The Light in the Woods

2/27/10 Spiritual Presentations           I love You my God, for making it clear that You are here, You know me well, and You love me enough to let me know something about it. I must have prayed sincerely and properly for the release of my pain, because it happened immediately and decisively. Much more than my healing, I value how You have given me Your word, letting me know that it’s right to believe, to ask, and to offer.

I worship You and I honor those mystics who have come before me. They have told of their experiences as well as they could, and You have guided me to study their lesson. All this love is not lost on me. Thank You for Your love – I want, more than anyone but You can know, to have the chance to pour out my love to You in return. I promise to take every opportunity to do this, and still, as always, I ask for Your help in every aspect of my life to be whatever pleases You.

You created me as Your child. Everything You do is for my good, even pain. I don’t need to know nor am I likely to find out what purpose you have for my pain. Sometimes I feel like it’s there so that I can know great relief when the pain passes. Sometimes pain reminds me of all the things in my life that can be painful but aren’t, because of Your mercy. Sometimes my pain makes me compassionate towards the pain others are going through. Even when the agony goes on despite my prayers, I at least have a higher comfort – that of knowing I am accepting of Your plan without complaint; proof that I hold You in higher esteem than I hold myself.

2/19/10 Spiritual Presentations        

For quite a while now I haven’t believed heaven to consist of anything other than pure joy. To me this means that nothing of our earthly lives is needed to complete our heavenly lives – friends, relatives, pets, or places that we loved on Earth. Even if you discount that the presence of acquaintances must cause disruption as well as joy, just as they did on Earth, it still seems that they would not be necessary and therefore would be redundant.

It’s my intuition that only God’s presence is necessary for complete joy. But there is something endearing about the possibility of being greeted by loved ones as we approach heaven. After all, the fear of death makes us cling to the thought that we will be helped into the transition by people we know and trust. Yet it doesn’t ring true to me, as the concept of “God is All” is so ingrained in my mysticism, and wishing for something else in heaven seems sacrilegious.

I guess there would be no harm, though, in speculating about these wondrous things, much in the way we review what we would do with a million dollars if we won the lottery. I think it’s human nature, since we don’t know for sure about something that’s inevitable, to make up what we would like to be true just as an exercise.

Tonight as we were ice fishing we were discussing how the people in the stories we tell all seem to have passed on. I mentioned that I’m old enough that I think I know more deceased people than living ones. This got me to thinking that the moment of death must not be too hard to handle, since so many have done it. From there I began to reflect on how people might envision their entry into heaven.

There standing on the huge expanse of lake, the enormity of God’s work came to mind. As wondrous as it is here, how awesome it must be in heaven, where we get the full effect of God. I began to play with thoughts of what I’d like to witness as I pass over, even though it’s my theology that the presence of God will comprise my ecstasy and that alone will be enough for me. I went from being able to eat whatever I want without fullness or guilt to having unlimited opportunity to spend my own time however I want. I thought of the things on Earth I didn’t like and gave some thought to how it would feel to not have to worry about them.  I envisioned a lack of responsibility; the freedom to have my head in the clouds instead of on worldly considerations.

At the end of this exercise I looked out onto the lake and was struck by something I don’t remember ever having noticed before. I never realized how beautiful the smell of warm snow is when the sun starts to go down and the cold starts to bring all the senses into sharpness. It’s like a prayer, a gift, and a comfort from God that all is well because He wills it to be. When we see how God presents beautiful things like the smell of snow to us here on Earth, we can be comforted that He really does want only good for us and is capable of providing it in His mercy – now and on into eternity.

12/20/09 Spiritual Presentations             

Last night I shut off the light and settled down under the covers to pray. It was zero degrees, making the ice boom like cannons – a nice sound, like thunder without the fear of lightning. The stars were many and beautiful; as always they remind me of the immensity of the universe, and that always makes me wonder about God’s works.

I was thinking about the fall of man, away from perfection and exiled here, where the ugliness of life stands side by side with the beauty of nature. The only way God, who doesn’t create evil, would allow us to exist this far away from Him is if the agony of this life is somehow a good thing. To me, this life is an illusion anyway; maybe the evil inherent in it is even more than an illusion. Maybe the illusion that is our suffering here exists to bring us greater joy. Did you ever look back on a bad time in your life with that curious relief that comes from realizing that life is better because the bad time is over? Did you ever have pain that was almost worth it because of the relief it brought you when it went away? Maybe that is the reason for our worldly existence – to make the transition back to reality even more wonderful than if we had never left. Maybe God gets something from this on our behalf. Whatever insight I was poised to get, I never got any further than this in this reflection.

