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God and Me – A Relationship that takes work
Please welcome today’s guest blogger, Lisa Burke, and join in conversation by responding to Lisa’s reflection using the comment box below.
God and Me – A Relationship that takes work
by Lisa Burke
Have you ever found yourself prompted to be more deliberate about your relationship with God? I have. In fact, that is exactly where I find myself right now.
God is with us at every moment, in fact from before we were conceived until long after we take our last breath. With God ever present, we are always in the presence of God. Yet are we always mindful of God’s presence around us and within us?
For me, the short answer is “no.” Yes, I know that God is there and here, but I am not always mindful about it. So it’s important that periodically I refocus my attention on this essential relationship.
Sometimes, when I experience these promptings –- you might call them movements of the heart — I feel that it’s not just me recognizing that I need to be deliberate about my relationship with God, but rather God taps me on the shoulder or puts a hand to my heart and says “I’m here. I’d like for us to spend time together.”
This deliberateness about the God-me relationship doesn’t happen as a result of some magic formula or combination of religious rituals or actions. It happens over time, and each time it happens it happens in different ways and through different encounters. The invitation usually manifests itself not through a major conversion event but through a series of opportunities.
The invitation to focus on OUR relationship (and yes, the God and me relationship is a mutual, two-sided relationship) is an invitation to sit and spend time, to be conscious of each other’s presence, to recognize the signs of each other’s love in everyday life, to hear the voice of God revealed through the voice, words, and silence of other people on one’s life.
Sometimes I achieve this refocus on “God & me” through a retreat, or a day of recollection and renewal, or seasonal spiritual practices or devotions such as are offered during Advent and Lent, but most often I experience this process of once again being deliberate about my God and me relationship by taking time to be conscious of God within and around me, by seeking and seeing God in the communities in which I find myself, by recognizing that God wants to be in a deeply intimate relationship with me and intimate relationships involve work and are worthy of work.
With the start of the season of Lent on the horizon, just a few weeks away, this seems like the perfect time (then again isn’t God’s time always perfect?) to be engaging with God about OUR relationship.
Long ago I realized that “God and me” is a lifelong relationship that is constantly (and thankfully) in progress or under construction – and that’s a good thing. I am thankful that God periodically offers a direct invitation to “sit and stay a while!”
What are some of the ways you experience God’s invitation to deeper intimacy?
What are some ways that you re-focus on the “God and me” relationship in your own life?
Lisa Burke, a native of New Jersey, is an Associate of the Sisters of Christian Charity and recently commemorated her 15th anniversary with them.
She is grateful that God deigned to include in the recipe of who she is the rich flavors of the daughters of Blessed Pauline von Mallinckrodt, the Sisters of Christian Charity; the daughters of Blessed Fr. James Alberione, the Daughters of Saint Paul; the daughters of St. Dominic, the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell; the daughters of Blessed Mary Angela Truskowska, the Felician Sisters; and the sons of St. Marcellin Champagnat, the Marist Brothers of the Schools.
Her personal spiritual charism embodies a little bit of each of these religious congregations and the three dimensions common to each of them: Eucharistic, Marian, Ecclesial/Missionary. Her life interests are broad, rich, and enhanced by many interesting paradoxes.
For prayer today, visit our Praying with the Sisters page for a recording of today’s readings and reflection.
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{ 9 comments }
Enjoyed this, Lisa. Much of what you wrote evokes memories of similar God moments in my own life. Especially the “tap on the shoulder”. Thank you for this.
I am glad that the image of the “tap on the shoulder” resonated for you. I don’t always articulate my “God and me” relationship in such concrete terms, but it really is the way I see and experience it. I remember a card I received on my First Communion Day from my sister’s godmother (a former Carmelite nun). She wrote, “Lisa, congratulations on the beginning of your love affair with Jesus!” Later in life, a spiritual director advised me to do as Teresa of Avila and picture Jesus sitting there with me as I talk with him. I’m grateful that God has been deliberate in deepening my awareness of this relationship as personal and intimate. I’ve been blessed to have people and opportunities throughout my life to cultivate a real sense of the God and me relationship as interpersonal and as real.
