... its all IN the becoming ...

I find myself sitting in the stillness of the house, the sun finally making an appearance through my window with a cold shiver leaving my back. 

Breathing out with a heavy heart, if I only have the eyes to see, grace saturates each day and carries me through the good and the hard - the mess and the chaos. 

I find myself ahead, reading news reports of yet another crisis; a skipping ahead to next week’s problems; holding tightly to next year’s worries that might or might not play out. I am here right now with my right now people, reminding myself to take in the grace because I don’t want to miss this, but I am also there, worrying, fearing, fretting. 

It happens in the day and it happens in the night. Sometimes in the middle of heart stompingly joyful moments, but sometimes too, in complete silence. 

Sometimes my anxiety stems from something as simple as the mundane details of life, but it can also paralyse me as I whirl around worst case scenarios, envisioning how i would respond should something happen. 

Small or Big - it doesn’t matter, my worry finds a way to lay claim to any situation. 

I become unglued, unraveled, rundown and I cannot gather up my frayed pieces quickly enough. There is not enough deep breathing, not enough words I can whisper to pick up my pieces, to cover me in peace. 

As I process it all - trying to be here but mostly there - I realise something about all of these future worries, tomorrow’s struggles, worst-case scenarios that I hold so tightly to; They are false images. They’re not real. They’re just dusty representations of how it would actually be because my imaginings don’t show God’s presence covering me, within me, around me, strengthening me then just as it is now. 

I guess its why God reminds us so often to simply stay here now. He gives us strength anew every morning, grace for this moment, manna for this day. He knows that one day is about all we can handle so in His gentle guidance He constantly shifts our gaze back to this day. It’s day-by-day, moment by moment collecting of His peace, His presence, His strength, keeping me dependent on him and continually turning our face towards His, drawing upon His resources rather than my own. 

And no matter how hard I try to pick up my pieces, it is this that gives me peace - His presence, standing guard. 

In those times when I feel paralysed by fear, by worry, and drawn away from my right now moments, I remember that fear doesn’t get the final say. Love does. Hope does. 

Refusing to die at the exact moment we are been offer new life. 

Hope is not a denial of reality. Hope is a series of small actions that transforms darkness into light. 

I recall the ancient story of the elder who was talking to a disciple about tragedy, he said - 

I feel as if I have two wolfs fighting within my heart. One wolf is despair and the other is hope. 

The disciple asked, Oh holy one, which one will win the fight within your heart? 

And the holy one answered, it depends which one I feed. 

The spiritual task in life is to feed the hope that comes out of despair to stay in the struggle until it is transformed into new life. The road is long, the path never ends, and at times we ask why we do not win. Simply sometimes we do not endure, we are not giving. 

This moment is necessary to the final resolution, the whole purpose of wrestling with God is to become the self we are meant to be. To step out of the confines of our false security and allow our creating God to go on creating within us to the point that WE can transform the world around us. 

The really hard thing to come to understand in life, is that it is IN the BECOMING that counts, not the achievement, not the roles which we manage to mental ourselves. The becoming is the most busing task, giving ourselves over to the sculpturing of it again and again, can become a life time of shifts, alternations and orbiting in spins of near despair leading to HOPE. 

Turning our faces to the sun, the Maori people say, let the shallows always fall behind you. When despair comes in order to de - spell with Hope we have to make an effort. Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside ourselves to get better, it is about getting better inside whats going on inside ourselves. 

Its about becoming open to the God of newest. Its about allowing ourselves to let go of the present and even the future we do not see but trust in God. Then whatever the circumstances no matter how hard the task is the struggles of life may indeed shunter us from catechism to catastrophe, from disturbance to debacle; BUT they will not destroy us. 

We always think of hope as grounded in the future - But this is WRONG - 

Hope is fill filled in the future, but it depends on our ability to remember here and now, just like Jacob. We have to survived everything in life to this point and are in even better than when those troubles began. So why not, how can we not say we can not survive this latest situation too. 

Once we understand ourselves, its our task to help other people see, that of the two wolves we are living with, despair and hope, the wolf that will always win is the one we feed. Alway 

It is easy to give people pills to dull the pain, but its your task and mine, to give them the vision it takes to transform themselves into life again so they too can transform the world around them. 

Thats the spirituality of struggle. 

Thats the spiritual task of life and it is to live in hope. 

To seek the sun always, embrace tomorrow as a gift we set to build upon from today. 

To find life before death,  to stay in the struggle wherever we are, until that struggle is transformed into new life - yours, ours  and the life of the world around us. The life that is depending on us to transform this world. 

Photo we took at Hamilton Gardens in NZ