"For me this is a practical matter. Instead of having the answer about
God like some guy or some thing or some explanation or some anything,
I have a space of possibility like an openness, like a place for God
to
show up
in my life."
...
speaking with Reverend Terry Cole-Whittaker about God
(transformed way)
"My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever,
during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of
footprints, it was then that I carried you."
... God, Footprints In The Sand (classic way)
"When there was only one set of footprints in the sand, that's when
there was only one set of footprints in the sand."
When I leapt to my feet at the end of
that last weekend of August
in 1978
as if struck by
a lightning boltout of the blue,
delighted with the onset of transformation, I noticed a
shift
in who and what God is for me. To be sure, the experience of
transformation doesn't replace or require relinquishing the
relationship we have with her. Rather, what's so is the relationship we
have with her is profoundly enhanced by it. I saw it's likely
transformation will bring a new clarity and depth to that relationship
for everyone, neither of which was conceivable or even possible prior
to its onset. But in hindsight (and hindsight is always
20/20 vision) that's really not surprising.
In terms of the experience I'd just had of transformation, and the
experience I'd had of God prior to its onset, it became abundantly
clear to me that the one isn't a substitute for or a replacement of or
better than or senior to the other. It's apples and oranges. Comparing
the experience of transformation to the experience of God (or even
comparing the work of transformation to
a path to
God)
is like comparing a hole in the ground to the
swimming pool
it becomes, once it's filled with
water.
When I realized what transformation really gives, that is to say when I
could set aside my concepts and
beliefs
of what it gives, and experience the
contextual
shift
it really is for the first time, it came as no surprise to discover
(and confront and admit) that my erstwhile relationship with God was
largely conceptual ie I had simply fabricated it out of my deeply held
(if not cherished and sincere)
belief.
It suddenly became blindingly obvious (much to my chagrin) how much I
had confused my concepts /
belief
in God with my experience of her (to which I'd had no
direct access
prior to transformation's onset, having obfuscated it with my concepts
/
belief).
Look: there's
nothing wrong
with our concepts of and / or our
belief
in God.
There's nothing that needs to
be changed or fixed about them.
Nothing at all. That said, what transformation allows for is a clear
view of the difference between concepts of /
belief
in something ... and our experience of it. That's really worth
listening!
As I began to see, my most cherished concepts of /
belief
in God had gotten in my way of / prevented
directly experiencing
the space in which she
shows up
in my life. With the onset of transformation, none of that needs to
change. Indeed, transformation doesn't change anything. So it's for
sure not going to change or replace who and what God is (or isn't) for
us. I want us to be clear that
the work of
transformation
isn't antithetical to God. In fact it barely addresses her at all - and
no more than the work of, say, mathematics addresses her. What
the work of
transformationdoes do, is
recontextualize
(I love that
word)
who and what God is. That's profound. And that's not because
transformation brings with it any particular religious slant (apples
and oranges again). It's because transformation
recontextualizeseverything.
Wait: what do you even meanLaurence,
by
"recontextualize
who and what God is"? If God isn't
recontextualized,
are you saying she disappears? What I mean is that God
shows up
within the space of who I really am ... and ... if I don't
generate myself as a place for God to
show up,
then yes, it is likely she won't
show up
at all ie she disappears - which is what, arguably
unexamined, happened to
Mother Teresa
during her epic, bone-numbingly honest,
brilliantly
articulated
crisis of
faith
episode (that's not to mention courageous, given we all took the
saint she was for the poor, for her Missionaries of Charity, for
Calcutta, for India and
the world,
for granted).
When God disappears, it's more than likely I've re-conceptualized her
again,
believing
once again it's
my tired, old system of
beliefs
which accounts for her, and not my having a place for her. And that's
not all: what's also more than likely is I've allowed the place for her
to
show up
in my life, to go out of existence - in other
words,
I've stopped generating an openness for her to
show up
in my life (Man! I'd love to be
a fly on the wall
during a conversation between
Mother Teresa
and
Werner!).
