you call sacred.

A note about the name: “God”. I offer this as a name that I have used for what is holy to me. I’m tired of the dogmatic and religious who have hijacked God’s name in the name of being right. I want to use this name respectfully and inclusively. Use what name you will, or none at all. Also a note about the word “thee”. I know this sounds antiquated and dramatic. But it’s what I heard. The word feels akin to the word “beloved” when I use it in my journals. The parentheses are my interpretation.

~~~

August 26th, 2013 7:32 AM

I woke up this morning feeling worried, even anticipating the next door neighbor’s dog barking. “I’m going to have to deepen my practice now.” I said to myself. “I want to be deepening my view instead of making up phantoms and disturbances.” So I came to the writing desk. I sat still and quiet on the outside. Yet on the inside the dog was still barking again and again. Then I tried to cover up the fears with planning my day, conniving my schedule, organizing the uncontrollable wending ways of life.

Then I prayed.

Words came.

And I listened the best I could listen.

“My child, I love thee. I love the rambling voices in our head. I love your stillness at the desk. I will love you all the way home. Now I will offer you the power to soothe your fears. I will help you to: listen but not heed, desire but not need.”

And God spoke deeper and deeper within me. Or should I say that my awareness dove deeper and deeper within me. I heard what is always there. Here are fragments of what came forward:

“How long will you travel this road, small one? Are you willing to grow up and become all that you are and always have been?”

I answer, “Yes, papa, God, Father, Mother. I will pray with you. You are my rock.”

And S/He replied in a thousand whispering voices all at once, like the ocean, like the wind:

“Child, I will love you in your universe. Though I stand apart from all your worries and fetching ideas, I hear all that you say. Pray or ramble… it makes no difference. I esteem thee as my own, my beloved, my small voice chattering, praying, and living in the dark. I see all. I will share the awareness of my senses beyond sense, so that you won’t have to make up a world of pretend.”

“As it is on Earth, so it is in Heaven.

As you love your inner one (child) living in the dream dark, so I will love thee.

Love is perfect in my grace.”

All (beings, things, manifestations) are voices in the dark.

I am the body of the Universe.

Integrate and see through my eyes.

Touch through my hands.

You no longer have to make up a world to feel secure.

And when it is time of no time, you will awaken, and (you will see that) all that you are will have been Me all along.”

“My chatterer, I love thee.

I Love Thee.

I Love Thee.

Continue your talking. I will listen.

I have no choice but to listen, because you live in me. You are becoming me.”

 ~~~

I mused to myself during this time at my desk. Perhaps I am a voice in God’s head, or perhaps in other parts of his/her/its body. If God can love me unconditionally and guide my foolish ways toward perfection, then I can do the same for the voices within me… no matter how afraid or controlling or trivial. As I grow I can learn to love the other voices and beings, in this world, who dream of eternity while thinking they are separate.

Aho, such mysterious wondrous wisdom, Great One. Thank You.

~~~

And the Great Mystery answered:

“As you learn to love yourself, you will learn deeper and deeper secrets of my love for you. And you will awaken to loving all of me (creation) with purer and purer compassion.”

“As you move through the fear inside of you, you will grow fearless in your countenance and discover the peace that is your spirit.”

~~~

The trinity hovered above the desk.

The first said: “Now be me.”

The second said: “Now fly with(in) me.”

The third said: “Now sing my song.”

Love,

Rick

* John wrote this after he'd been imprisoned and tortured by his brothers in the church.

 

© Richard Sievers, January 2014, All Rights Reserved

Ordinary Wonder

The mist lies upon the land, a blanket of grace and quietude. I am listening to a haunting song of essraj and harp*. The coffee is silken warmth. My journal is spread out like the field outside the widow. I write. Whatever comes, I write. Happy. Free.

Then I’m called out of the room. Just for a moment. A change.

Coming back. Sitting down. Same coffee. Same music. Same scrim of fog outside. But a new moment. The old is gone. The old inspiration, the old story being carefully scribed, the old way of thinking, the sense of flow, Gone. And I sit, blank. Blank as the grey of winter. A little befuddled. What can I expect? Everything changes. The old reverie morphs into new questions. After five decades I am learning to be open over and over again.

Yet.

I long for how it was. Long for the coffee and the music to soothe like it did before coming home to a new moment. Long for the flood upon the page. Long for the happiness of a sad song. Then I let go and open my eyes to what Is.

Over and over again, our experience is never the same.

Looking toward my short horizon, I see the field again. In and out, the mist comes slinking and snaking through the forest. The window frames greys and greens in a deep shadow with no sun. Soon enough the sun will come. Someday the forest will fall and rise or burn. The field will awaken and then be harvested. Or some other calamity of ordinary wonder will arrive. 

We are guests, passing through this life. We are passing through these mists and occasional clarities.

Moment by moment, what remains?

Who is experiencing this grace of being alive?

What would life be if we could answer these two seemingly simple questions?

Perhaps we’d be free to roam through time.

Perhaps we’d be free of the leaving everything behind as the next moment comes.

Perhaps we’d be free to peer through the fog.

The answers must remain as mysteries. For now, I simply try to reach out to you. Through the electrons and the weavings of space and time. Satellite to Earth and back again. Through the cable filled with light and into your flickering screen. Now, this moment shared with you is not ordinary anymore.

Thanks for reading this and for taking time to experience a small part of this morning with me. I pray that you find happiness today in the moments shared with those you love.

Rick

*A wonderful album: Within by Benji Wertheimer and David Michael

(c) Copyright Rick Sievers, December 2013, All Rights Reserved

Days 9-10 You Say...I Say

If you receive a version of this blog sent by email press the title link to see the blog in its full format. This posting is a segment of my ongoing series Two Weeks in an American Ashram begun in November 2012. To see the previous entries just scroll down or click on Journal Archive at the right. 

Heard in Prayer:

Child of mine:

You say that you have not done enough to match my grace.

My Grace is sufficient; that's why it's called grace.

You say that you have mostly failed in your callings.

I say that by Grace you serve 

and by Grace you offer what you will.

You say that your mind wanders too much, 

that you are too much a hermit and too little a friend.

I say that my Grace fills the space between your words.

I say that you are beloved on earth.

I say you are wholly mine.

I say you are a strand 

in the very fabric of my purpose 

here in this world of now.

Peace,
Rick

(c) Copyright Richard Sievers, February 2013, All Rights Reserved.