I was about two minutes into my thoughts when I heard a soft, swishing sound come out of nowhere. I sat up in bed and listened but there was nothing but the sound I couldn’t identify. So I got out of bed and went over to where the sound seemed to be coming. That’s when I realized that during my meditation, for no reason at all, my old radio had started to play even though it was turned off.

It hadn’t been tuned to a valid station – what I heard during my meditation was white noise coming from a dead radio. Happening when it did was like God acknowledging that I was finally understanding something that He wanted me to understand. I fiddled with the power switch to see if there was a short in it, but the switch was working perfectly. Once I started messing with the dials, the radio no longer played when the switch was off, but that’s without a doubt the way it was when I heard it. It’s been over nineteen hours and the radio hasn’t repeated it’s unasked-for performance, and the switch is still working properly.  I can’t duplicate the miracle.

I still need more inspiration on the initial thought that set off the radio. I will put myself in front of God and I’ll reflect on this with patience, and eventually I will have more insight on it if that’s God’s will. But for now the important thing is to stress that God does give us signs to encourage us to come to Him for enlightenment. Some signs are less subtle than others, but we should be amazed at everything anyway. Our first thought when given a sign should be to go before God and thank Him for His wisdom instilled in us, and to pray that we will use this wisdom wisely.

“Dear Lord, I am so small, but it’s OK, because I belong to a great God who can do anything to show His love for me.”

All mysticism does is bring you before God – God will inspire you as to what to believe, and it will be right because it’s God’s work. While we do not ask for signs, it’s a valuable gift to be able to receive them.

11/20/09 Spiritual Presentations

Every morning this time of year we prepare the boat and leave the dock; the same raven appears and accompanies us for miles as we make our rounds. There are other ravens around, but only one follows us throughout our work. I think this is the third fall this oddity has taken place, and I suspect it’s the same raven each year.

I’m under no delusion that most animal behavior is not food-oriented. But this goes well beyond that kind of motivation. The raven merely goes with us, and when we land at the dock again back home, it goes back to whatever it does all day and we notice it no more.

This of itself is amazing, but today it took on a new twist. As I usually do, I was meditating and praying as I rode in the boat. Today I was thinking of the morning devotional on which the prayer “Hasten, O God, to save me; O Lord, come quickly to help me.” (Psalm 70:1) was being expounded. I thought of this prayer to God in conjunction with the raven as a sign from God, and I wondered if the two might come together as one manifestation – sort of like the mystic experience as prayer and presence coming together.

As soon as I said the prayer with this thought in mind, the raven lowered its flight to just above me in the boat; keeping up with us perfectly in sync as if all else was standing motionless, and it began calling continuously. Never had the raven approached the boat this closely before, and never did it call continuously. That it chose this moment to do this was for me not a surprise, but a validation.

My husband always said his Indian family believed it possible to come back after death as an animal. In fact we’ve been calling this raven “My Old Grandmother”. I don’t believe we come back after death at all, but I very much believe in the ability of God to reach out to make Himself known to us in any way He wishes. He has put me in the state of mind where I can welcome and expect this visitation, and I have used my free will to recognize and accept His attention.

What a joy it is to be in harmony with God and to know it. It is a cycle of being loved and loving that keeps validating itself the more it goes around. I’m grateful for whatever good spins off from this cycle of love between Creator and creation.

9/6/09 Spiritual Presentations              Almost everything I’ve studied in the last couple of days seems to point coincidentally to the subject of personal intercession. It’s as if God is calling my attention to the very thing that shakes my faith.

This comes at a time when I’m in the middle of finally making a move to implement something I think God wants of me. I’m not at all assertive; I hear God, but then I tend to wait for further instructions. The things I’m reading lately seem to want to address the value God puts on our bringing of others to Him, as Jesus presented us to God through His intercession.

This is precisely relevant to the project I’m working on right now. So the coincidences might be designed to comfort me that the steps I’ve taken will bear fruit. Or maybe they’re to let me know that it’s good to have taken the initiative. It seems that this is the way God has chosen to speak to me this time – through coincidence; each instance being appropriate to the issue at hand.

