On Earth as it is in Heaven

. . . remembering our innocence

Psalm 46 includes one of my favorite lines from the Old Testament: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Even as a child that appealed to me. The stillness part reminded me of forests and pastures, the dog’s head in my lap while I read the Hardy Boys, and how beautiful sunsets and violets and moonlight were.

It reminded me that God was everywhere if I simply gave attention.

Life was not always happy or safe when I was growing up, but Psalm 46 addresses that also. It's a declaration that God is our safety against whatever injustice or calamity the world wants to throw at us. Not matter how bad it gets, God is there and everything will ultimately be okay.

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

As I grew older, and became more aware of all the ways that human beings fall short of their potential to be loving and graceful, I began to look for ways to be better myself and hopefully also helpful rather than hurtful. Parenting, lawyering, teaching, gardening, writing. Life happens. You make some good decisions, you make some bad decisions but those external storms - political, economic, psychological, sociological - just keep coming.

I began to feel like the answer had to come from another space - it wasn't enough to be an activist, to grow your own tomatoes and raise your own chickens. The change had to come from deeper within us - individually and collectively. It had to be radical and sustainable.

Psalm 46 professed that God was the answer, which I could get on board with, but it also included the puzzling premise - if you want to know God, if you truly want to save the world, then you have to become still. You have to become the opposite of a tempest. It’s not what you do - it’s what you don’t do.

Here is how A Course in Miracles talks about it.

Only be still and listen. You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in his Father's Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true (W-pI.125.9:3-4).

In stillness we are able to hear the Voice for God, who we call the Holy Spirit, and that Voice teaches us that in our defenselessness our safety lies. It urges us to a state of innocence and openness - that to be quite honest - can seem dangerously vulnerable. And yet.

We clothe ourselves in defenselessness, as we prepare to meet the day. We rise up in Christ, and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abides in us (W-pI.153.19:2-3).

There was great comfort in knowing that the answer was given, that I simply had to get out of my own way in order to receive it, and that its reception would be measured in happiness and peace. In the context of separation - the only context in which measurement is viable - I would know happiness and peace, and in exchange I simply had to give up my insistence that suffering rather than joy was God’s Will for me.

There is no ritual - there are no rules about when to pray and what to say- there is no requirement that you meditate in this position or that one. All that is elided in the clear guidance that all we are asked to do is come to stillness and give attention. When we do this, then God gently - so gently we nearly miss it - reveals Himself.

God has not left his altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is holiness (T-14.IX.3:8-9).

This was not just about my morning prayer. It was not about the pleas for help and the murmurs of thanks uttered throughout the day. It wasn’t just about turning off the television or sitting still rather than puttering.

Rather, it is a quality of attention, a way of being present to what is present to us. It reflects our desire to know God intimately and fully and to accept nothing less. When knowledge of God is our sole objective, then the externals - be they a vexing co-worker or a breathtaking dusk - become increasingly irrelevant. We begin to understand the logic of nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists.

He speaks from nearer than your heart to you. His Voice is closer than your hand. His Love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as He (W-pI.125.7:2-4).

God is not a mystery to be unraveled by rabbis and theologians. God is not a revelation disclosed only to saints in remote monasteries. God is our very being, freely given and forever giving itself away. We are not - we never were and never can be - apart from our being. It transcends the body; it trascends the cosmos. In stillness, we remember this. In stillness, we accept it.

And then we can claim our place "on earth as it is in Heaven."

Ours are the eyes through which Christ's vision sees a world redeemed from every thought of sin. Ours are the ears that hear the Voice for God proclaim the world as sinless. Ours the minds that join together as we bless the world (W-pII.14.4:1-3).

When I was a child I knew what made me happy. Playing with the dogs, making forts out of hay bales, gazing at quartz rocks after rain, walking in the forest. Looking back at those moments, I see innocence and trust. I see a joy that did not need to justify itself.

That it was lost is no longer a crisis. It can be recovered and shared again.

When we are born again in this way, we reclaim our innocence - not as children lost in the world but as adults who have remembered that we are all God's Children, "complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love" (W-pII.14.1:1) and thus act like it.

I’m not saying I’m there. I’m saying, thank you for holding the remembrance of what we are in truth so clear and bright so that I can remember too.

Love,
Sean