How I Know God

How do I know God is real? All I am able to do is share my experience with you. Being aware of God is, for me, like falling inward into Oneness with everything. When I am aware of God, I feel the boundary between me and the world less acutely so the my edges are softened and I sense God as Energy innervating everything. When I am aware of God, I become aware of how I reflect God, of how I embody Christ's love for us. I have had the experience of God as a physical sense, once as a voice, occasionally as a physical sensation but mostly I experience God as the Divine Love that is the foundation of everything.

When I am living in accord with God's will for me there is flow. Van Morrison, in the song Astral Weeks, sings:

If I ventured in the slipstream,
Between the viaducts of your dream,
Where immobile steel rims crack,
And the ditch in the back roads stop.
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again

The slipstream. When I am living God's will for me, I am living in the slipstream. Christ is there and Energy flows and I find harmony in my life.

When I am living in God, the sum is much greater than the individual parts. Connections happen that create joy and sometimes trepidation. I am not talking coincidence. When I have been faithful to God and aware, there is a rightness. God puts me in the places I am meant to be, meeting the people I am supposed to meet so I can do the work I have been prepared to do. It's easy for me to get caught up in the rightness of these encounters and get all ego-puffy which, of course, misses entirely the whole flow which causes me, like Icarus, like Lucifer, to fall (and the Chihuahua to run wild). Humility has never been my gift. But when I stay true to the Call, there is a sureness, a rightness that I am doing God's work, that I am reflecting Christ's love.

There have been a couple of times when I was being prepared to be Called. I've written about the agitation of this, the awareness of being between, unfinished, not fully formed. In a way, this time of liminality is the true test. Can I live in the unknown without finding my own way to fill the void? How do I allow the mystery, the unknown? What do I do to prepare? Do I turn to God? Do I seek guidance from seasoned friends? Do I allow myself to be formed? When I turn to God through prayer, writing, reading and seeking, I am allowing myself to be shaped and directed, even when I am clueless to the actual direction. In the midst of wandering, I may be gently, or not so gently, encouraged toward something--a door opens and I walk through . That something may seem incidental at first but over time takes on increasing importance until I see, sometimes in hindsight, that it was part of the plan for me, maybe even the purpose of the process. Everything else falls into good order and the agitation is replaced with a sense of rightness, sometimes of peace, sometimes of mission.

I am not experiencing the agitation right now or the Call to search and reach out and stretch. God is encouraging me to sink down, to deepen, to follow my roots and connect with the Foundation. I have never been called in this way but I am clear that I am to wait and rest and turn my fear of the unknown over to God. I don't believe that this means I am to be ir-responsible or un-prepared; on the contrary, I think the sinking and deepening and resting are the preparation. To what, I do not know.