"to know, know, know You..."

"to know, 
know, know Him,
is to love, love, love Him;
and I do..."

 Sometimes, when I read the Psalm, "Be still, and I know that I am God," I hear Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Dolly Parton's To Know Him is to Love Him," as the background music -- when it's not The Fray's "Be still, be still and know..."  Not all the lyrics, usually just those first few lines.

I love that the Psalmist encourages us to know God. For most of my life I confused knowing God, with thinking about God. But knowing is very different from thinking.

Webster's defines "knowing" as: 

"to have developed 
a relationship with (someone) 
through meeting 
and spending time with them; 
to be familiar or friendly with..." 

Thinking about God, is not the same as really knowing God.  Relationships require something more than just thinking about the one we love.  They require listening, the sacrifice of one's own self-certainties, exploring common ground, and spending time together in discovery.

In the context of this kind of knowing, it is incumbent upon us to make space for a relationship that isn't just cognitive, but experiential.  The Psalmist encourages us to discover how it actually feels to know God.  To allow ourselves to feel our oneness with divine Love.  To let ourselves experience the sweetness of carving out time each day for communion with our first love -- God.  To trust God -- a little more -- with each challenge.  

Jesus -- who, more than any other, gave us an example of what it means to be "in relationship" with God -- encourages this kind of knowing when he said:

"Ye shall know the Truth, 
and the Truth shall make you free."  

God is Truth.  So, if we know -- are in relationship with -- God, we are made free.  Free of fear, because we are in relationship with Someone who we know loves us, has all the power in the Universe, and is always present.  With that kind of a Father, why would be ever be afraid? 

We are free of the need to figure things out -- in hopes of avoiding the discomfort of feeling exposed and vulnerable to all the "what ifs" of human thinking.  For this is what the human mind does -- it thinks.  It thinks about things.  The human mind does not have the capacity to know.  Only to think about.  It remembers, imagines, speculates, and wonders about.  It is never really at peace.  It is always mulling things over, adding up pros and cons, figuring out a plan, imagining a strategy, wanting, wishing, worrying.

For me, knowing is a feeling.  It is the way a child feels when she is lying in the arms of Someone with whom there is no need for words.  It is the feeling of not needing to think about anything -- just feel.  In her "little book," Rudimental Divine Science, Mary Baker Eddy assures us:

"You must feel and know
that God alone governs man..." 

Not think about and then hopefully feel.  But feel and know.  the integration of the affection and intuition -- of Love and Mind.   To feel the love of God is to know the love of God.  Knowing is synonymous with feeling -- not thinking about.  And this feeling -- and knowing -- is a promise, not a suggestion.  She lovingly states that we must experience God in this way.

To know God is not an activity of the human mind, it is a feeling of the heart.  It is what we experience when we stop all the thinking, and discover that we are always being held in the arms of a loving parent who we know -- loves us beyond measure.

offered with Love,

Kate

"I'm hooked on a feeling..."

"I can't stop this feelin'
deep inside of me.
God you just don't realize
what You do to me...

When You hold me
in Your arms so tight
You and me know
everything's all right...

I'm...
hooked on a feelin',
I'm high on believin'
That You're in Love with me..."

I know, I know, this song is a bit of a stretch as an inspirational keynote, but I like it so, so much.  It brings me back to the summer of 1969, and my aunt Marge's kitchen in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Blackberry pies in the oven, flour-covered countertops, and B. J. Thomas on the record player, in the family room singing, "Hooked on a Feeling."  My cousin, Anne, and I, dancing around the house while we waited for our carefully-woven lattice-topped crusts to turn a perfectly-baked golden brown.

Tennis in the morning, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the town pool for lunch, picking berries and baking in the afternoon, the Beyer boys and homemade ice cream in the evening.  It was a perfect summer.  And I was absolutely, without-a-doubt, hooked on the feeling of being a teenager.  It was a wonderful time in history...for music, fashion, movies, having a crush on a boy, learning to bake the perfect pie...well, just everything!  But that was then...

