"You are Alpha and Omega...infinity"

"...You are Alpha and Omega,
Beginning and end...
You are my Prince of Peace
And I will live my life for you..."
-     Michael W. Smith

I love this Michael W. Smith praise song, "You are Holy."  It is one of those sing-with-your-eyes-closed, your-hands-raised, and your-heart-completely-bare-to-Him kind of songs.

If you read the post last week titled "Everything in its Time" about spiritual vectors, you know that I have a "starting point" and a direction.  My starting point for the last few years has been based on Mary Baker Eddy's statement...one that, I believe, was her most radical contribution to the history of humanity's search for Truth...in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, -- that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."

This is the "place" I return to for recalibration, for refreshment, for refuge and respite...it is what I rest upon, and radiate from.  It is my starting point.  If  I returned to it 200 times a day, I return to it a thousand.  I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that it sets the rhythm of my day, as much as my own heartbeat...or the in-and-out of my breathing. It is, in fact, the keynote of my own personal purpose statement.  I find it pulsing through my heart when I wake up each morning.

I spend hours a day listening for fresh inspiration from its timeless promise.  There are countless moments where I find myself staring into "space" pondering the depth of its demands upon my spiritual discipleship.  I revel in the breadth of its meaning, and am fascinated by the infinite range of its application. 

But, for the most part, the message has been more of a blue-collar feeling than a great big spiritual "aha" moment of inspiration.  That's not to say that  I didn't love discovering early on that the word "might" meant not only power, but possibility.  Because of it, I have been able to claim on countless occasions when the possibilities for answers seemed impossible, that because God, Spirit is All-in-all, that there were an infinite number of possible solutions, answers...miracles. 

I have delighted in replacing the word "Spirit" with each of the other names for God...Principle, Mind, Soul, Life, Truth, and Love. The implications are infinitely wonderful.

But today, as I was talking with a friend, trying to describe where I am finding the core strength of my spiritual confidence these days...days when I can't depend on information, validation, or outside approval to secure my inner peace...I had two things come to mind.

One was the image of two full-length mirrors...offset a bit and facing eachother...in which the reflection of the image standing in the middle goes on and on, infinitely.  And the other was the statement from Revelation:

"I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last..."

And just as I was describing this process of constantly returning to my starting point throughout the day for recalibration and orientation, I heard myself saying (in light of an earlier conversation we'd had about those spiritual vectors with no destinations...only directions) that the only place I'd really ever want to "end up" was back at my starting point anyway.  And in that moment I got it!

Any desired destination or outcome...a perfect human body, all the financial resources I could every hope for, family relationships that completely transcended the mire of day-to-day navigation and negotiation, a dream realized, a professional goal accomplished, an inspiration seen and felt...would pale in comparison to the depth, breadth, height, might, and majesty of that "place" where God is All-in-all, and where I am completely at peace because of my trust in this fact...for me, and mine, and all.  That place of spiritual intimacy, an infinte nearness I feel in the silence of His sanctuary...conscious Being. 

Annie Dillard wrote, in Teaching a Stone to Talk:

"The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega,
it is God's brooding over the face of the waters..."

I love this silence.  I love it so much I ache for it.  I ache for it for me, and for you, and for a world that is so hungry to know that there is something more, something deeper, something higher than its own mistakes, choices, decisions, votes, wants, and petulant demands. 

It is alpha and omega...the starting point that is also the only real destination or outcome that will ever satisfy, bring us peace, make us feel secure, give us something infinitely more promising than anything which the egomaniacal "self" can even try to imagine, dream into existence, want badly, make come true, demand from its loved ones,  or try to control.

It exists within, and cannot be taken from us.  It is a magna core of molten Love, the radiant reality of Being.  It is like the spiral that exists as a visual question for me:  which end is really the starting point?  I always have to ask myself in tracing its trajectory, do I start from the outermost point and move inward, or start from the innermost point and circle outward...and, you may ask, does it even matter?

I think it does. If I start from the outside...getting my information about my life, my value, my potential and what is possible...and move inwards, I feel tighter, tenser, constricted, smaller, and because everything seems so limited and restricted, I feel the need to control it, hanging on to every shred of shrinking substance...of love, opportunity, goodness, attention...worrying that what little there is, in my continuously shrinking world, will eventually disappear. 

However, starting from my deepest inner truth:

"The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, -- that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."

From this penetratingly deep spiritual core, I can only reach outward and upward.  My life expands, radiates and includes more and more, as it circles outward, until all I am is the existence of that very All-in-allness of good, of Love,  that I started with.  I am radiating out from a place of deep contentment.  My base of operation is an unfathomable sanctuary far below the surface, deep within myself, where God, the great I AM, exists and governs.

