“Faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.”
I have believed this for a long time and I always will.
I Don’t Look at Scary Statistics – I See a Spiritual Famine
God isn’t really trending – at least I don’t think he is! I don’t know why though because it is the only thing that makes sense to me sometimes – the fact that we are in relationship with God.
I just can’t imagine not finding this truth for myself. My most treasured possession aged 4 was my picture service booklet I took to church. Yes – I was raised to go to church – but more importantly I had an idea that was was a very significant thing that I learn about God. It seemed so big and exciting from where I was standing with my family in our 3 bedroomed house. Yes, we went school and had Birthdays and Christmas and new shoes . . . but this was God – a whole different kettle of fish! I wanted to know who God was and what he might have to do with my life and me.
As I grew older I became more and more convinced that life wasn’t enough just as I saw it and felt it. There was clearly something very big missing. It sounds so cliche but there was a gaping big hole and I had no idea what was supposed to fill it – O Levels, A Levels, a degree, husband, children maybe? But I knew right then and there that those things would not fill it.
I liked the idea of God, the mystery, the journey, the expecting of the unexpected, the puzzling things out with someone so much bigger and wiser than me! I loved that idea and so I chose to pursue it down all the twisty turny roads that have bought me to this point. And I will pursue it for ever!
Let’s tell our children about God. Don’t sell them short and give them the idea that life is just about having things, knowing things, a career, partner, children and holidays. IT ISN’T.
Living by the Light – When I Struggle to Connect
Seeing the colours in the light gives to me clues as to why I may feel a certain way in my body or emotions, or why I am thinking certain thoughts. I don’t mean that I am just dependent on my connection with the environment. Far from it – I am always asking God what things mean and how to interpret the messages I get through my relationship with the light.
Today, for instance, I notice a lack of yellow, and this always causes me to feel less emotionally connected than usual. When I first realised this, I was quite devastated, thinking “How am I going to live if I don’t feel really emotionally connected all the time. Isn’t this what everyone is striving for?” But I have had to let go of that way of thinking. God has shown me that connection runs deeper than heart energy or hearts or being grounded or breath or stillness or emotion.
Connection is through the soul. It just is!
Living by the Light in January – Ask God what it is all about!
In my last post I said how God speaks to me through my relationship with the light. Today I want to give you an example of what I mean by this.
January isn’t that long after the winter solstice on 21st December so I am always amazed at how the light suddenly becomes brighter and more enlivening as soon as Christmas is past.
For me, though, the spectrum can feel imbalanced. I may be seeing more blue and violet light but I am struggling to see red light. I feel energised yet I don’t feel very grounded. And when I don’t feel grounded it is harder to process all of my sensitivities so it is harder to engage with my projects and with the world.
My reaction could just be frustration and defeat but I prefer the route of frustration and determination! If I don’t feel grounded it means I struggle to use the analytical part of my brain to work everything out and create plans. Another way of looking at is that I can experience more freedom and less control. I have to dig deep to find out what I should be doing. What helps is to give myself a role like ‘Path Forger’ or ‘Battler’ so if I am having a hard day I still feel some sense of purpose.
This year these were the roles I gave myself in early January. I was trying to work out how I could fit some music composing and crafting into my life to help me stay feeling more enlivened and positive this year. I studied some complicated computer software and taught myself a new knitting style! I didn’t manage to complete a project. I was just path forging. Then came a day of deep black cloud and I really felt stuck because I need light to feel good. That day I was thinking about my next way forward with my highly sensitive son. This gets beyond path forging at times. It turns into battling!
Now, having connected with those energies I have kept myself moving and motivated. Now I sense the light going through a more balanced phase I am ready and charged for more creativity like writing this post!
If you find yourself feeling challenged by your own feelings this January, go deeper, and find out what is there. Talk to God and ask what it is all about. As far as I can see, God is is the only one who really knows!
Living by the Light – An Extra Anchor for my Soul!
Hi, I was lying in bed last night struggling to sleep. This is not a mild sort of struggle. It is a real ‘I can’t sleep!’ It has been going on for a long time and I would say that it is because I don’t feel grounded. So sometimes I talk to God.
Last night I said ” God, Why do I have this problem?” and God replied “Because you are not fully in your power” I asked “What stops me?” and God said “You.” I said “How?” God said “Well, you have this experience of me. Why don’t you write about it?”
So here I am willing to write. I find it hard to write about my relationship with God. It is like someone asking me to write about my husband. I mean there is so much I could say . . . where would I start?!
