Plain Sight

There’s a Sufi proverb from Rumi which says,

“I SEARCHED FOR GOD AND FOUND ONLY MYSELF.
I SEARCHED FOR MYSELF AND FOUND ONLY GOD.”

Whatever a ‘divine spark’ might be, it seems to be carried within our humanity. And yet many of us are healing from teachings and communities which suggested otherwise—which sought to divide us from ourselves, and to keep all the good things in external compartments… So we couldn’t own them. Couldn’t feel their affirmation or their embrace or their warmth.

Much of Christianity loves to talk about something like incarnation, but only in the sense of what it might say about God. It misses the equally scandalous dynamic of what such a concept might say… about us.

It was Jesus who said something about not building a house on sand, where the foundations could not handle a storm. When the storms come, often the unfortunate inadequacies of our constructs and - let’s say our sheltering, are laid bare. From within those shelters, we knew the roles we were required to perform. We knew how we were meant to appear. Many of us carried all of it out meticulously.

But the storms came. And the masks we wore came down with the rest of the house.

And yet, free of the illusion of those shelters protecting us, a burden is lifted. We sense the things that were there all along, however buried, or stifled or censored in us. And in rediscovering the things that were hiding in plain sight, creativity is ignited to build something better, with all of our resources intact.