This song begs a different question tonight:  "What is the feeling I'm hooked on in 2010?"  And for me, there is no question.  The feeling is one absolute trust in God's presence and power. The kind of trust a child feels when she knows that her parent has authority in her life, is reliable, and will never let her down.

Mary Baker Eddy, in her brief work, Rudimental Divine Science, promises that:

"You must feel and know that God alone governs man..."
[emphasis added]

And not just know, but feel and know...what a promise!!  I love having this as my expectation, as what I must feel...and not just might be able to feel, if I think the right thought, or pray the right prayer...each day.   To feel and know...to experience...God, Love, as the supreme and only governing power in my life...ahhh...what peace.

There is a sense of joy that comes from knowing that you are not responsible for holding the world in orbit, that there is someone who will never let you down, someone on whom you can rest your hopes.  There is a sweetness in knowing that your divine Parent loves you completely, absolutely, irrefutably, irrevocably, infinitely, unfathomably...forever.

This is the feeling I love so much.  This is the feeling that I am hooked on...trust.

with Love,  

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

ps:  if you don't remember the 1969 B. J. Thomas version of this song, but it sounds familiar, it might be the Ally McBeal "Dancing Baby" version you are thinking of....and for this reason (and because I think it is such fun) I've also included it here.

[photo credit:  Nathaniel Wilder 2010]

"Turn the beat around..."

"Turn the beat around..."

Gloria Estafan's "Turn the Beat Around" feels like the perfect keynote for a piece about detaching from messages of pain, depression, fear.

I was sitting at an outside table, at a small bakery/café around the corner from our house wondering if there was anyway to contact the person I had gone there to meet.  My head was pounding, and I really wasn't sure if I could stick it out until she arrived.  I'd been praying all morning, and although I was certain of my right to be pain-free, I just wasn't feeling it. 

Then, just as I was looking through my contact list for her number, a tricked-out car with a huge sound system -- bass notes pounding and thrumping through every molecule of my being -- pulled up at the stoplight nearby.  

At the same moment my phone rang.  It was a good friend who was struggling with some very deep emotional issues (she has given me permission to refer to this experience) and wanted to talk. 
I suddenly noticed that my foot was tapping out the beat of the song on the car's stereo system, and I was feeling the percussive bass tones within my chest.

It was clear as bell that the music was not "in" me. I decided, right then and there, to stop tapping my foot. The rhythm wasn't in me. It was originating, emanating, coming from, the car -- not my chest, or my thinking.  It was not part of me.

With that realization, I was also able to disconnect from the painful pounding in my head that I'd been dealing with all morning.   Although it had seemed as if that pain was so much a part of me - it wasn't. It never more than a suggestion originating outside of my thinking. Outside of my body of knowledge or belief.

Just like the car's music was suggesting itself from the stoplight. And not only did it originate outside of me, I could decide to NOT feel it -- just the way I had decided not to feel pounding of the car's bass tones. I could see that my freedom started when I chose to stop tapping my foot -- as if the rhythm was in me.

I decided that peace was my natural state of being. Peace, flowing as a clear, calm undercurrent through the course of my day. The truth was, that the kingdom of heaven was all that was within me, within my body. It had been there long before, during, and after the pounding in my head "drove up," and tried to get me to believe that it was "in me" and that it could make me react to its noise, forcing me to cancel my appointment -- or tap my foot.

The song playing from the car's speakers was projecting its suggestive message to everyone within listening range. For me, it was the beat that insinuated itself as a rhythmic message. But I could imagine that someone who knew the words to the song, might find themselves singing along -- whether they agreed with the song's message or not. I remembered a time in college when a particular song had been running through my thoughts for days and suddenly I found myself on the verge of acting out its message -- one that was antithetical to my own values.