So here is an attempt to explain how I go about things in my day to day life. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t quite say “Hello, God” but I immediately wonder what my day is going to be about. I check into my feelings, my thoughts and how my body feels. This always gives me some clues. Well, this is all I used to do . . but these days it is a little more complicated. 3 years ago I realised I had an unusual experience of being very sensitive to the light. As the light changes, so do my feelings, thoughts and how I feel in my body.
For instance today, on January 9th, I am seeing a little less red in the light that I think most others would see and a little more violet that most others would see. The lack of red causes me to feel ungrounded and the violet light causes to me to feel full of ideas and inspiration. Understanding more of why I feel the way I do enriches my experience of God. I think “Wow . . God is speaking to me through my relationship with the light. This is amazing!”
I would say that living by the light is like having an extra anchor for my soul. It takes me deeper and helps me feel more connected to myself, my environment and of course ultimately . . . God.
A Message From God’s Heart!
A Message from God’s Heart
Q What is it you want to show me?
A I want to show you about the great wonder of having a personal relationship with me.
Q And how do we do that?
A Simply by knowing that I’m here, ready and willing to commune with you.
Q And what do we do?
A Talk to me. Share your troubles and your joys, your doubts and fears, your hopes,dreams, ambitions, ask me anything you want to know.
Q And will you answer?
A Of course I will answer, in any way you believe that I can answer – through your dreams, through things people say, books, writings, nature, a voice in your head, synchronicity in your life, opportunities that open up, doors that open and close and more . . .
Q And could we just say that this is the universe speaking, or light or love?
A You could, but isn’t that an impersonal way of looking at relationship with me, the great Mystery, the Divine? If you find your breakfast on the table in the morning aren’t you delighted that someone laid that out for you? Or do you say “Good, the universe provided again!” Doesn’t it give you a warmer feeling to know that a person with feelings lovingly laid that breakfast for you?
Q So you want us to depend on you like a child depends on their parent?
A Yes. I didn’t create you for self-sufficiency but for relationship. I didn’t put all the answers in books, or in angel cards, or what you call your Higher Self or even in the Bible. They are hidden in me the great Mystery and because you and I are one, I will reveal them to you as and when I know the time is right. Our relationship is one of co-operation – a dance if you like, a banter, a dialogue – and between us we will unfold the greatness that I have put in your heart.
Call it Coincidence or Call it God – Your Choice!
I have a 12 year old who is scared of many things. He is scared of the electrical sockets in our house, the gas fire, the fact that he didn’t have chicken pox, a tiny speck of blood on his finger, an expression on someone’s face, the tone of someone’s voice . . . and the list goes on.
My son has light, colour, pattern and sound sensitivity. Life is naturally more scary to him than others. He is struggling to process all the colours, patterns and sounds in the world. And I totally understand his fear.
So . . . How Can I Help Him to be Less Fearful?
We have tried rationalising things, teaching him more about things like electricity and gas but it doesn’t seem to work. The only thing I can do for my son is to teach him about faith.
I find this pretty hard as my son has a very scientific mind and has learnt that he feels better when he is being very logical and systematic using the left side of his brain. And to live by faith we need to let go into the right side of our brain, where things aren’t rational and logical. They are more feeling based. This is where we make connections and see life as more of a whole, and start to wonder if there might be a bigger plan, and whether we might be part of it.
My son already lives by faith in a way. He often says that things don’t feel right, whether that is food, place, a person or an activity. And he is very strong on these things. However he is also open to change. He told me very strongly that he didn’t want to have anyone massage him the other day. Then when I walked out of a massage with a very nice lady in a very nice place, he said ‘Actually, I think I would like to have a massage!’
When I spoke to my son about faith this morning, I could see deep down that he found it comforting and he said “Well it was a bit of a coincidence that we found our white doves the way we did!” We had been to a pet shop and we spoke to the lady there of my son’s love of pigeons. We had decided to buy a smaller variety of doves called diamond doves, but when we next went to the pet-shop there were 3 beautiful white garden doves in one of the aviaries. They had lost their mother and the lady at the pet-shop had hand reared them. We all knew they were waiting for us!
Call it coincidence or call it synchronicity or go for all out comfort and call it God!
Diving Without an Oxygen Tank!
What’s it like to dive in the deep? I don’t know as I’m not a confident swimmer and don’t like being out of my depth! And yet every day God asks me to go diving. I want to go through some routine to assure my safety and put on my oxygen or at least my snorkel but God tells me that ritual is not necessary and that if I simply trust, I will keep breathing.
In my search for an experience of God I used to sit and pray and meditate for hours. I was looking for some experience that took me beyond the humdrum normality of my everyday life. I wanted to feel a sensation in my body – heat, tingling, anything. I wanted to feel an intense joy and to be able to think only pure thoughts. Sometimes I did feel some of these things and then I’d want to meditate for longer and when I stopped meditating I would feel a sense of disappointment, even fear at finding myself back ‘in the world’.
