Living Presence

My friend Lindy at http://stillfruity.blogspot.com/ tagged me to reveal the one book that I could not live without. (sorry about the full link - still haven't taken time to figure out the "here" thing of linking one word with the site...archaic, I know.)

In my mind's background I have been letting this thought run for the last few days. I could name "To Kill a Mockingbird," my all time favorite book in the whole wide world since I was young. Or I could name "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison..."My daddy's face was a study". I think that is one of the most profound sentences ever written. The rest of the book is just as profound. Or Renita Weems' "Just a Sister Away". Or Esther de Waal's Rule of St. Benedict. Each one of these books had a mesmerizing effect upon me.

But the one book that I would not want to be without is "Living Presence A Sufi Way to Mindulness & the Essential Self". I don't know if the book led me into a greater understanding or if I was just at that moment of awareness but it was in the reading of this book that I began to understand the Presence of God. Whether I was aware of God or not; whether I felt that presence or not, God was with me, around me, in me, in all I saw, in the wooden bench that I sat upon, within each and every face that I looked into. God was there for me to experience, when and if I was ready.

It was in the reading of this book that I gained clarity on how very small and insignificant "I" was. It was in the giving of "I" that I became whole.

The whole of who I am may seem complicated when I try to break it down into pieces but if I turn it into an Essential Self that encompasses me but is not me alone, I become a simple work. And it is in that simplicity that I now live.

An example: (please forgive or give thanks for the changing of the masculine into the feminine)

"Sitting beneath a tree in a park was a poor woman quietly murmuring, "Oh God, God, God..." Many people must have passed iwthout notice or care, until someone sarcastically remarked: "I hear you calling God, but I don't hear God answering." The poor woman was thrown into perplexity. Time passed and some tears flowed before a messenger from God appeared and said, "Sister, your Lord wants you to know that your calling Her IS Her answer to you."

And so it is -- by my being a child of God, by my attempts to follow God's will in my life, so God answers me.

So, thank you, simple child of God, Lindy, fellow student of Love and Infinite Wisdom, Thank you. By the fact that we are seekers, God answers us. "What we love, we will become."