"Here I am..."

"I am here in the dark.
I'm the song inside your heart.
I'm the missing piece
you've had all along.

I am here when you call.
When you rise,
and when you fall.
I am here,
I am here,
here I am..."

I can't seem to get enough of Amy Grant's new CD. Her new song, "Here" is the perfect keynote for this post.

Recently I was asked how it felt to experience healing. It was a good question, and I wanted to honor the genuine spiritual hunger behind it. So, I asked if I could think about it and "get back to you."

I knew I had to speak from my experience, and mine only. So I went to a place --within myself -- where I could be absolutely still.  Then I revisited some of my most profound moments of spiritual awakening, healing, and transformation. It didn't take more than the breadth of a heartbeat before that very same feeling washed over me in visceral waves of holy remembering.

There are no words to describe it fully save:

"I am here..." 

This I am is not a human presence -- mine or anyone else's. It is the deep I AM of timeless, changeless, conscious Being. It is the I AM that is -- for me -- God.  It is infinitely near, while still being radiantly unconfined.  And I am as sure of this I AM, as I am of being conscious. It is like honey coursing through every cell of my being -- sweet, warm, heavy with the weight of promise, a constancy that goes beyond what I could ever imagine, and clear as a river of crystal.

It is very different from human thought-taking -- the kind of human reasoning that wants to believe what it thinks it knows.  And it takes me by surprise -- every time. Yet the moment I feel it, I am free. There is nothing but absolute trust.   It is not a trust that is invested in, or holding out for, any particular outcome.  It is an unequivocal, absolute trust in the divine.  A trust that surrenders self-determinism and says -- at the deepest level, with child-like joy:

"Thy will be done." 

When I feel this deeply innate sense of trust -- one that so naturally lets go, and yields everything to God's presence -- I can't even fathom why I ever wondered or worried about anything. It is how I imagine a small child must feel when she gives herself up to sleep in the arms of her parent.

Yet it's not a surrender to an "other."  It is a full-bore letting go, a yielding to the Truth of being -- the core of who I truly am -- eternally.  It is a feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into the great vastness of the kingdom of heaven within. A feeling of being submersed and yet, held aloft at the same time. It reminds me of learning to float as a child. Relaxing my entire body into my mother's arms, and then discovering that she had lowered her arms and I was being buoyed by the same water that had -- only moments before -- yielded to the touch of my tiny fingers.  


This feeling of being "with the Lord," is the best feeling I've ever known. No one can take it from me. Nothing can shake me loose from it's hold. Spiritual texts, words of inspiration, prayers of longing -- no matter how holy -- can only open my heart, and point my hopes in the right direction.   Towards the enduring promise that God's presence is as close to me as my consciousness of existence. This is the feeling that I lean into every moment, of every day.  That's my answer -- what's yours?

offered with Love,

Kate