by Kayla McClurg
For each of us there comes a moment, or a slow series of moments, when we sense the Great Love of the Universe, the One Who Is Beyond–God–as a personally felt presence. Something cold in us warms, something stiff in us loosens, and we sense a turning, an allowing, a yes. “Yes, I am ready to hear you, God. I am ready to deepen my connection to you and to your family. I am ready to be completely yours.”
And we change, not because we decide to change but because we have said yes to the very nature of God, which is not separate from but together with. Together with God … together with God’s creation … together with God’s dream.
What happens, as Gordon Cosby would say, is that we become sane in the midst of insanity. We step into the Real World from an unreal world. We come into our right mind, and God’s secret longing is revealed: that we will rise to our true callings in life to be healers, justice-seekers, lovers of all.
We join God’s dream, secret no more, to become co-creators of the beloved community, immersing ourselves in whatever pieces of creation-mending are the right pieces for us, using our particular weaknesses and strengths, our unspoken longings and desires and fears. We don’t wait to reach ‘perfection’ before finding our little chunk of God’s dream. We grow into our own healing as we join in the healing of some broken place in our world. We experience the love we’ve been longing for as we let God love others through us. We work with our anger, our selfishness, our isolation–whatever has been keeping us from becoming our true selves–as we let others in.
The process goes something like this:
- Through many voices and providential circumstances, as diverse as we are diverse, we hear God call, “Be with me. Spend time with me. Let me come closer so I can love you more fully.”
- When we respond out of our depths, we are transformed. The world as we’ve experienced it no longer comforts us. Our longing now is to be deeply rooted in the Source of Love that calls us by name and longs to be with us.
- We begin to adjust to becoming sane in an insane world. We begin to loosen our grip on all parts of our lives–our relationships, our schedules, our jobs, our use of money, our emotions, our political leanings, everything–allowing them to be transformed, or let go of, as God chooses.
- We get honest about ourselves in a circle of belonging where others are also on the path toward living more authentically. We become wide open and accountable for who we’ve been and who we long to be. We ‘listen each other into being’ and together listen for whatever chunk of God’s dream we might carry together. We offer ourselves, together with others, to helping mend of some piece of our torn creation.
And then the real adventure begins. No longer sightseers, absorbing as many life experiences as possible, we become pilgrims journeying into an unknown land, enrolled in a School for Love. We join God’s dream by joining other pilgrims, tearing down our walls of separation and seeking Life together, for ourselves and all creation.
How is God saying a deeper yes in you right now? What piece of God’s dream are you being invited to carry with others?
Kayla McClurg was on staff at The Church of the Saviour and facilitated the website, inward/outward.
