A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

Today, John Meunier wrote a post on The Gift of Wonder. A very nice story courtesy of his son as his spiritual director. It connected with a few moments in my life recently.

The other day, someone on Twitter mistyped sacred as scared. That caught my eye because I think it probably truly represents a lot of people’s connection or lack of connection with God. Like the community of the Exodus as they saw the awesome power of God on Sinai, we are scared by just the idea of God. Protect us from God we say. Sure we talk about God a lot and in theory we speak of intimacy with God, but when it comes to truly sitting in the quiet of the Divine Presence we fill it with our voices, or even the noise of our songs and words.

Out of fear we reinforce all kinds of filters and boundaries to our experience of God. We can do it with empty liturgy as well as with the illusion of casual familiarity. How often though do we accept the trappings of devotion as a disguise for our fear. Unless we are in control of the moments and movements in worship and prayer we are scared. So our ideas about God provide the means of our avoiding authentic contact with the Creator and Essence of Life.

While in the Black Hills on vacation last month, I sat on the porch of our cabin and remembered that the native inhabitants of that land held the land to be sacred. A special place that continued to invite wonder and awe. By holding it as sacred, they invited one another to not take the land or the gift of life for granted. The response to that sacred space was respect and honor. Instead of seeking to conquer the land to keep the fearful aspects of the wild under control.

On that porch I sensed an invitation to enter into a new relationship with the land. Rather than see the place as a thing to be used, manipulated and exploited, it has life and personality. The sacred land was calling me to love it with a different kind of devotion. Where we would work together as partners in the living creation.

The invitation from the Sacred Divine is a similar yet primal and primary relationship. God has no desire for us to so fear the Divine Essence that we do anything to avoid a relationship, but that we enter into that sacred intimacy. Yet we have to risk the scared to live in the sacred.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.