It’s like the opposite of the “dark night of the soul”. Though it’s painful when God withholds Himself in order to impress a truth onto my spirit, there’s a corresponding joy when I come through the test with my faith intact and my love of God enhanced. So I thank You, God, for the trials that cause so much joy when they’ve been overcome. Thank You for the opportunity to love You, to serve You, and to please You. Thank You for Your good plan – the miraculous ways You find to carry it out and Your generous sharing of the knowledge of divine ways.

8/17/09 Spiritual Presentations             

Thank You, Lord, for answering my prayer and totally taking away from me that agonizing pain. Some would say that my tooth would have eventually stopped hurting even without Your intervention. But You and I know that nothing had happened, except Your loving grace and my prayer to You, that could have severed that exposed nerve from reaching the pain receptors in my brain.

Isn’t that a lot like the mystic idea of perception of reality? Reality is not always what we perceive, like pain, because we do not perceive perfectly, and reality, being reality, is perfection. You, Lord, and Your will for our good, is what reality is, and You have prepared for us a place with no pain and no heartache; free from fear or worry.

You give us glimpses of this perfection to inspire hope in us. We cannot fully experience Your perfection while we go through our trial of Earthly life, but this faulty perception can clear up in small ways if we ask for this in sincere, honoring, prayer to You. And each time perception is cleared up for us through prayer, we release a little more of our doubt and fill the void it leaves with hope.

Prayer leads to hope – this is why mystics communicate with God. Yes, we can receive what we ask for but, more importantly, we receive validation for our hope in eternal life and the part God plays in this Earthly one.

6/11/09 Spiritual Presentations

Yesterday I kayaked on the lake in a misty rain. There were billowy clouds marching across the sky constantly; now and again one would start to weep big drops of cold rain. Behind it the sun kept up its job, but it’s power today was no match for the clouds. At one point I watched for a few minutes as a rainbow rested in the trees before it had a chance to arc into the sky. I didn’t know until now that this could happen, but now I know it can because I watched it clearly.

The mosquitoes went wild – they would buzz around my head and get into my face, but they never lit or bit. I had to ask God to please stop them because I could hardly breathe, and my trip would be ruined just as I was starting it. Yes, they went away instantly. I don’t care if no one believes me, other than the fact that if they don’t, they’re wasting so much beauty and peace that comes with holding God in your heart so close that His love and care comes through when you ask for it. It is always there, but it’s when we ask for it that we are lovingly made to realize that it’s with us.

5/8/09 Spiritual Presentations          I’d had a headache for over a week, brought on by neck muscle problems. It wasn’t killing me, but the aspirin I had to take was going to cause harm eventually. Plus the longer constant pain goes on, the more I fall into a pit of despair. Last night I asked God to comfort me because I had had some bad news earlier, and I prayed that if He gave me relief from my headache I would take that as a sign that I was handling the bad news in a way that pleased Him. Instantly I relaxed and I did feel better and was able to fall back asleep.

This was in the early morning hours. When I got up for the day I thought that I wouldn’t be surprised if the headache was back, because things that happen in the night usually seem more dramatic than they do in the daylight. Finding I really did have no headache, I praised God in my wakeup prayers. It felt so good since the disappointing news had shot down royally something I had asked God for that I thought would bring Him glory, and I needed His special comfort then. And I was quite surprised that having specifically asked for a sign, I actually got it. I had assumed God would not appreciate being tested that way.

By the time of my morning devotions, doubt had already started to creep in. Could I have been having headache respites all along and put that in the back of my mind in favor of a miracle? Did I ask for a sign that God was still with me despite my recent setback, or did I just ask to be relieved from the headache? Did the headache go away just because talking to God relaxed me? Could the miracles I witness be proof only that I can control my pain using my mind? Or is pain itself a delusion I can let go of?

The point comes to me now – in any scenario I can think of, it’s actually God doing the work no matter how much input there seems to be on my side. It doesn’t matter how the headache came to be gone; the headache and the healing are both works of God designed for my benefit. Same with my bad news – what I wanted was not meant to be, but sometimes life’s hurts illustrate how blessed it is to go to God for comfort.

