This month, I would like to reflect on the idea of “co-creation.” Not because I hear God’s voice, but because I am trying to listen. I joked with my housemates that if God has been trying to guide me to a call, he’s been getting a busy tone for years.
There are dozens of reasons for my spiritual absence, most of them centering on my resistance to rules outside of myself. That’s not to say that God functions as a life-limiting rule setter, but that I’ve interpreted divine influence in my life as such thus far. I resist trusting and falling into the hands of another. To release my fears at the feet of God, who I barely knew how to find to begin with, proved beyond difficult. I doubted God even more heavily than I’ve doubted myself. And now that I’m seeking God within myself—instead of picking apart God’s validity in the words of others—I find that maybe my self-doubt and doubt of God went hand in hand.
I strive to pick apart the inner tug of God with the voices of external influences warring in my mind. I say “strive” because even now I push to understand a God which I more often find in moments of surrender. As soon as I stack up worries over whether I’m listening to this well of love in myself, that feeling of spiritual connectedness leaves me until I settle. I’m currently confronting the reality that if I choose to fully embrace a spiritual life, I must integrate those values into the whole of my life. And if I make such changes out of a feeling of obligation, I know that I will never find peace with them. Whatever I do, whatever beliefs I relax into, I need to embrace them from the depths of myself. So now comes the journey of listening to those depths and choosing to trust them.
Sometimes when I let down my barriers and connect with that vast sea of love in myself, a strange feeling comes to me. It is like crying, but no tears fall. It’s a sense of rawness or of being new. So I rarely access those depths in order to function in our world, which means the ring of God’s voice does not cut through the stimuli of our dominant culture. At best, moments of reassurance flit past me and I sometimes catch them in my heart, an echo reminding me of God’s presence and love.
Do I even know God, though? That I cannot answer, and may never. When I search for the dream of God in myself, I now go about laying my doubts to rest. Maybe I am not entirely sure who God is, but I know that whatever I may hear from God comes from a place of peacefulness and love. Those moments of surrender I hope to bring to the world even when I’m not sure how to manifest a divine dream. I can only remind myself of a few wise words. These words which have met my ears, entered my brain, and thus far bunched up in my throat long before reaching my lips or heart. I’ll remind myself to release control to give others power, give and receive love, and to hand the universe my trust.
–Loui Killion is serving at Threshold Clubhouse this year and enjoys playing piano and ukelele in his free time.
