Talking with Santa, talking with God

Lord, it’s almost Christmas. I remember our priest friend Fr. Bill used to always tell us, Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming! Everyone talks about Santa and we need to remember, Jesus is coming!

Talking with Me is not like waiting in line for Santa Claus, a little nervous and very excited, and wishing the other kids would hurry up so it can finally be your turn—and then you say your piece, but have to climb back off Santa’s lap and walk away and wait a whole year before you get another chance to be heard.

Being Timeless means I hear you yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and I hear everyone else in the same way. I KNOW you. All of you. And your thoughts, all human thought is not noise to Me, although some individual notes are discordant in the overall tune of the piece. Think of a conductor and an orchestra. A great conductor can hear each individual instrument, each voice. A great conductor knows when an instrument is out of tune, or off the tempo. Am I not greater than the greatest earthly Maestro?

Let Me retune your individual part of the chorus, of the symphony. Let Me give you back your song. Let Me simplify the score, and at the same time, increase your confidence and skill so you can play an ever-increasing complex melody of Love that is in harmony with those around you.

What if THEY are out of tune, you ask. Listen to Me. Don’t tune yourself to others’ instruments. Tune to Me, to My Voice. Every solution for every life’s question can be clearly heard when you are in tune.

 

Whale Breath

In looking back at old journals, I found one entry that had a goal of writing in my journal once a week! These pages have shaped me, changed me. They are like whale breath, voluntary but essential. I have thought for a while that the writing of them helps me to listen—and to remember, or if I don’t remember, as a way to be reminded. I remember once years ago I gathered up everything I thought You had spoken to me through others and wrote it all out, but the emotional result was depression, not joy. It puzzled me then, I never understood that. And I have been reluctant to do that kind of exercise since. So the fruit of that effort was not nourishing. Can You help me understand why?

Those were all words other people said to you in My Name, interspersed with what you had sensed on your own. This was a time when “hearing from God” was hard for you and you relied mostly on others, and frankly what you received wasn’t enough. Some of those entries were a sentence or two. You were starving by then, and you had to wade through a lot of mud, a lot of “hard times” entries to get to even those morsels of Me. It wasn’t My true words to you that depressed you. It was the clinging residual of those times that depressed you.

Think about your prayer vision experience, in February 1992. That brought incredible joy. That brought abundance of assurance. That experience changed your life with Me. That was the turning point, the watershed experience. That was a foretaste of how you live now, and its legacy is all good.

Seek and Find

Lord, what would You say? You speak to my artist friend in drawings. You speak to me in nature, in patterns of light and shadow, and in words I hear in my heart.

Don’t ever stop searching. Those who seek, find. Those who search for Me with their whole heart, find Me. Search for Me everywhere and you will find Me, everywhere waiting. Search for Me in one small narrow corner of the vast universe, and that is where you will find Me, but that is not only where I Am. Truly I Am Everywhere-Present, all the time calling and speaking to you.

What you are experiencing is expansion of experience. You are shattering gates and knocking down walls to My Presence in your life. You are letting Me rush in like a flood, like a Mighty Wind. You are letting Me flood your soul and your life with Light. You are expanding your territory when you expand the boundaries you have put on My Presence.

I Am not playing Hide and Seek with you, not as you think—rather, I Am Hiding in Plain Sight, just waiting for your least glance, your least nod, to notice My Presence. Then you will hear Me plainly say, Here I Am, Here Have I Been All Along, Here Will I Be, in all your tomorrows.

Clarity

Lord, I feel like we have both become discouraged, and discouragement is obscuring. Like, like the dangerous aspect of fog.

You need clarity. There is a reason you de-fog your lens. Too much fog and you can’t focus on anything. Then fog becomes like Silence. You don’t want to be deaf or blind. You want to be clear—clear eyes, clear heart, like clear water. You want to reflect Me and My heart through your life.

Oh, God, the Seat of Seeing I want to sit in is Yours. And the One I want to walk the beach with and listen to is You. And if I take myself on a guided meditation and walk a path through the forest and over the footbridge and into the clearing, the One I want to find there is You. Yes, I’d love talking animals and birds to accompany me, of course! Like Narnia! But as Lucy said, it’s You, Alsan. It’s You.

I Am always with you. I will never leave you. Even when you don’t know what to do, what to say, where to go, where to be, I AM. And I AM by your side, and I Am within you. I fill all things—for you that means I fill all circumstances, all situations, with My Holy Presence. Let Me fill your mind, your thoughts. Let Me fill your body with health and strength. Let Me fill your days and your nights. Let Me fill all things in your life with Myself. Let Me be the air you breathe that sustains you moment by moment. Let My Spirit flow through your body like oxygen-rich blood, energizing and inspiring every part of you. You sing praise. You sing hallelujah—not because I need to hear it, but because it is healing for your soul to remember the Song. Fill yourself with Who I Am. Glow—Sing—Blaze. Stand—Walk—Run—Fly—Soar. Lift yourself up as you lift My Name up in praise and thanksgiving. That is the key for you—sing praise.