Here’s the thing about asking for a sign, and why I think God uses signs sparingly — we are never totally satisfied or fully convinced. I ask for a sign from the Divine, I get it, and still I doubt. For a person who believes with such certainty, my disbelief is enormous. This is a good lesson for me – to take what I’m given as proof of God’s love; to know that His ways are mysterious for a reason; to learn to heighten my belief by accepting everything as from God; to hold off judgment of others’ disbelief when my own is lurking stealthily beneath the surface. This lesson was worth the headache and could be the real sign for which I was searching.

4/26/09 Spiritual Presentations  

I’ve missed the eagles that used to sit in the tree on the other side of the bay opposite my window. Do they stay away from their nesting tree to draw attention away from it? Surely they don’t have eggs in the nest this early, or if they do one of the eagles would be sitting on the nest, as it’s below freezing these mornings. The nest is slightly below the tree line, under the dead top of the white pine where the eagles normally perch. I can’t see the nest itself from here, but I could see the eagle if one were in it.

Then off to the right I just noticed, like a picture perfectly framed by close-in Norway pines, a huge eagle perched on another dead-topped white pine I never noticed before. It’s almost as if all the limbs on one side of the top of one Norway have been cut away so I can see this new perching sight in the distance framed by beautiful Norway needles. I laugh to myself as I think: God must have made sure this tree uncharacteristically grew that way so that I can watch the eagles from here.

It sounds funny, but then, could that be true? Why not? God has that kind of purpose and that kind of patience. I like to reflect on nature serving God this way. I know many instances where, when I’ve felt especially close to God, animals have appeared – foxes, wolves, eagles, otters – as if to confirm God’s presence and compassion for me. This makes some people nervous – shades of divine fraternization and nature worship! But from here it looks like God loving me and showing it – it fits perfectly as the sort of thing God would do for me. The fact that He could do it draws out my awe for Him; the fact that He would do it draws out my loving respect.

3/29/09 Spiritual Presentations      Today something happened that made me realize what up till now I only suspected. I can get so wrapped up in spiritual matters that I’m oblivious to what’s going on around me.

The phenomenon had started out a while ago with someone telling me something while I was being attentive to God; me acknowledging it and then later on having a memory of acknowledging something but being clueless as to what it was. All this accompanied by the feeling that I could never hope to pick the memory out of the air because it never really nestled itself in my brain in the first place.

Now, I’m no spring chicken and I know a certain amount of mental distraction might be normal for me, but then I graduated to this thing where I would instantly feel like I was asleep as soon as I began to pray. It’s almost as if when I start to talk to God my brain shuts off everything else in order to keep the lines of communication open. It isn’t real sleep because I’m aware of words and ideas into and out of the oblivion without any feeling of actual transition. In real sleep it usually takes awhile to get there, and when I wake up I’m instantly and obviously in a new state.

Today the oblivion happened while I was fully aware and functioning. I was writing and reading and when I got up to stretch, I realized my husband was being awful quiet and he hadn’t been in and out of the cabin as he would be normally. He wasn’t downstairs and there was no smoke coming out of the workshop chimney. Then I did experience a small spark of memory – I think I did hear a snowmobile start up but must have instantly dismissed the consequences of that. I looked out and saw that one snowmobile was missing. My husband had gone somewhere, maybe even told me he was going because he normally does, and most likely he had waited outside the window so we could wave goodbye to each other like we always do. The reality of what took place is lost somewhere in a fog, and the meaning of that makes me uncomfortable. My husband must already have been wondering about me — I had turned down an invitation to dinner with friends we really wanted to visit. This is God’s day for me and I must honor it better than I have been doing lately, but this will be a rare thing for one of us to go visiting without the other and my mental fog adds to the strangeness of the situation.

Of course, no one else understands the implication of my needs when I’m immersed in God because I don’t talk about it. From my studies I realize it’s possible to get unbelievably wrapped up in God – I just never thought it would happen to me. It goes to show that God has ways we don’t understand because of our human weaknesses.  We need to welcome His ways even when they make us seem foreign to ourselves and cause us to look odd to others. We must allow ourselves to follow the ways we are inspired to go, as long as they are good and right within our spirits.  I pray for the ability to discern properly, and the understanding of my friends and family when I act on my convictions. And I pray not to fear the effects of this course toward union with God, but see them as appropriate to me because they are designed by God Himself.