June 9, 2008

You are sad. Why? — Because you are living in yourself and not in God. Remember that God is present. You are not alone for a single moment. He surrounds you. He sees you. He bears everything with you. He wants to help you. Always live in the assurance that God is present. The awareness of His presence will transform everything for you, and your sadness will disappear.

Mother Basilea Schlink, Daily Meditations

Jane Jimenez

Unplugging…it speaks of stopping…even of taking steps back, but the very word itself…unplugging…is a word of modern times, of action, of being electrified, charged up and holding voltage…even as the end of the cord lies on the floor…out of the source of juice…unplugged.

I have absorbed the static electricity of our times, not knowing that the very first step of unplugging was just that…the very first step.

Modern life has taken on a visceral quality.  We are propelled forward with our first breath in the morning, a schedule sounded by the alarm, children and school bells, snarls of traffic and a push on the gas at the first open stretch, having mastered the one fluid motion of bumping-wheels-to-the-curb-turning-pulling-key-opening-door-feet-out-and-down-closing-a-click-of-the-key-as-it-drops-into-purse-door-locked-almost-early-again-one-minute-late.

But it’s not just the activity of the day.  It’s the activity of the mind…of the spirit…of the soul.

The more I unplug, the more I find I need to unplug.  I exchange my radio and television for music.  I exchange my music for melody…lines of quiet musical poetry that aren’t improved by bass.

No longer needing to respond to the latest Fox News Alert, confident that next week will be soon enough to know who won the primary, silence beckons with her promise of a door that opens into a different world…and I turn the dial to fade the last diminishing flute tone down and out of sound.

Silence makes me aware of a different noise, the noise of the self, the mind turned inward, feeding on worries, questions, and habits that have pressed out the Source of life.  I am plugged in still, plugged into myself.

I have been struggling to set myself on a more inspired path for the coming years.  I have strained to hear and see God’s vision.  I thought that unplugging would reveal the Word.

It hasn’t.  And I fear it is because I am still plugged into the barrier that separates me from my Master.  I still grasp for control.

Unplugging my desires, my plans, my goals, my pride, my vision of what I think I need to do…I have been led by the challenge laid out by modern motivational speakers, “Make a difference, think big, ask for the sky and lay it all out, like Jabez, before our Father.”

From a quieter perspective, I think I have been trying to build a bridge to heaven.  Not His bridge, but my bridge.  His bridge was given on the cross.  It’s already here.

Laying down plans, unplugging from myself, I set myself down…quiet…chided…chastened…and loved.   The only thing left to do is pray that my every desire and every action will be created and activated from the Source above.

I am still.  Waiting.  He is God.