God

Clearing Our Cloudy Images of God by Felicia Murrell

Clearing Our Cloudy Images of God by Felicia Murrell

The sun beams. The grass beckons. I heed its welcome and lay on my back. Bare feet to the earth, knees upright to support my frame. Shielding my eyes, I stare at the sky naming each majestic cloud as an image I’ve formed in my mind’s eye. Horse. Chicken leg. Heart. I think about clouds as images. Clouds as covering. And somehow, I think about God…

Where is God in the clouds? How do I name that which I’ve deified? How cloudy are my images of God? What or who do I imagine God to be?

Tradition has given me some answers. Many words have been written to substantiate men’s beliefs about God. I’ve parroted a lot of them. But how do we truly begin to know God in that passionate, deep, mystical, unveiled knowing that Jesus speaks of in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent”?

A Way Back to Trust

A Way Back to Trust

Now conscious of my turning, I consider the way back to trust. And I ready myself for the tussle. Because this trust requires honesty. It requires that I look straight into what is real today and pray. Not a flowery prayer that defies reality, but raw, visceral prayers of lament. That cry out for encounter. And in this place of prayer — talking, crying, listening, thanking, releasing — God’s goodness becomes rooted in me again. Because I begin to remember his character, his faithfulness. And I begin to see his face more clearly, the expression of love and kind knowing. In this place, in the light of Love’s face, I can rest. I can wait. I can trust.

The Present Is the Gift

The Present Is the Gift

Because here’s the thing. This present moment, the breath I’m taking now, is the only thing that’s real. While I still feel the effects of the past, the past itself is, well, past. And while I anticipate the future with a mix of hope and doubt, the future itself is unknowable. The only place I can know and be known, the only place I can live rooted in love, the only place I can experience God, is in this very messy moment. Rooted in the reality that there is enough, right here, right now. Me in God. God in me. In the now, there is enough.

Life Is in the Roots (or how I began writing rooted IN)

Life Is in the Roots (or how I began writing rooted IN)

This place of connection is the place where truth and wisdom break in.  So I lifted a question.  Why is connection so important to you, God? Connection with you, with ourselves, with others? The response came—every point of connection is a connection with him. God in us.  God in others.  God in everything he’s made.  Not in a pantheistic, the tree is God, kind of way.  But in a sacramental, seeing and touching the holy, kind of way.