Waiting for God's Children

The whole Creation eagerly waits for God’s children to be born…
St. Paul

If this is true, why would Creation long for God’s children? Is a child of God a member of a certain religion? Does a child of God have just the right dogma or ritual, tradition or moral attitude to make Creation itself long for their presence in the world? What is so special about a child of God that would make the stars, the sun and moon, every bird and fish, dog and bear, even the rocks and rivulets, trees and toads long in every fiber of their instinctive beings for God’s children to be born? Scripture says, “God is Light…” Is it Light then? Are God’s children full of a primal Light and lightness of Being all Creation sighs for?

We are part of Creation. Our “human nature” is simply nature in a human form. As part of Creation are we longing for God’s child in us to emerge out of the shadows of our hearts? Do we sigh for a natural freedom of being along with the innocent animals and the chemically burdened sky? If so, why don’t we arise and shine? Why can’t we radiate Life like happy people we admire? What holds us back? Is it because even as we long for Light we also fear its radiance?

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? Maurice Freehill

Our best songs celebrate joy, Love, beauty… those qualities we have long ascribed to the Light. Our joyous, jump up and down Gospel music celebrates the freedom of Light manifested into the world as Love. Why would we sing of Light, work for Light, long for Light and yet secretly fear it? Perhaps because this kind of Light, the Light of what is whole and real, exposes all that makes us conflicted and phony. What if those whom the crickets are nightly calling, are souls who for the love of Light have faced their repressed traumatic pain, their secret fear of guilt and embarrassment so that they too might sing songs of Love in the dark?

I believe that to free the Divine child within us is to bubble with Life’s joy… to laugh so hard at times our whole body aches. I believe it means that instead of repressing our energies we recover the innocence nature of our being and guide our energies in the ways of fearless Love. This is the way we come to passionately love being fully here, sensual, alive, vibrant with God’s Life-force flowing as freely through us as wind through the trees.

This is the way to be a blessing, when God's own energetic Love streams through our open energetic system to bless animals, plants, the patient trees. We are the ones we are waiting for, just on the other side of pain's shadows and the projections we make on others. Just behind the passing clouds of culturally "normalized" misinterpretations lies a reality longing for our Love filled embrace, our awakening, our coming home to the unbroken fabric of all that is real.

Ashes and Snow: Finding our Song

I’ve been meditating on the mystical and beautiful images on the Ashes and Snow web site. They remind me of a novel I spent 13 years writing, Pio and Lilly. It is the story of a young woman raised from birth with the animals, and a Franciscan Monk who finds her and falls in love with her innocence, wildness and beauty. Within these astonishing Ashes and Snow images as well as in the Pio and Lilly story, what strikes me is the harmonic resonance that occurs in a more wide awake state of being, when one wakes up to the Divine dimensions of life governed by harmonic sound, by the original voice that brings one into the Light of the original face——both our own and God’s. This dimension is real, more real than real. Those who touch it know they have been kissed awake by a Great Love that is the primal source of existence.

This is God beyond all concepts of God, beyond all “ownership” by religions, beyond all traditions and cultures. This is the primal harmony that makes galaxies revolve. I believe it is this awareness of a sacredness, wonder and unity inherent in the structure of reality that alone can lead us forward into a new era of peace where wisdom and Love at last rule the heart of mankind.

But how can we come to this beautiful awareness on a widespread level? Is it through faith, prayer and meditation, art, social activism, science or church? That is the question we each must wrestle with for each of us must find an answer deeply relevant to our own soul. I believe this individual questioning has far more value to our growth than someone offering their opinion of the answer to us on a platter. As it says on the Ashes and Snow web site, “A whale sings not because it has answers but because it has a song.” Perhaps it is as each of us embraces our responsibility to find answers to the most important issues that lie before us that we will end up finding that song which is itself the answer: a song of Love given by the great God of Life to enlighten us and inspire others. And perhaps singing with awe and gratitude from our heart in harmony with the universal harmony is much more important than any answer we could ever articulate with our wondrous yet limited minds.