Mirroring

God, I feel as if I can talk to You about anything. And increasingly, at any time. So I want to talk to You about my fingers. About this decades-old habit, started when I was, what? You know. Three? Four? Five? This lifelong habit I have of picking my fingers, which drives Pete crazy, and which, for all these years, I have assumed You judged me for. I certainly have judged myself. And in that judgment, I named the habit sin, which I really think, thought, it is. Until I was falling asleep–or between sleep and waking–and You said, I think it was You, something extraordinary. And I want and need to talk to You about it.

You said You didn’t see this habit as sin. Is that true? Was that You, that sudden thought in my head, so contrary to the way I have thought?

Yes, that was Me. What I need you to understand is that all the times you felt prompted by Me to stop, those leadings were not to lead you out of something I was judging you guilty for. I have asked you to stop because of what the habit is doing to you. I see, deeper than you yourself see, the sense of shame and guilt and even despair you carry, over this seemingly simple little habit. You began as a way to handle stress and tension in your house when you were a very young child. You have used it ever since, when you were tired, or stressed, or afraid, or under any kind of accusation. To keep yourself silent, you took to tearing at yourself.

Let Me ask you a question. In fact, let Me ask you several questions.

Would you reach over, take Pete’s hands in yours, and begin systematically to tear at his fingers?

No, of course not!

Would you do this to a close friend?

No.

To an acquaintance, perhaps?

No.

How about a stranger? Would you feel free, would you be motivated, to do that  to a stranger’s hands?

No, Lord. You know not.

Well, how about someone who hurt you? Would you reach out and hurt them back in this way?

NO.

Okay, well, what about an animal, then? Would you do something comparable to an animal?

No, never.

So. Last question. Would you, if you could be with Me in a physical way, would you do this to Me?

No, Lord, of course not!

Look at what you are saying. You are making yourself less than anyone else you would ever know, or meet. Less than the animals, whom you purport to love.

I do love them, You know I do.

Here is what I know: you do not yet fully love yourself. You have not yet fully received the depth, the breadth, the length and the height of My love for you. I have asked you to stop, and told you that stopping will open doors to greater service and ministry, not because this habit is sinful in My eyes, but because it reveals you are not yet fully healed, fully whole. You don’t see yourself as I see you, and you see yourself much less clearly than you see every other living thing on the planet.

Lord, something set me off this past spring. Sometimes I know my triggers but this time I am not sure what did it. I was fine, I was okay all during Pete not feeling well last fall, and holidays with family which are always stressful, and then the decision to move Yellowhouse, everything involved with that, and then suddenly something upset me to the point I started again.

And the shame of starting has fueled you to continue. That is what I want to address, and relieve–your deep sense of shame. Every one of My Children is worthy of love, of My Love. Every one of My Children begins as a precious and innocent being. And as you well know, I will move heaven and earth to show each one the truth of that Love. So what do I have to do, what can I say, to bring you to a place where the mirror you look deeply into is My Eyes of Love for you?

That sounds like a Vision Quest question.

Indeed it is. You have an old, flawed, distorted mirror. I would like to lead you away from that mirror to a place where you can see a clear, honest, pure reflection. You have been afraid to come to that place, seeing it as a place of shame and accusation, which is what you are running from, and what your tearing at your fingers is an expression of. But I Am calling you, asking you, pleading with you, please stop running. Stop running from your own precious self. Stop running from the you I see, the you I love, the you I chose before you were even born. Be willing to live in the light I Am offering you now, and I promise you, the compulsion you have felt for the past five-and-a-half decades will lose its grip and its power on your mind and your heart.

I Am asking you because your pain grieves Me, and I would relieve it. But we must be partners for that to happen. Because this originated in your feelings about yourself, you have to have a part in its resolution. This isn’t a work I can do by Myself; I need you as My Partner in your wholeness.

Okay, Lord. I really do want to be free of it. 

Yes, I know you do. But hear Me well — you need to be free of your distorted view of yourself, in order to be free of the habit you so despise. You think the habit is causing the distorted self-image, but I tell you, the reverse is true. The distorted self-image is manifesting in your habit, not the other way around. So Come. Come to My Pool of Reflection; stand here beside Me, look into My Love and see what I see. You–and your life–will never be the same.

The Heart of Lent

Lord, the other day someone I love told me, I am giving up guilt for Lent. I thought that was brilliant! I’ve had pastors in past years speak about releasing, letting go of habits or patterns of life that are not in line with Your love or our best values. And I have heard others talk about sacrifice and giving up something we love to undergo a fast in order to somehow make ourselves more attuned to You. And I have heard still others say, no, Lent is not for doing without, Lent is for adding to — adding in habits or patterns that actually help a person draw closer to You or be more loving in their earthly relationships. Lent is really an invention of humans, meant to prepare us for Easter. What would You say about Lent, about all these different ideas about how to mark it?

The different ideas really reflect different human personalities.

Well, how should we mark it then?

The important thing is not how you mark Lent, nor even how you celebrate Easter. The important thing is, in light of Christmas, in light of Easter, how do you live? How do you live the other 360-some days? How do you live the 360 degrees of your life’s round circuit of the year, when you are not celebrating these signature “holy days” like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and your national holidays of Thanksgiving and New Year’s? What about all the other days? Too many ramp up what they think of as holiness during Lent, or during Advent, only to return to what they think of as secular lives during the other weeks of the year. What I would prefer is that you think of all your days as secular AND sacred. Both/And. No day is so secular that I Am not present. No day is more sacred than another. Every day, every hour, is present to Me and you are present to Me and I to you, at every moment. It is that presence that makes every second sacred. And I call you to live a sacred, consecrated life, in the middle of a very human existence, in community, with family, with friends, at work, at play, in business. What I mean by a consecrated life is a life in which you fully show up to be present while simultaneously aware of your connection to My Presence. One foot on the soil and one hand in heaven, so to speak. And your heart connected to both. So to answer your question about Lent, what I would say is, do you feel you are the most connected to Me you can possibly be, or is there room for a closer, deeper relationship? If you answer the question, there is no way I can be closer than I am living now, one of two things is true: you are very close to your Homegoing, or there is more for you to understand and grow into. And if you answer, I know I can be closer, but I don’t know how, then Lent has served its purpose. For I Am here to draw you and reach to you and teach you how to live a human life with a heavenly heart, with a heart connected to heaven and earth.

You saw the heart reflected tonight on the water, and you wondered, how can this phenomenon be happening? And I told you then, this is a reflection of your heart. And inside, you doubted. You doubted not Me but yourself. You doubted you were hearing My voice.

And then what happened? Your friend sent you a timely message written by Richard Rohr about divine radiance, about our human hearts being attuned to that radiant Presence, and how you need to keep your lens clean and your heart pure in order to see God. And where were you as she was preparing to send you that message? Out in the world, walking at sunset, camera in hand, very attuned to nature, beaming your own love of the land and the birds out from your heart. And what did you receive in return? A radiant heart shining and shimmering on the water. This is your calling, in Lent, in Advent, in all the other “ordinary times” — see with the eyes of your heart. See as God sees. And remember that the lens God chooses to see through magnifies good, and diminishes evil by applying mercy and grace and forgiveness and a seventy-times-seven second chance. So by all means, keep walking. Keep seeing. Keep sharing. And keep loving.