A Spirit Broken Out
Went to the labyrinth this afternoon because I thought I needed to refocus. It has been difficult with the move coming in 6 days (a surreal feeling) to stay focused on the things that I think I need to be doing. So I went seeking a gift to concentrate and focus more on my stuff and on God. The temptation with all the busyness is to say I will get back to God when things settle down. Yet, you and I know that then is the time when I most need to seek God’s face.
Anyway, back to the labyrinth. As I walked I realized that focus was indeed my problem, but not in the sense that I didn’t have enough of it, but as in I had too much of it. What I needed from God was not more focus but more openness. The whole playing field was being changed in front of me. I need to have my heart broken open to let all of God’s presence in. The dilemma was that I was working real hard to be so focused on this project or that task that I was focusing God’s presence out of my living moments.
What is the essence of obsession and addiction? An almost compulsive (read binding as in prison) focus on something. One danger of this compulsive focusing is that we close our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies off to the other parts of life. I had my headphones on the other day, focused on something on my computer (I don’t even remember what now) when I felt this slight touch on my shoulder. I jumped and then turned and saw that my wife was home early from work. My shutting down of my senses led me to miss hearing the presence of love.
Is God’s presence focused? Can God only be found in this sacred place or that holy mountain? Does God speak only in one way or in many ways? How have we closed ourselves off to many of the ways that God wants us to delight in Grace and Love by thinking we have to focus more on a limited set of ways God’s presence is with us? I am so glad that as God creates the universe that God didn’t focus obsessively on only a few things but comes to us with broader strokes of fine detail and outrageous color and shape.
Ironically, as I walked, I realized that I am able to accomplish more things better and with greater joy when I am broken open to the breadth of God-life than when I focus exclusively on only one or two things. That also keeps my heart open for those gentle touches of Love that invite me into a new way of delighting in Life and the God-life in me, in us, in the universe.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Your phrase “gentle touches of Love” will be with me all day, longer I hope. The deeper I fall into God’s world the more times I recognize those breezes of love that brush up against me daily. I will remember today that I can be a brush also. Thank you. May you have many Gentle touches today.