Two Things Can be True at the Same Time
A phrase that’s become kind of synonymous with me is, “two things can be true at the same time.” I first started using it when I was working as a therapist to help clients see their past or their present from a different perspective. Lately I’ve been thinking about it in relation to this golden journey we’re on together.
I want to focus on preparing the way for the presence of God by doing two things at once: having a wider lens for our life and also having a smaller lens. First, I want to describe the wide angle lens, or how to see the bigger picture.
The Wide-Angle Lens
It’s natural, when looking at one’s life, to say, “I don’t know the big picture of my life, I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what my purpose is, AHHHHHH” This isn’t a sign of being flighty or in the slow group about how to live adult life, it’s rather a link to all the generations that have come before you. Basically everyone feels like this. It’s being human. But it’s also helpful to want a life where the ruts are smoother and the rocks are cleared out so you can find your way. What to do?
First, here’s God’s point of view:
Isaiah 65:1, “I am ready to be approached by those who do not study me, ready to be found by those who do not seek me. I say, ‘I am here, I am here,’ to people who do not even invoke my name.”
To me that means that even before you do anything to be ready and open to the presence of God, he’s already here. He’s always been in you because he made you, we’re never apart from Him. The currents of his love have been flowing, but whereas before we were drifting around, now we swim. The wide-angle lens allows us to view the current of our lives AND the world around us, this current which is filled to overflowing with the presence of God.
But we have to live in the practicalities of day to day life, too. Which can sometimes be murky.
George Orwell said it best, “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.”
It’s like placing your hand on the barre in class, a light touch helps steady us, as we’re doing hard things at the same time.
Next, having a wide-angle lens enables us to experience our life with a combination of two things: awe and surrender. The spiritual journey is the interplay between moments of awe that slightly stun us, followed by surrender to that moment. The layering of those moments draws us upward and inward to wonder, and the HS traffics in wonder. It’s healthy for us to to be captured by goodness, beauty, truth, something outside ourselves that reeks of mystery. And then to surrender to it and let it fill you up. We resist awe in our rational mind, and we resist surrender in our will. But awe and surrender are the highway to glory.
God often comes at us indirectly, to catch us off-guard, and we need spiritual eyes and ears to pay attention that He’s everywhere around us. We’re never really separate from God except in our own mind. He’s here, tune into Him. He won’t hurt you.
Finally, to help practice using the wide-angle lens, I want to introduce you to “beholding.” I’d like you to try something in your own life: go outside alone in a place you like. Draw a symbolic line in the sand and then step over the line, expecting things on the other side to be special and invitational. Use the silence to help you see everything with its inherent dignity on display. Every time I go bird watching I’m conscious of beholding, and it produces that lovely awe and surrender that is so good for my soul. Deep calls to deep, as it were. I experience awe at the holiness of each moment and I surrender to that moment, basking in the Presence, safe in God’s company.
We also need a small lens, to see what’s inside us and right up close. A good image for this practice is a pair of reading glasses, which sharpen and bring clarity to the many details of our lives.
The Small Lens
In the 1600s a French monk named Brother Lawrence wrote a series of letters that were published in a small book called The Practice of the Presence of God. For thirty years Brother Lawrence scrubbed pots in the monastery kitchen, that was his job. And it was in that kitchen that Brother Lawrence daily practiced tuning all his senses to the charged air of the presence of God. He reveled in it, he talked to God all day long, asking for help and just hanging out with him. All of his work was drudgery, washing the same dishes over and over. But he made the kitchen a cathedral because his focus was on God and his love. Not God and his judgments or his rules or his requirements, but how God lavished love on him, all day, every day.
His writings were nothing short of revolutionary, because in the 1600s they were burning women as witches for not obeying the rules of what was considered godly behavior. No one was writing about god’s love raining down blessings and how that results in us responding to god’s love with more love of our own.
Brother Lawrence encouraged a familiarity with god, what he called a “holy freedom” to converse with god throughout the day as we go about our responsibilities. He described it as a “secret conversation with the soul of god,” where the “King, full of mercy and goodness, embraces me with love, makes me eat at his table, serves me with his own hands, and gives me the key to to his treasures. He treats me in all respects as his favorite.” That is extremely appealing to me, and it takes practice to first believe that we can have conversations like that with god, and then to experiment by actually doing it.
It doesn’t take much from our end, either. The smallest lifting up of the heart toward god is enough. “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me,” is as good as way to start as any. The least remembrance will always be acceptable to god. You don’t have to cry out to god very loud, he is nearer than we are aware of and he wants your sufferings.
The Quakers call the presence of God the “light within.” In the beautiful mystery that is God in us, he increases our inner light so that it spills over to others. We don’t have to work at it, it’s a spontaneous reflection of our spirit joining up with the HS in all her loveliness.
This enables us to do two things at once on a daily basis: think, plan, work, do chores, raise children, and at the same time, at a deeper level we can pray, worship, feel God’s love, be attuned to the divine breathing deep inside us.
The Quaker Thomas Kelly said, “Walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends, But behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship. Keep it up throughout the day. No one need know about it.”
I love that last part. It’s a private conversation between Jesus and me.
The more we accept the Presence all around us, the less words it can take to pray. It often leads to the repetition of a few phrases. One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott’s, prayers are a string of “help me, help me, help me, thank you, thank you, thank you.” Mine tend to be along the lines of, “ I’m yours, stay close, what do I do now, thank you.” As an added bonus, the Bible says that even when we don’t have words, the HS is praying for us. Allow yourself to be in the orbit of prayer, it’s happening all around you. Brother Lawrence said that those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. This is comforting to me, because I don’t have to always be pushing, striving, organizing, second-guessing everything. Even when I’m sleeping there is more light growing inside me. It can happen for you, too.
Now what? Where do we go from here? When I was a teenager and extremely boy crazy, I memorized a Bible verse:
Romans 8:25: “If we hope for something we cannot see, then we must settle down and wait for it in patience.”
That verse didn’t get me the boy in tenth grade I had a crush on, but I learned a valuable lesson: to believe that my best life was still to come.
This is Living Now
Begin where you are now. Use what tiny element of belief and hope you are capable of to live in the present moment. Tell god “yes” to his presence around you and his light within you, and then go about your ordinary life being attuned to wonder and the wisps of glory that pass by you. Start with a single sentence that’s just between you and God. Make it your own and repeat it every day. That will be enough.