I See God In Everything

A couple had 2 little boys, ages eight & ten, who were always getting into trouble ... if any mischief occurred in town, their two sons were somehow involved.

At their wits end, the parents contacted a clergyman  who had been successful in rehabilitating children. He agreed and asked to see the boys individually. 

The eight-year-old was sent to meet with him first. The clergyman sat the boy down, looked him sternly in the eye and asked, "Where is God?"   The boy made no response, so the clergyman repeated the question, more sternly, "Where is God?"  Again the boy did not answer, so the clergyman raised his voice even more & shook his finger, "WHERE....IS....GOD?"  At that, the boy bolted from the room, ran home and slammed himself in his closet … shaking.

His older brother followed him into the closet and asked, "What happened, what happened … what did they say, are we in trouble?"  The 8 year old looked up, tears rolling down his trembling face and replied, "We are in BIG trouble this time. God is missing and they think we did it!"

Of course, God is never missing, we're just looking the other way.  Can we really see God...in everything? Many think not 

God is forever beyond the reach of...the intellectual faculty; but by means of...the loving faculty, [It] can be fully grasped by each individual being.  God can well be loved, but cannot be thought. By love, can be grasped and held, but by thought neither grasped nor held.  God is eternal, the human mind is finite. If God could be comprehended, surrounded by a concept, this would make us greater than God. We invent the illusion that God is a thing that we lack and must therefore seek, find, and control...  ~14th century Christian mystic, The Cloud of Unknowing

What do you think of that?  Talk about duality b. s. Some, like St. Augustine, said It could be located:

But when unknown to me you caressed my head,
and when you closed my eyes lest they see things that would seduce me,
I began for a little while to forget about myself,
and my madness was lulled to sleep.
When I awoke in you, I saw very differently,
infinite in a very different sense.
But what I saw was not seen with the eye of the body.

Augustine, like many of us, searched for God where it is said It cannot be found—outside oneself, in conquest, career and ambition. He got woke in Spirit, beholding what only the inner eye can see: 
...the infinite possibilities of the One Mind
...the luminous vastness that we are part of
...a Power we can forget, ignore or reveal by choice of thought, feeling and belief. 

But is it only the inner eye that can see Spirit? It is true that when we employ the Divine Matrix it becomes less an intellectual exercise and more of a communion, realization and transcendence ...to know in our heart, is to know in our head. Our what (profession, status, finances, etc.) is not our who (Truth – Individualization of the Divine), but our who is in our what. We just require the eyesight and insight to see God is in everything; the outside just doesn't make us who we are.

In metaphysics, as in everything else, we are dealing with a proposition which is the substance of things which are not seen by physical eye. The human eye only sees things which are effect; the human hand touches only that which is effect; and we are very apt to say these are controlled by law. That is true, everything must be governed by law. Law controls everything, absolutely. But we are not as apt to realize that the law itself is an effect.   ~Ernest Holmes, Love and Law 

How we see things -our perspective, our perception- is how we are effected by those things.  Spirit is only in everything when we allow it to be. Sometimes that takes a beginner's mindset, a zen practice called Shoshin.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.  ~Shunryu Suzuki

When we reach the end of what we know, that’s where we find God in everything.



Ilia Delio, a Franciscan Sister and theologian wrote in Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian about the ideas of God's love from the writings of Dyonisius the Areopagite (or Denis, for short), a judge from the late 5th/early 6th century:

God’s love is so tremendous ... like a sober drunk, falling over Itself in the desire to share divine life.  God, [is] the eros of divine love. God, the agape, gives Its God-self away.

Which we individualize

 We long for God because God longs for us

It experiences life through us, as us

God, the volcanic eruption of divine life ... seemingly hidden, but revealed and accessed by way of Its manifested creation, eternally desires to give Itself away in love so we can give ourselves in love

And what is that eruption called?

There is a Divine urge within everyone to know more, to be more, and to express more, and I have found that the thing we are searching for is the thing we are searching with.   ~Ernest Holmes

Good, bad, destructive, constructive; all is the same in God ... a non-judgmental force for Good (which has no positive or negative aspect to It). For example, the story of the great ancient flood, Noah's flood. Bible tells a big story of how God is mad and wants to start over with Noah and the family and two of everything.  It's a metaphor, a fable, a lesson. God wasn't mad, that was humankind's self-destructive consciousness in play. Again, it's a lesson to teach that human consciousness as a whole, race consciousness (as it is sometimes called) is powerful both in Mind and action. What we do with that lesson, is how we experience and see God in everything. Heck, the kidney stones I experienced years ago (which was no picnic) and the standing ovations (which was) - both God. My divorce and my inspiring others in my ministry - both God. All were in and through the Divine Presence. What I do with those experiences in joy or learning or both is what's important. Neither were examples of God mad or happy, punishing or rewarding. All is a reward, even if I don't like the "prize," I love it and see God in It. I see God in everything:  sorrow or happiness, joy is in the experience and/or the lesson.

Wisdom is knowledge deepened by love. The wise person knows more deeply by way of love than by way of argument because the eye of the heart can see the truth of reality. Hence the wise person is one who knows and sees God shining through everything, even what seems ugly or despised.  ~Ilio Delio

Ernest Homes tells us, “We are to look for God in each other and love this God, forgetting all else." Yes, I may sometimes not like the experience, but as I move through it and past it, I learn from it, because Spirit was in it.

I see God in everything, because It is!

Affirmation
Seeing Is BE-ing
I have 20/20 vision for 2020. Perfect sight lit by the flame of my faith that reveals the Divinity in me.  I look in the right places, spot the right ideas, view the best questions, and perceive the greatest answers.  I open my mind to the most wondrous, inspiring magnificence. I open my heart to  recognize love so pure. And I identify inspiration at every turn.