What
If
“God
comes to you disguised as your life.”
Paula
D’arcy
I first
heard this quote last week as a women’s brunch—seven women: two dancers, two
retired radiation therapists, one retired chaplain, one international improvisational
musician, and one old sponge, retired counselor/teacher/artist/massage
therapist/blog writer. Guess who. We were asked to bring a “wisdom quote” to
share with the group and this was one of them. I had never heard of Paula D’arcy,
but reading some of her online material, I want to know more. Regarding the old
sponge bit, I once had a dream that I was sitting in a stone grotto looking
into a pool of clear ocean water. As the lights came up in the grotto, I saw
that the floor of the pool was covered in beautiful sponges—the living kind. I
realized then that sponges are my closest aquatic relatives.
“God comes to you disguised
as your life.” Wow—let that sink in for a minute. We are constantly looking for
evidence of God’s hand in our lives, of how the Divine operates in the world. When
times are difficult, as they have been for the last few years, we assume that
God has abandoned us, or that God doesn’t care about human suffering, or that
God is punishing us, or any of the other notions that make God a separate
entity, different and apart from human beings. But, what if God, the Divine,
the Holy One—whatever you want to call the
one we think of as foreign and far better than we are, is life itself. What if Holy
Spirit is the life force that animates us; that brings people and events
into our lives so that we can see ourselves as we are. So that we can grow and
change.
How would the events of
your life look different if you knew that they were sacred tasks set
before you by the living consciousness that created and continues to create the
universe. After all, we are but one tiny speck, one blip in time, one very
small and short vibration in the magnificence of the cosmos. We are here for a
moment and then gone. Surely, we are here for the furtherance of that life
force, for the greater good, to change the trajectory of our species toward
sustainability. We take the planet we are part of for granted, thinking that it
will always provide for us. In the actions of climate change, of our lakes and
rivers drying up, in record hot temperatures, in the failure of our public schools,
in the everyday occurrence of human beings living on streets and under bridges,
and in the dysfunction of our government agencies, what if the Creator of life
is showing us what happens when we forget that we are the stewards and that it
is our job to care for all of these.
What if the same vital
energy that creates and supports life, that we have given the name “God” is
right here in us and around us, above and below. What if our task is, as
Genesis suggests, to be stewards of the garden Earth. And furthermore, to be stewards
of the sacred life that we have been allotted, and that of our fellow humans.
God comes to us disguised as our lives. May we open our eyes to see it.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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