Living Into
Six acrobats performed amazing feats all totally dependent on each other for safety and the beauty of their routines. There is more to my dream from last June, but this is the part that so excited me even while I was dreaming it. What I read into the dream is that these well-practiced routines are in my life too, where I can absolutely count on what I need being right there in the right time and place and form for my next move and the next and the next. That I can count on God to provide every single thing I need as I need it. That I can trust that I’ll have just what I need when I need it to do the work and to live the life to which God calls me.
I did not have that level of trust back in June, 2011, but the dream awakened the desire for it. I knew that I needed to live into that trust to make it real in my life. And this is what I want to write about today—living into our potential for love, faith, trust, patience, forgiveness, etc., as God calls us to do. I did not know how to get from a tremendous faith in God to that same level of trust, but I didn’t have to worry about that part of the equation. The dream was prophetic for me, depicting how it would feel to be a part of that well-oiled routine, back and forth between God and me. God’s part would be to transform my inner state so that I could trust God implicitly in everything. I’m not talking about the idea of trusting God, but about really trusting right down into the depth of my being, with every fiber of myself.
My part was to set my intention to become a person who trusts God in everything and to begin to live into that trust. So God was and is doing the transformative work and I am participating willingly and cooperatively with God. I had no idea how God would accomplish this task or how to go about it myself. I was much too close to the situation to see it with any perspective. Now that eleven months have passed, I can see the fruits of this transformation in me. I have kept my eye out for signs of change, keeping the goal of total trust in mind. This spring I have noticed how God is delivering with perfect timing just what I need when I need it. I have begun to count on this. I have much less anxiety about what I am to do. I notice how often what I needed in one case builds into filling another need coming up. I am beginning to just show up knowing that I will have the tools I need at just the right time.
Last fall I began to notice a lack of patience in me as I tried to wrest control from God and “make” something happen. So I paid attention to impatience. That desire to push through something or to “make” something happen arises out of my anxiety. Living into trust, leaving anxiety behind.
In the Life of the Spirit we don’t get rid of the ”bad,” say unloving, false-self parts of ourselves as much as we encourage them to change as we move towards being more loving, kinder, more compassionate. We are living into our better, deeper selves, tucking in the false self along the way. Consider the self as a unique system where nothing is ever lost, only transformed. We have to live into these spiritual skills that bring us a more “Christ-like” nature. Living into our more loving, compassionate and justice-loving selves means putting our transformation in the hands of the Holy Spirit and cooperating willingly with the Spirit as we are drawn into our deeper, more purpose-filled selves.
Notice that goals are still set, but that the means to achieve them are very different from the cultural paradigm. It is God who sets the agenda through dreams like mine or other means of communication, because God knows the right steps that each of us need to take in order to fulfill our created potential. Living into our goals takes the challenging parts of ourselves and uses them as the change agents. It’s a lot like composting kitchen and garden waste, where the discarded provides the nutrients that support life. Compost has to “die” and be transformed to be truly useful to the garden. Between the action of the Holy Spirit and our own cooperation, the problematic parts of the false self are transformed into what is already potential within us for living out God’s agenda for our lives. Living into trust, love, compassion, etc., is the way to become our created selves. All we need to do is to say “yes” to the call and then to live into it.