Questions

I guess if I can write lyrics on envelopes, I can talk to You on envelopes!

You can talk to Me anywhere, anytime, about anything.

Okay, then, I want to follow up about hearing from You. I mean, hearing from You about others. 

In what way?

Can I? May I?

Sometimes the best way to talk is to listen. Ask a question and then listen to the answer. Often the answer is itself a question.

Yes. So?

So instead of talking to those you love, if you ask a question, an inspired question, you will actually be prompting them to listen to their own heart. And that is where they will find Me–just as you did.

Okay, I understand. So…what’s the question?

Ah, yes, the question. Well, there’s not really the question. But here is a question. What in your life, right now, brings you the most joy? Why don’t you answer it first?

The most joy? A lot of things bring me a lot of joy.

Yes, but I asked about the most joy.

Honestly, Lord, it’s You. It’s knowing–I am smiling just writing this–it’s knowing I am connected to You. That You hear me and I can hear You. I didn’t use to have this connection and I so treasure it.

You always had this connection, you just didn’t know it. And now you do.

Yes, and that knowing–that brings me the most joy.

So here is a question for you to think about for tomorrow. What brings you the most peace?

 

 

 

The Clockmaker

Lord, You know what Oct. 18th means to me, that day long ago that I heard from You in that church service when those visiting pastors came. I can’t believe I spent that day of all days in the ER!

Every day is that day for you, now. Unlimited access, 24/7, 365. Then, you needed validation, assurance, healing. Now, you need confidence, boldness, healing. Then, you believed hearing directly from Me was reserved for the few, and you felt fortunate to receive a few paragraphs, spoken from the mouth of a prophet, with your name attached. Now, you know My Heart is to have a deep, abiding relationship with everyone, everyone on the planet. That is My Purpose. And, as the Cross demonstrates, I will go to any length to have it, even play to human wants for justice that are misguided.

Misguided?

Much of what passes for justice is really revenge. What I want is so much bigger, so much deeper. I want forgiveness because I want transformation. I want everyone and everything in right relationship, in harmony and in balance. I created the Universe as that place.

But we sinned, we didn’t listen to You—and we got kicked out of that place.

 Think of the story this way. Humans managed long, long ago to upset the Balance, to introduce enmity between themselves and the natural world and between one another.

Wait a minute! Wasn’t the Serpent the Enemy?

Not until they listened. Not until being out of balance seemed more attractive than in balance, and war seemed more attractive than peace, and hate seemed more attractive than love. Imagine a different ending. Imagine Eve saying to the serpent, I think you are mistaken. Let’s go talk to God about this. Imagine a role where humans were—as I intended—stewards and teachers, learning from Me and teaching others.

But the kicked out part?

Eden is just another word for life lived in balance. They destroyed the balance. That is what led to the separation and the sense of shame, guilt, and fear I never intended for My Creation.

But…but if You really are the Creator, I mean, if You began everything

Think of Me like a clockmaker, crafting and then winding a clock. The clock is designed to keep time and keep it accurately. But dust or dirt can clog the works, causing the clock to malfunction. A good clockmaker will clean and oil his clock as well as keep it wound. The possibility of it winding down always exists—but so does the reality of all running smoothly as long as the clockmaker stays involved. But what if the clock could somehow run itself, wind itself? I gave the clock—humanity—the power of creative choice. I give that same power to every baby born.

Because each child is born now into an out of balance world, each child has to choose at some point, and then choose over and over, who to believe and who to be. You are choosing to believe in Love and Peace and Joy as a Way, a Way of Being in the world, a way of living moment to moment and day to day. It is, in Native American terms, the Good Red Road. It is, in both eastern and western terms, the Way.

Every human who chooses this way helps tip the earth ever so slightly back toward the balance I created in the first place.

Connection

Lord, what would You say? Come to the silence, quiet my chatter, that is what these morning pages are supposed to help me do. Inner knowing to me means hearing from You. It means receiving when I don’t know.

You don’t follow Me by rote—You follow Me instead by “wrote”—by My word made real to you, spoken to you. I have never spoken fear to you. So don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of displeasing Me. You want, you seek, to make something tangible, something to help communicate and reinforce My presence with you, and with others with you, to help spark their faith in My goodness and My power to heal and restore—and My willingness to do so. The ingredients you are choosing connect you to the idea (and ideal) of connectedness to all living beings, and to living in peace.