I, too, found Lisa’s reflection meaningful. I read Brother Lawrence’s “Practice of the Presence of God” more than 50 years ago. That book, and another, Thomas Kelly’s “Testament of Devotion, ” also about attentiveness to “the inner life,” and based in Quaker spirituality, were foundational in my spiritual life in all the years since – but, as Lisa says, to live *consciously* in the presence of God takes work – and attentiveness. For me, it’s only since I was past my 70th year that I find myself persisting in that awareness without so much deliberate effort – and that has been the greatest blessing of my life.
Marsha,
I love the concept of both titles you reference. “Practice of the Presence of God” expresses what I was getting at in my blog reflection. The “God and me” relationship is dynamic, multidimensional, and constantly growing. It takes work both on our side and on God’s. We don’t always consider that God works at it, too. God loves us unconditionally but sometimes God has to wait for us to respond, to listen, to make ourselves open and available. As a musician, I understand “practice” to be more than just repeating something until I get it right; for me, it’s about returning to something on a regular basis until it is part of me. That idea translates perfectly to the spiritual life, but I recognize I still have “lots of work” to do. Fortunately God understands that and doesn’t hold it against me.
Lisa,
Enjoyed your reflection very much. I, too, have been trying to spend some quality God-me time lately, to the point where I have created a prayer corner in my apartment, specifically for that purpose. I have removed the distractions of computers and tvs, and it is a cell phone free zone. I have some items for reflection, but it is basically my chair and the cross. I try to spend at least a half hour a day there, meditating and praying, but mostly it has been simply being quiet and present with God. Listening to Him in the stillness of the heart.
KC, thanks for sharing the concrete ways in which you are deliberately carving out space for God and you to recreate in deeper ways. Entering into the stillness of one’s own heart is not always easy, but when you can find space and ways in which to do it with more certainty, it brings such peace even amidst the chaos of some days. While I am trying to be more deliberate, more attentive to use Marsha’s phrase, about my “God and me” relationship lately, I have to admit I am not having an easy time with locating the stillness within me. I am working on it.
Thank you so much for these reflections Lisa. It is a highly practical essay and set of your ponderings and findings, showing a very simple and non-ritualised approach to keying-in to God.
We can spend so much time searching for God, that we lose him in the search! Like throwing the baby away with the bathwater; like following ritual blindly instead of being mind-focused on the objective of the ritual – which means that the means (ritual)becomes an end in itself, instead of a means to and end (God).
What i personally find is that there are days when I really do not feel like praying because I am downhearted or heavy with something else; perhaps not feeling “holy” or spiritual – still most of the time I manage to do the prayer time anyway, offering up my inadequacies including that I do not feel like praying today. I know at some level (faith?) that in spite of myself and my own emotions (deceiving as they are) by doing the ritual in such a state, helps anyway. I suppose it helps to keep the God connection going even whilst in turmoil about something. If I had to wait to feel holy and spiritual every time I allowed myself to pray, then I might never pray again. And like any close friend or relative, whilst I am in my troubled state, God sits by me anyway – abide with me. Even in my darkest times, when I cannot see a slither of light and I do not feel like a heavenly being at all, I know that somehow or other I have to keep that connection going.
Thank you for your comments, Eileen Ann. Your thoughts really resonate with me. I think there’s a healthy balance one seeks between naturally interrelating with God and ritualized encounters. Rituals are valuable to us as human beings, but unfortunately I think after Vatican II, many traditional prayer rituals had become (and some still are in some places) marginalized. I think it’s important to value them in their context and appreciate them for the vessels they can be to an encounter with God and not an ends in themselves as you note. That said, I also think we go through ebbs and flows in life where at time we may seek/need/want/end up with more of one or the other. And that’s ok, too. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where we can only manage the ritual; sometimes we find ourselves in a place where we can only manage quiet presence; and sometimes only manage the “Hi, God, it’s me.” That’s the singular thing about God: God understands us before we understand ourselves and God always loves us unconditionally and awaits our response when we are able.
I try to refocus by getting outside in the open and away from walls and the stuff of life that all to often crowds my “hearing.” This winter it has been hard to do this due to the very heavy snow and ice and some other stuff – which has made me have to try and get “outside” in other ways.
So I try to focus on my feet in order to stay grounded. Sometimes this helps me to stay responsive and be clear from that instant REACTION that can all to often happen.
Still hearing the call to be present in the moment with God even for a little while can often be a challenge for me. Perhaps if someone could just turn up the volume on the answering machine that is often me I might hear God’s “ring” better.