Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome to Look Again.
Today.
God isn't somewhere else.
You don't have to get closer to God,
And I would contend that you actually can't.
Because wherever you go,
God's already there.
And I know this sounds like a fairly ordinary thing to say,
God is everywhere.
I mean,
Particularly within the Christian tradition,
We learn that along the way.
But I want to stop for a moment and actually think about what that means,
Because if it's true,
It changes almost everything.
About spirituality.
We do.
Tend to imagine God as somewhere else,
Right?
God is up there,
God is out there,
God is in heaven,
God is watching us from a distance,
Thanks Bette Midler,
And I'm down here trying to get closer.
Okay,
So what do we do?
We pray,
We go to church,
We read the Bible,
We meditate,
We develop other spiritual practices of devotion and meditation and contemplation.
We become more disciplined.
We try and be better people.
Now those things are not wrong in and of themselves,
Please don't hear that,
But underneath all of those things can be an assumption that lays there whispering to us,
God is somewhere that I'm not.
And my job in spirituality is to get there.
But Christianity actually makes a claim that's.
.
.
Very much pushes against that.
God isn't.
Somewhere else.
God is the one in whom you already exist.
We see this in Acts chapter 17,
Where in the Areopagus in Athens,
Paul says,
In God we live and move and have our being.
In God we live.
Right now you are breathing in God's creation.
Your heart is beating because you've received another moment of existence.
That share underneath you.
Exists because existence itself is being given,
That the world around you isn't happening.
Outside of God.
It's all happening within God's sustaining presence.
Now when we talk like this,
All of a sudden things like For example,
Prayer.
Looks very very different because prayer Now,
Isn't you trying to establish a connection with God?
The connection's already there,
If we think like this.
And so what prayer is,
Is prayer is waking up to and acknowledging.
That connection with God.
Just think about that for a sec.
You don't.
.
.
Make God present by praying.
What you do in praying is you become aware of the God who's already.
And that's very,
Very different.
It means that prayer.
.
.
It can happen anywhere and in any situation.
You can pray washing the dishes or walking or sitting on the bus or a hospital waiting room or when you're angry.
Now that seems pretty obvious,
But then it goes a bit further when you think about the fact that if prayer is awakening to God's presence,
Then you can be praying Even when you don't have words.
Because the presence of God.
Isn't dependent on our ability.
To say something.
God's not waiting for us.
To become sufficiently peaceful,
Or to ask,
Using the correct terminology,
Or to invoke God with the right,
I don't know,
Incantation,
Whatever you want to call it.
God's already there.
And so most of the time when we're talking about an absent God.
.
.
It's actually the opposite.
God's there.
The problem is our attention,
Our ability to notice or our willingness,
I guess,
To notice.
And I think this is one of the most beautiful insights of the contemplative tradition,
That the world is saturated with God,
But we're distracted,
Right?
We rush past things,
We live inside our heads,
We replay yesterday,
Rehearse tomorrow,
We scroll and plan and worry and distract and perform.
And meanwhile.
.
.
This thing called now.
Is happening and God is here in that now.
Which means that the spiritual life is about becoming awake.
To where you already are.
And that changes how we think about something like holiness too.
Because if God's only encountered in certain places at certain times during certain things,
Then we have to go to those places and at those times and do those things,
But if God is everywhere.
And its existence itself.
Then It's really just a question of,
Can I learn to notice?
Can I notice God sitting in the person opposite me on the train?
Can I notice God?
In that stranger.
That I walk past,
Can I notice God in my own body?
Can I notice God in silence and in beauty?
And even in the parts of my life that I wish weren't there.
And again,
This is where it gets really interesting,
Because if God isn't somewhere else,
Then there is no moment of your life in which you are outside the possibility of encounter with God.
None.
Not one.
Not the boring,
Not the difficult,
Not the times when you've felt spiritually dry and empty,
Not the times when you've failed or think you've failed,
Not the moments when you're absolutely certain that you've gone too far this time,
That you're too far away.
You can't,
You cannot be too far away.
You can't go outside the presence of God.
You might have lost awareness of it,
Or closed yourself off to it,
Or even become numb to it,
But you haven't escaped it.
Even the psalmist wrote in Psalm 139.
Where can I go from your spirit?
And the answer in the rest of the psalm is basically nowhere.
If I go up,
God's there.
If I go down,
God's there.
If I go to the farthest edges,
God's there.
There is literally nowhere to hide.
And that's not meant to be frightening.
I don't think the psalmist is writing that to say,
Oh,
I just can't get away from this God.
This should be freeing because it means you don't have to spend your whole life trying to earn your way into God's presence.
You don't have to spend your life wondering if you're even in it.
You begin there.
You wake up there.
You breathe there.
You fail there.
You begin again there.
And you die there.
And if Christianity's true,
You discover that even death can't take you outside the life.
Of God,
So maybe we need to rethink what we mean.
When we say,
I want to get closer.
To God.
Because I think,
Maybe the better prayer.
.
.
Is God,
Help me become aware of how close you already are.
And that's a completely different prayer.
And I think that's why Jesus keeps saying things in the Gospels like,
Look,
Listen,
Stay awake,
Pay attention,
If the Kingdom of God isn't somewhere you need to go to.
If it's already breaking in,
Already present,
Already among you and within you and around you.
Well then the invitation is to open your eyes and see.
To notice.
So here's something to try today.
I invite you today to stop.
Wherever you are,
Just 10 seconds,
Feel your feet.
Notice your breathing,
Listen to whatever sounds are around you,
And then just say,
God,
You are here.
God,
You are here and then just sit with that.
Because remember,
You don't need to make anything happen.
You just need to allow yourself to notice what's already true.
And here's the thought I want you to take with you.
That maybe the spiritual life isn't about getting closer to God.
Maybe it's about discovering that you've never been anywhere else.
All we have to do is look again.
And may grace,
Peace,
And love go with you today and always,
Because frankly,
You can't go anywhere where grace,
Peace,
And love are not.
Till tomorrow.
Bye for now.