And when two, or more, outward reaching spirals are placed "in relationship"...each reaching out and wrapping its love around the other, yet returning over and over again to its core truth...it is the symbol of eternity that appears. A symbol in which our journey continually, perpetually, eternally returns to a shared, but deeply sacred "center" whenever we are impelled outward from that center by Love.


This is where I am trying to live.

There is so much to think about...from just this one sentence...about God.

sigh...this is why I love the silence...

always,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Everything in its time..."

"...Some folks try astrology,
some turn to crystal balls...
To find an answer,
to get through it all.
I just fall on my knees
and I try to pray, and
and in the silence I can hear Him say,

'The river runs, and the river hides,
out to the ocean, and under the sky.
I promise you, the answer will come.
Hold on to patience, and watch for the sign,
...Everything in its time..."
- Corinne May

Sometimes I get so impatient with God.  I want to know when...and how, and what, and who.  I find myself asking, "When will you tell me what you want from me?  When will I know, what I need to know next?  Where should I be and what will I do there?" 

This Corinne May song, "Everything in Its Time," is such a great reminder.  It assures me that I can surrender my timetable, and trust His omniscient plan. 

This trust, in God's itinerary, must have been at the core of one 12-year old boy's willingness to walk away from his "Father's business," when his mother interrupted his trajectory, and asked him to continue walking his journey with her for a while longer.  (Luke 2: 40 - 52)  It must have been hard for him, to set aside his own  sense of purpose.  But it was this overarching spiritual purpose, and his willingness to surrender, that his mother "held in her heart," while he matured into the fullness of His Father's promise. 

And it didn't happen over Spring Break,  that "while longer" lasted another eighteen years.  Eighteen years of trusting that the conversation, which he began in the temple with rabbis and doctors, would resume "in its time."

I have been thinking about this...a lot...lately, the surrender of mortal timetables, for the acceptance of an unseen, but certain, promise of divine unfoldment. It is a spiritual posture that requires a willingness to truly trust in the eternality of Life.  It requires a grasp of the fact that we are never, ever, simply poised on a random point along a narrow, limited mortal timeline, but we are always traveling along an infinite spiritual vector. 

A "vector," as I learned from Mark, the nurse I met in a mountain clinic one Sunday morning, is a "line" that has a well-established starting point, and clearly defined direction, but no destination.  A vector continues on infinitely in this unalterable direction...sometimes intersecting with other vectors -- creating points of significance along the way...but never reaching a final destination.

I like thinking of a river in this way. It starts from the mountaintop and flows towards the sea. It doesn't stop when it reaches a lake, a boulder, a mountain...it may eddy for a while...but eventually, it just continues its flow towards the sea.

These points of intersection and significance may often seem like destinations reached, challenges faced, relationships beginning/ending, or tasks accomplished, but they are really only...ever...moments of profound God-based self-discovery, opportunities for lessons in grace, orchestrated rests filled with deep listening, and instances of salvation --  divine "ahas," in which we realize that we are never alone, without purpose, or recourse.

I am gently yielding to this version of living, in which I am simply an eager student along a God-drawn spiritual vector.  I love having a clearly defined starting point for every relationship, activity, and desire. There is real peace in letting go of destinations and outcomes, while staying completely focused on retracing and starting out, each moment as needed, from my one "true north"...God.   It is a divine discipline to constantly be recalibrating my steps according to my true direction...the "hows" of my life...kindness, honesty, integrity, trust, respect, meekness, patience, compassion.

Remarkably, Mary Baker Eddy has given me the clearest, and most profoundly useful, and unfailing instruction for this new approach to spiritual orienteering in her statement:

"The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit,
is All-in-all, and there is no other might nor Mind."

This starting point, together with the well-defined MORAL. compass she outlines on page 115 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

MORAL.  Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance.

have been critical as I've struck out on this journey towards infinitely greater spiritual trust and discovery-based self-awareness that is rooted in my understanding of God. 

One of the questions I have been asking myself, as it relates to direction, is, "what is it that tells me when I am, truly, on the right path?" And one of the answers that revealed itself in prayer, and which feels most authentic, comes from a much-referred to (on this blog) Sara Groves' song titled, "Add to the Beauty," in which she says,

"I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story.
I want to shine with the light
that's burning up inside me..."

That better,  beautiful story, for me, is always going to be the one in which God is the only hero, and the light of His love illumines every narrative, every bit of dialogue, every inner landscape with self-knowledge, humility, love, and grace.

I know that, as long as I keep my starting point, and my moral compass, clearly in focus...I will never get lost in the quicksand of self.  And that I will experience, "Everything In Its Time," because, on a vector, I have an eternity...infinity...to discover all that He has in store for me, and mine, and all...everything exactly as it should be...in its time.

more on spiritual vectors in future posts, but for now...with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Nathaniel Wilder 2010]