As I sit in my kayak, floating on the placid mountain lake, I take the paddle out of the water and just glide slowly.
The cool breeze refreshes me as I have been paddling hard. The summer sun is powerful and makes me feel more than alive. The only sounds are birds chattering, an occasional insect buzzing past and the distant sound of children laughing on the rocky beach. The gentle swell of the water laps against my boat. My eyes take in the panoramic view of tall, snow capped mountains surrounding me.
Floating on water, yet immersed in the moment. I am only aware of beauty and majesty surrounding me and am struck by one thought.
God, the one who is being, though whom everything exists and has being, is also enjoying this moment. The eternal one is experiencing this moment through me.
As me.
There are mystics that say that there is only one joy—and only one suffering. There is only one being in this universe and one consciousness who has given us distinctiveness apart from Himself. And yet we remain one. Hardly ever aware of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are.
Entwined
Inseparable
Rumi once said, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” Sometimes I wonder—where does God end and where do I begin? That is not to embrace pantheism which believes that everything is God. This is panenthiesm. The recognition that God permeates everything while letting everything have it’s distinctiveness. It’s as Richard Rohr says, recognizing that we are in a “Christ soaked world.”
It’s one thing to experience joy and peace—to recognize God with me, experiencing this with and through me, but what about when I feel like I am swallowed up in the darkness of pain. What about the times when I feel God has abandoned me? I have to realize that God also experiences this with me as well. I know that God has experienced this in the person of Jesus as He hung on the cross, dying and had he not been suffocating, would have screamed to the heavens. Instead, He choked out a breathless, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”
It’s these times that makes me realize that God is not all powerful. I think we insult and minimize God by thinking of Him as such. This gives me comfort. I don’t feel safe with a God who is all powerful, who can stop bad things from happening, but doesn’t. I do feel very safe with a God, however, who is all vulnerable. Who’s power is in irresistible invitation. One who co-suffers with me. One who completely understands my human condition and situation—and still pours love into me like an artesian well. One who will never give up on me, even if I should go to the grave rejecting this love. This love has no expiry date.
“You are that part of God that He does not control, but let be. In the God for whom all things are possible, you are one of those possibilities in the process of being realized. A unique aspect of Her beauty is unfolding in your existence … never before did God exist the way He/She exists in you!”—Andre Rabe