Do you ever wonder if you're really a spiritual person? I do. My life seems so ordinary, so mundane, so - unheroic. It's easier for us to feel more spiritual and holy when we're quietly praying in Church or away from home on retreat than when we're driving our noisy kids to sports practice, or rushing off to work, or, exhausted, putting together a dinner that doesn't take too much time or energy.
None of us wants to pick up the ordinary cross of our present moment because it doesn't seem "real" that we could find the Presence of God there. Yet, as James Finley says, "The greatest teacher of God's Presence in our life is our life."
If we walk down the footpaths of Jesus' life, yearning to be other Christs, we discover how many of his life experiences, his joys, his sorrows, were simply, humanly, ordinary day-to-day "stuff." For years, his life was spent in the same area. He walked the same roads over and over again, crossed the desert using the same route, got into the same boat to cross the Sea of Galilee. Loved and also put up with the same thick-headed friends. Went to weddings and funerals. Kissed his mother "hello" and "goodbye." What made his life extraordinary was that he accepted all of it as the "real place" where he met his Father.
We also are each where God means for us to be. Hafiz says "The place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you." God knows that you're in that house that needs a new roof, that you recently lost a loved one, that your arthritis or cancer or chronic illness makes you irritable, that you live with depression, that your friends surprised you with a birthday party. And God waits in every one of our experiences for us to recognize His face, hear His voice, sense His nearness. God waits for us to experience our lives to their depths of sorrow and joy so that we learn new truths about ourselves and God.
There are people in my life who leave me feeling impatient and jumpy. Loving them and being patient with them takes every ounce of my will-power. Yet how patient Jesus must have had to be with his closest friends and family members who misunderstood him so often. How patient God is with me! God is teaching me how to be patient through these experiences in which I have to practice patience.
There are other people in my life who set my heart aflame with love and joy when they hug me, kiss me, call me. I think I can taste Jesus' joy in his loved ones during those moments. So many of these people have seen me at my worst, my most stressed, yet they choose to stay with me. Their love teaches me humility; their joy re-fills my empty soul.
On my way in the car to visit my Mom in the nursing home, knowing how it will break my heart all over again to see her so affected by dementia, my stomach clenches with dread and my hands want to turn the steering wheel and drive me home. Yet Jesus told us that he waits for us in every person we feed or clothe or care for. I call upon him to flood my soul with courage and compassion, and that I trust that he will uplift me while I am with her. Jesus always does uplift me. His gentleness pervades my soul with every spoonful I lift to my Mom's mouth.
When we live our lives fully, attentive to God's presence there, when we surrender to the Real, God leads us into our own center where God dwells - and we we are on the path to finding Love Itself. On the path to becoming saints. Even though we are not there yet, when we follow Jesus, we know the way. The only obstacle is our own desire to be in control and evade God.
Hafiz ponders the spiritual path in "Tripping Over Joy":
What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
and that of a saint?
The saint knows
that the spiritual path
is a sublime chess game with God
and that the Beloved has just made such a Fantastic Move
that the saint is now continually Tripping over Joy
and bursting out in Laughter
and saying "I surrender."
Whereas, my dear
I'm afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves
Fr. Richard Rohr reminds us "We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing humanity."