You are making a new oil—an Oil of Peace. Your life of connection is peace, is a life of peace. Love is the bond of peace for you—and for Me. Under your Tree of Life are all the four-footeds, and the wingeds rest in that Tree’s branches, all at Peace. Eve’s Eden indeed.

Seeking and Finding God

I think I am listening for Your voice. It’s like a singer with a distinctive voice—like Barbara Streisand. Anyone could sing the words, but you immediately recognize her voice.

And what do you think of as My voice?

Well…the words themselves can be firm, and pointed, but always loving and fair. And Your voice, at least to me, is always gentle. Loving and gentle. And I am not hearing that in many places.

What if I said to you, “Go where you find Me.” Then what would you do?

I guess I’d need to go look for You. Spend time trying to find You.

 But I didn’t say, “Go try to find Me.” Or, “Go and Seek.” Read it again. “Go where you find Me.” Where do you find Me NOW? Find Me consistently? Or to put it another way: where are you enriched? What do you look forward to with gleeful anticipation? Go where. Go there. Don’t waste your time turning over rocks in a dry streambed, seeking for gold. Mine the gold you have. Treat every morning, here, as church. Play worship music on your guitar and in your car. Sing Me the love songs that you delight to sing. And as for your book—books—they are to be love stories. Write Love Stories. My Love Story always has a happy ending!

You praise Me—really—because you love Me. You are singing love songs. That is what sets you apart from so many others—you fell in love, with Narnia and Aslan—and Me. Your Door was different for a reason. I didn’t bring you in the Church Door, or the Bible Door. They came afterwards. I brought you in the story door, the Love-story door, and a story focused on Talking Animals to boot—for a reason. Yours is not a traditional path and it is not a traditional calling. There are a lot of, too many, mixed messages in the traditions.

You are a Creativist and a Creationist, meaning that two of the offshoots of your spiritual path are creativity and the natural world. You find Me in both, and yet I Am Beyond both. So are you—you find sustenance in and through both, and yet there is more to you, and more to what you have to give—that is why I keep saying your work is beyond natural history. It’s not that natural history won’t be a part of it—of course it will, because you love to share about creation—but your work is beyond that, as you are beyond a naturalist. So your watchword for today is Beyond.

 

Believing for myself

God, why is it so easy for me to believe You will hear my prayers to bless others…and so hard for me to believe for myself? Is it just a lack of faith on my part?

When you pray for others, you are relying on what you know and believe in your heart about Me–that I Am good, that I Am Love, that I long to bless everyone. From that perspective, it is easy for you to ask, and to ask large. And look what you receive! That kind of faith opens all sorts of possibilities. It is not that you have to convince Me to act; I have told you this before. Rather, it is that much of My acting involves prompting humans to act in certain ways, to be sensitive to certain impulses, to follow their own hearts’ leadings.

When it comes to asking for yourself, a curtain drops down between what you know to be true, and what you were told about Me and about yourself many, many years ago. The curtain is thinner now; it is more gauze than thick brocade, but it still clouds your vision and thus your belief. You begin to doubt your inclinations, doubt your impulses, and unwittingly close the door to much that I would otherwise be able to give you. It is not that I become reluctant to give; it is that you cut yourself off from the very ways I mean for you to receive.

Let’s try this. Try pretending, the next time you feel uncertain about asking Me for yourself, that you are asking for your best friend. What would you ask for then? Ah, you see, you are smiling already. Remember, abundance really means “more-than-enough.” More than enough for everyone–including you.

Stay Tuned

OK, Lord. Here I am at this point, where I need and want to get quiet. Try to hear You. Ask You to speak, to break in.

Imagine tuning a radio, the kind you grew up with, with its dial. Hear the crackle of static? Hear how stations get louder or softer as you dial them in or out? Here’s a secret—the music is always playing. I Am the Word, so I Am always speaking. I Am always speaking over you, over your life. Over your world. Over everyone in it. Like a radio station broadcasting 24/7, I Am always speaking. You just need to turn the dial.

Now, there are a lot of voices in your radio. Not all come from Me. Not all are inspired voices, just as a radio broadcasts all sorts of music and programs all across the dial. But each station has its own identity, its own voice. Be careful which stations, whose voices, you tune in to. Keep the dial of your mind and heart near Me. The other voices you hear in proximity to My Voice will ring true and can give you good counsel and encouragement.

This is a role you can play yourself, for others. You wonder, where is my own voice in all of this? Keep closely tuned to My Voice, and what comes from the depths of your own heart, and the reaches of your own mind, will be inspired, and give life.

Your broadcasters often end a segment or a program with the invitation, Stay Tuned. That’s good advice for a musical instrument, too. Stay tuned. Like an engine—stay tuned, stay tuned up. Stay tuned in to My Voice.