Hearing Voices ...

Oooooh, I been a vewy bad bwogger this year...!

I confess that I've been in a post-Christmas-production schlump (does "schlump" have one p, or two...?). I confess that I've been doing a lot of vegging ... attempting to get caught up with my multitude of emails (got it down from 500+ to 200, and then it went up again ... sigh...!). I confess that I've been talking myself INto this schlump/schlumpp ... and I'm hereby choosing to walk myself right out of it...!

So, I want to talk about hearing voices .. not just voices, but the Voice. Remembering now, with a grin on my face, that old email about "how to have fun in Walmart" ... one of the suggestions was to go to Walmart, wait 'til you hear an announcement over the PA system, and then hold your hands over your ears, fall to your knees, and wail, "The voices, the voices, why can't they leave me alone?!?"

Yeah, I so want to do that...!

But I'm not talking about those voices (enlightening though they may be!). I'm talking about the still, small Voice.

Back in my church-going days, I kept hearing about how others were hearing God's Voice ... and I never did. I wondered, were they all pretending, or was I cosmically left out? Was something inherently wrong with me? I mean, some folks are born missing a limb, or an internal organ ... was I born missing my soul...? My conscience? My ability to connect with God...? Or, had I lost it?

Ahhh, the wretched agony of fearing that I was either spiritually defective, or had inadvertently committed the unforgivable sin...!

I tried hard to hear God ... read the Bible incessantly (though I would hear it in the voices of those who claimed that they alone could interpret it for me) ... prayed all manner of prayers, both rote and spontaneous (most sounded like, "OH God! I am a wretched woman and unworthy to hear from you! Please save me from my own depravity!" ... as a (wo)man thinks in her own heart, so IS she ... believing I could not hear from God, how surprising was it that I couldn't ...?).

I had a friend explain it like this (he, who was horrified at my theology,
nevertheless was used by God, profoundly):

"Y'know those 'too-good-to-be-true' thoughts you get ... those thoughts that
blow your mind and feel so good, and make God seem bigger and better than you
imagined... those thoughts that make you feel totally loved and accepted and
led? Do you then think, 'nah, that couldn't be God!'...? Well, I ask you: why *wouldn't* that be God?"

Stopped me in my tracks.

I became more aware, less dismissive, of what I was experiencing within ...

Did you ever have a sudden leap of recognition within you, as you heard or read something? Something that suddenly felt real, meaningful, true ... something that "resonated" (almost as if you'd forgotten something you once knew/experienced on some deeper/higher level of awareness)...?

It changed my experience ... I now realize that God is never *not* talking to me
... I just wasn't tuning in.

Shalom, Dena

The Trouble with Transformation ~ Part III

I trust that you, like me, desire more than anything to follow the Spirit's lead into all Truth, as we can bear it. I trust that you, like me, desire to embody love, in all of it's pure expressions, even while acknowledging and honoring that we, in this human form, cannot help but do so imperfectly ... embracing the gift of that, in that we learn from our mistakes far more than we learn from our successes.

While we're enroute, it's far too easy to misunderstand each other ... far too easy to confuse egos (our own and those of others) with who a person really is -- their spirit. Our perspectives are just too limited, too based on our past-experiences-grid, too focused on what we *think* we know. I prefer to see through my limited perceptions, and discern the heart/spirit of the person behind the presentation. That, too, is a work in progress -- I am a mixture of Unlearning and RElearning and REmembering ... quite the wild and adventurous (and messy!) process, no? Perhaps that's why we're told to be so lavishly generous with our love for one another, while IN this process together ...

I do trust the Spirit to lead ... even despite our own human inclination to "miss the point". I believe God knows our inherent limitations far more than we do, knows FAR more our proclivity to be deceived (to self-deceive!), and works with even that, for our good. I trust the process, I trust the bigger-picture, because I trust God. We're just not a match for Him...! Woo-HOO!

I trust that we will know His Voice, and follow Him ... and that we will not follow the thief nor the stranger, even if it takes starting after either of those, for a season, and thus learning from that experience ... I see that we come to God, not because we get it "all right", but because of how He seeks after the lost one(s) 'til He finds them -- thus, we come to God even because of how we keep getting it "all wrong".

My spirit breathes a sigh of relief at this awareness ... I don't have to strive ... I don't have to attain or maintain the "right path." God, who is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, is on my side. He's on your side. EVERYTHING, including (& especially!) our blunders, our mistakes, and our seeming tragedies, work to our good ...

We *can* trust Him, and thus live this, the Abundant Life, with optimism and unfettered JOY...!

Why not...?

Shalom, Dena