All of this thinking happened in the few moments that the car was stopped at the red light. And the most wonderful part was, that I was able to share these insights with my friend. We both laughed at how we'd been hoodwinked into believing that our pain - or sadness - were within us. Her heartache ceased and we talked briefly about how we'd each felt as if we were helpless to oppose what we thought was truly and actually in us, originating as a broken head or heart.

Lately, whether it is pain, heartbreak, anger, fear, or depression -- it has become so clear to me that it is not originating in the mind or body of a child of God, mine or anyone else's. The only thing singing through our being is the song of peace, the poetry of stillness, the Word of God.

Or as Mary Baker Eddy says:

"Beloved brethren, today I extend my heart-and-hand-fellowship to the faithful, to those whose hearts have been beating through the mental avenues of mankind for God and humanity; and rest assured you can never lack God's outstretched arm so long as you are in His service."


I also love that she encourages us to:

"feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life with regeneration..."

and to trust that:

"the music of Soul affords the only strains that thrill the chords of feeling and awaken the heart's heartstrings..."

This is the only beat I am allowing to set the rhythm of my life. It is all that I am accepting as the driving beat in my heart. It is the only syncopation that can cause my being to dance -- it is the music of the spheres.

Peace is not the absence of noise, it is the presence and power of a divine Voice, the constant, conscious awareness of God's presence. It is the song we hear as we lie still in Her loving arms and feel the soft beating of Her heart whispering, "Peace, be still my child. Peace, be still."

This is really all that is within us -- because it is all that is within Her. We live, and move, and have our being in the sanctuary, the kingdom of Her love. Unless what I feel singing its song within me has the nature and character of Her voice -- peace, beauty, kindness, trust, satisfaction, joy -- it is simply a suggestion, projected noise from outside of the I AM. In this I AM of conscious being, I am at one -- in perfect, harmony with the rhythm of Her being.

It's time to turn the beat around and reclaim it for our God. Love is the constant, persistent, and ceaseless song of our lives.

always with Love...

Kate

"Smell the Color 9..."

"I would take "no" for an answer
Just to know I heard You speak
And I'm wonderin' why I've never
Seen the signs they claim they see
Are the special revelations
Meant for everybody but me?
Maybe I don't truly know You
Or maybe I just simply believe…"
- Chris Rice

It was cold, cloudy and drippingly gray on the Cape that afternoon.  The small church seated less than 50 in its auditorium. By the time we arrived for the talk they were seating overflow guests in the Sunday School down the hall. 

I was distracted and I don't think I had ever felt so empty.  There wasn't a "reason," I couldn't put my finger on a cause.  It just felt as if all the light and inspiration had drained out of some spigot in the bottom of my big toe and I didn't know how to get it back. 

We had moved to Boston earlier that year to serve an organization we loved.  When we considered making the move from the comfort of our small university town in Colorado, it was easy to feel inspired and courageous, selfless and willing.  But once we got there and discovered that our commute was going to be about an hour and a half each way, and our work schedules were not in synch, and that I would find the tasks in my job menial and mind-numbing…well, we were not such happy campers.   All those noble motives and ideals seemed to pale in the actual light of a 15-hour work day…door to door.

The further I indulged my sense of disappointment, the less inspired I became.  What was I thinking...accepting a job as a file clerk when I had been a school principal?  Didn 't this organization realize how over-qualified I was?  Was I crazy to think that the mission of the office--and the materials I would be responsible for--would overshadow my sense of personal achievement and  job status?  Before long I was feeling an emptiness so hollow that I could hear the echo of every complaint reverberating through me like an out of tune bell.