I decided that something wasn’t right about this. I had been born into the world so why would I have such an intense desire to escape from it? The truth was that I didn’t feel part of the world – I had no sense of belonging. I realised that I needed to heal more than I needed to meditate. Since that day I have chosen not to partake in any ritual whereby I might try to escape from myself and the world again!
Church – It’s Time for a Change!
I have visited many churches and sometimes been inspired by the preaching, sometimes moved by the worship, sometimes touched by the sense of community but I have never quite felt at home. I have always had a slight sense of isolation as I sit in my seat and the service unfolds. I start wondering about the person next to me and wonder what their life is like and how they are touched and moved by God but when the service closes and we speak, it is only of surface things and the depths within both of us remain untouched.
Occasionally someone has wanted to know what bought me to their church and when I have said God told me to come, they have given me a puzzled look and said “You mean you felt you should come.” And I repeat “No, God told me to come!” And I wonder but stop myself from saying “Doesn’t God speak to you too?” On other occasions people have asked me directly “Are you a Christian?” Oh how I hate labels! Of course the person wants to know whether I recognised myself as a sinner and asked God to help me with my life on a specific day at a specific time. Well, as it happened I did but there was so much more. On that day I opened myself to the great mystery that me and God are indeed one. Since that day we have walked and talked and laughed and cried together as I have walked the twisty turny journey of my life. To reply to the question “Are you a Christian?” I would incur the same pain as if someone asked me “Are you a wife?” or “Are you a mother?” How deeply impersonal and how wounding to my soul.
At a different sort of church people don’t seem bothered at all by such matters. In fact the minute the service closes it is as if we haven’t been in church at all. The conversation is only of how well you timed your roast dinner to be ready and who is making teas at the village fete. The word ‘community’ is used a lot and there is much ‘doing’ and organising. But, I think to myself – I am hungry deep down in my sprit – hungry for some touch of another soul, hungry for connection, a moment of realness. I want someone to hear me, I want someone to see me but I feel invisible. I want to hear and see another but there is no chink of vulnerability big enough for me to crawl through. I shake the vicar’s hand, respond to the comment about how my son has grown and pass down the church steps, unnoticed and unknown. I had so many thoughts, feelings, ideas, gifts and talents that I wanted to bring but there is no room for such things here. I came to meet others on their amazing journey of faith but I wasn’t met.
Where can I go now? Like many of us, the answer is ‘nowhere’. On a Sunday morning I will stay home in the warmth and intimacy of my family. I will go walking in the hills and fields near our home and watch the flocks of sparrows chattering in the hedges. I will make junk model dinosaurs with my son and listen to him giggling with glee when we can’t seem to make the head stick on the body. I will do anything to make life flow through my body, interest my mind, light up my emotions but I will not go to church where I feel no life and my soul simply goes to sleep.
Christianity – A Message Written in My Heart
Many years ago I found myself on a course to become a Shiatsu Practitioner. I’d been suffering with chronic fatigue and became fascinated with energy work as a way to understand my illness and healing. I was a long way from full recovery but just about found the strength to drive the 70 miles from Somerset to Totnes in Devon every few weekends to attend my course. Having arrived there I then had to find the strength to learn something new that challenged me physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually!
The biggest challenge for me was spiritual. Within the philosophy of Shiatsu there didn’t seem to be any room for a relationship with a personal God. I found myself floundering and lost within a belief system that saw God as more of a cosmic force and us as metaphysical beings. The most significant thing to me was the absence of grace as I was told I had to work at my connectedness. It seemed that God couldn’t simply flow in me and through me to heal others. I had to do energy exercises, breathing exercises and meditation to work up the chi. I was insensed, enraged by this challenge to everything that I had found so dear, so beautiful and so meaningful. Why couldn’t I just work with the connection I already had – permanent and unchanging?
I struggled to understand this new philosophy and to try to reconcile it with my own experience for 2 years. I even created my own approach to Shiatsu that I called Shiaki based on a more Christian philosophy. I found myself speaking up for Christianity – the wonder of relationship with God and the gift of grace – at every twist and turn of my course. I was utterly amazed by my zeal and conviction as I had no idea that I would go out on a limb like this in a situation where no-one else shared my experience or beliefs. It was as if God had lit a fire in my heart and nothing could quench it.
Today I still feel the Christian message. If people try to discuss doctrine with me I feel my energy sink and become almost troubled. I don’t have all the answers and some days I don’t know exactly what I believe but as I live my life I become more and more aware that the message of Christianity is written in my heart
Holding Hands with God 