DIVINE PACE

I wrote once that life is a fast train.

Now I see that I was the train and life was the view.

How fast can you run toward the end of your life before everything around you, even the beautiful thoughts within you, are blurred? 

October will mark for me the passing of a year, of entering a dimension where the soul clocks time at a mysterious and unfamiliar pace—

the world still spinning at an impossible speed, while I was held firmly in place.

Something wasn’t right. The knowing of it doesn’t make me special or unique. On some level, we all know. But our minds are cluttered with fleeting, random obsessions that seem just so important at the time. Without intention, our on-board wisdom, our connection to ourselves and others, is inadvertently shoved aside.

While I was attending to all the commotion of what I deemed a “purposeful life,” my body was organizing a covert mission of its own. 

Keeping pace with my frantic spirit, my cells were dividing unusually fast. And cells that divide quickly don’t often have the chance to mature in a healthy way.

Isn’t it true that creating anything of substance takes time? Maturity isn’t something we can willfully advance. It’s a one-step-and-then-the-other proposition, not something hurried through or skipped. 

Our own bodies inform us that re-creation isn’t instant or a season but an endless and expansive “Going through.”

It’s remarkable how healing requires the absolute antithesis of rush. For someone who values productivity, rest took some getting used to or, maybe more accurately, it required a reconciliation with what productivity really is.

When something happens “to us” we make the mistake of defining the event as an interruption to our plan. But what would happen if we reimagined these moments as evidence of an omniscient hand?  

In Our most trying seasons, we wonder where god is. It’s not that He is tarrying behind us. It’s that He is light years ahead.

This, my cancer, was not simply an invitation to come for a visit, but an agreement to move into the sanctuary where the heart resides. Cancer was my permission to put aside the unrestrained Unnecessary and melt into a white cotton land of “I have everything I need.”

It became apparent that superficial and Spirit are incapable of occupying the same space in time. We fail to grasp the bigger vision when we are caught up in the trivial details—will I get sick, become dispensable, lose my hair? Worry is such a waste of our numbered days.

Fear is always playing catch up—fear of not measuring up, of missing out, and the unknown. Ironically there was no “what next” to dread because I had already arrived.

I quickly dispensed with the notion that I had been taken out of the game and instead visualized that I was the game itself—

Who I am is the Objective,

without need of context or definition,

without strategy or manipulation,

without competition or comparison,

without fear of loss, or compelling to win—

And I relaxed into the assurance that victory can manifest even in my sleep.

Life is complicated mostly because we make it that way. When we agree to being subjected to everything all at once, our perception of a world spinning out of control is the body’s reaction to being overstressed.

I tell myself to pay attention to the heart beating faster, the breath quickening, and the release of cortisol moving into overproduction mode. These are not merely miraculous bits of my humanity but the nonverbal expressions of an essential story being told.  

I am mindful that my relationship to what happens around me determines how fast the world is spinning within. And with every breath, one and then the other, I slow the pace.

Divine Pace is the antithesis of blur, bringing the full picture into view.

ATTRIBUTES OF DIVINE PACE—

Divine Pace is evidenced in the body—Normal respiration is 12-20 inhales per minute and yet we pay the miracle of breathing little mind.

Divine Pace acknowledges that all of life’s perceived detours are in fact, exactly according to plan.

Divine Pace holds us back from the danger we unwittingly place ourselves in—protecting and preventing us from rushing ahead.

Divine Pace makes room for the conversation between head and heart.

Divine Pace entertains the notion that instead of being taken out of something, we have been invited in.

Divine Pace clears the path for God to do His work.

Divine Pace doesn't cut in line or push ahead.

Divine Pace is the pause before the reaction, putting white space between words.

Divine Pace notices the little things most often missed.

Divine Pace invites all the senses to engage in the moment.

Divine Pace insists on the second thought, the second look.

Divine Pace is the antithesis of “blur,” bringing the full picture into view.

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ABUSE OF POWER

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SEARCHING FOR SOUL