I didn't want to feel this way.  I longed for the kind of quiet satisfaction I had felt when I'd hungered so desperately to make a difference in the world.  The kind of longing that had led me to Boston and to be willing to do the work I had accepted.   But I couldn't seem to find the heartbeat of that Soul-animated lifeforce which had impelled me to consider a life of selfless service.   The more I felt for it and was met with a cold, pulse-less silence…the more I wanted it.  And the more I wanted it, the less my work satisfied me.   It felt cyclical and bleak…and yet I still found myself waking each morning with this glimmer of hope that today some spark of inspiration would catch fire in me and reignite the passion for living with a spiritual purpose that had brought me there.  I just wanted to feel God in my life.  I wanted to hear some message of "good and faithful servant," to sense some small indication that I was on the right track with Him.

"'...Cause I can sniff, I can see
And I can count up pretty high
But these faculties aren't getting me
Any closer to the sky
But my heart of faith keeps poundin'
So I know I'm doin' fine
But sometimes finding You
Is just like trying to
Smell the color nine..."

That weekend had been particularly desolate.  I had brought work home with me and I couldn't even make myself open the manilla file folders stacked at my elbow.  I had spent hours sitting at the kitchen table looking out the window at the gray-green water lapping at the shoreline while cup after cup of untouched tea cooled in front of me.

When a friend at church suggested that we drive further down the Cape for an inspirational talk by the sister of a friend, I was really quite indifferent.  "Sure…why not…at least I will have an excuse for why I never touched those files," I thought.

But once we arrived I was thinking this was even worse.  At least at home I would be in my jammies, I could have my tea, and if I got really miserable I could turn on the TV and watch an old movie. 

Sitting in the cold Sunday School to hear a talk being given in another room seemed torturous.  It is hard enough to concentrate when the speaker is standing in front of you, but sitting in hard chairs without anything to look at except the wrinkled collar on the blue and white striped oxford cloth shirt worn by the guy sitting in front of me...was agony.  I really hoped something would penetrate my coldness, but my optimism was fading fast.  I decided I would listen for just one word or phrase I could take home with me.  I reached for an old magazine that was on the "give away" table near my chair by the door, and found a pen in my jacket pocket.  During the first 30 minutes of the talk I doodled away on the back cover of the magazine filling in all but one small square that I reserved for that one poignant message. 

When it came I was not expecting it…really.  I had been listening intently and nothing was getting through.  I felt as if I was hearing her words from under water when suddenly as clear as a bell I heard the phrase, "infinitely near."   That was it.  Infinitely near.  In thinking of God as infinite, it was always something big and "out there."  But an infinitely near God's voice penetrated deep beneath the surface of mere hope and faith to a place of oneness, a space so intimate that I couldn't sense it…any more than I can feel my own heartbeat, or find my own pulse, or see my own talents.  

This phrase "infinitely near" became a space of rest for my hope.  I no longer needed a rest from my longing for God. I rested upon that longing as the promise that God was with me IN that longing.  In fact He was the source of it.  My desire to experience Him, to sense His presence was a sure indication that I knew what He felt like and wanted to go deeper.   That He had already penetrated my complacency and dug beneath the surface of my simple senses to the place where, as Chris Rice sings, "trying to find You is just like trying to smell the color nine."  You can't sense with the senses what is part of you. 

"... Now I've never 'felt the presence'
But I know You're always near
And I've never 'heard the calling'
But somehow You've led me right here
So I'm not looking for burning bushes
Or some divine graffiti to appear
I'm just beggin' You for some wisdom
And I believe You're puttin' some here

Smell the color nine?
But nine's not a color
And even if it were you can't smell a color
That's my point exactly..."

This phrase "infinitely near" has given me a peace that is "beyond understanding"…beyond feeling, and seeing, and tasting, and hearing and touching. It is  deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky, it is nearer than my heartbeat and further than I ever hope to reach.   I went back to work not inspired to be something--a title, a mission--but to live in consonance with that deeper pulse that was so infinitely near.  No matter what...this is the rhythm I dance to...this is the beat that drives me...this is the song that sings below the surface of the quiet..."infinitely near."

It is the smell of the color 9.

With love,
Kate