Feeling god's presence

For some time now I have thought of the sun as a metaphor for god's presence. Some days she is brilliantly sunny in the sky and I absolutely cannot miss her. Some days she peaks out, then hides behind a cloud or two, and then peaks out again. As if to say, "now you can see me, now you can't, now you can, now you can't." It can feel like a game to see if I can hold god's presence in my mind and heart even when she's not visibly there in front of me.

But then there are the days, like today and yesterday and the day before that, when I don't get to actually see the sun at all. Three days of total cloud coverage and on and off rain. Three days of darkness. I have more trouble on these days. I have more trouble accessing my metaphoric god because I can't see her with my own eyes. I am relying on memory and faith to hold me over until the next moment, whenever that may be, that I may get a fresh dose of god's presence in that oh-so preferable concrete way again.

I was reminded of this struggle yesterday morning with something my five year-old said. He was sitting in the living room in his pj's watching cartoons before leaving for daycare. He was all wrapped up head to toe in a queen sized fleece blanket. Every stitch of him was covered in the warm blanket. But even though this was true, he looked at me and said sadly, "I don't FEEL covered though."  And isn't that just the truth?

Sometimes we KNOW we are covered or held or protected, but we don't FEEL it. I guess that is where faith comes in. But man is that hard sometimes, to be faithful. To look up at the sky and see all those clouds and not just KNOW that beyond those clouds is a gorgeous blue sky atmosphere with a bold yellow sun just sitting in the middle of it, but to FEEL it too.

When I just can't feel god's presence I say out loud: "god, where are you?"  It is usually in this soft almost little girl voice that is reminiscent of times when I was lost as a child at a fair or mall. One time, when I was ten years old I got lost at Disney World! Yes, Orlando, Magic Kingdom, Disney World.

When I was a child, and to a lesser extent now, I did not like roller coasters. Not at all. So when it came time to go on Space Mountain at Disney World I said, "no way."  But my parents and sister did want to go on this ride. The compromise came when the folks who worked at Space Mountain said there was a place for me to sit at the end of the ride to wait for my family.  And so I did. I sat and I waited. And waited. And waited.

Now, I was ten, and if you remember ten, you still don't really have an accurate sense of time passing yet (this was of course before a ten year old would have her own iPhone). So what was unknown to me was that I had waited for over 3 hours. Sitting on a bench in the darkness of Space Mountain watching family after family exit the ride and thinking, "man that must have been a long line!" I was not afraid though. I both knew and felt my parents' presence. I held faith and felt held. For 3 hours I sat. No book. No music. No technology device. No distress. No worry. Not happy per se, after all I did want to get to my rides too. But content just the same to sit and wait my turn.

Today, 27 years later, I marvel at that little girl. Of course the parent in me now says: "what the hell were my parents thinking leaving me alone in Disney World!" But setting that aside for the moment, I  actually was okay. Technically speaking, I was lost.  Yet, I wasn't because I didn't feel lost. Just as my son said, the facts are important and may tell us something about our experience, but equally important, and particularly in the realm of god and faith, is not just the facts but holding a feeling or presence of being held by our parents or god or perhaps both.

Now I must say here, as a college educated psychotherapist and as a parent there is a part of me, a big part of me, that wants to explain-away this Disney world story with facts about attachment theory and the kidnapping of children. But, just for this one moment, if I were to put those 2 other hats that I wear gently to the side for a minute, I would be forced to stay with the fact that it is equally true that I was held and taken care of.  I was in fact not afraid until a Disney World employee said to me in so many words: "Little girl, you are lost. We must go in search of your parents." It was said as an absolute statement, as truth. And I, as a 10 year old, accepted it as truth. At which point panic set in. A feeling I had not experienced until that very moment when someone told me the facts of my  experience, not the other way around. At that point I was brought back to the concreteness of the world and I thought, just as I do now with god, "mom-dad, where are you?"

Contemplating god's presence reminds me of Emerson's writing about what he called "The Over-Soul."

Sometime in my late 20's I began to read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I don't even remember how I initially got turned on to him because it was before I began to go to Unitarian Universalists Churches (where you also tend to get a lot of Emerson, which I must say, I love), but I remember one of the first things I read was about The Over-Soul.

Now, I must say here that Emerson's writing can be thick. And reading it, I often feel thick, and you may too. But that is okay.  We are not aiming for perfection or an "A" in our spiritual seeking. I try to keep that in mind.  I just try to read and muddle and muse.  Take the bits and pieces that resonate in any which way and leave the rest for another read somewhere down the line. Having said that, here goes Emerson:

"The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's [and woman's] particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart."

"That common heart..." Beautiful.

Emerson writes much more about the Over-soul which maybe we'll discuss at another time. But for now, let's try to notice, and remember to notice, moments of god's presence where we are "contained." Not just when it's easy though when the sun is full and shining bright in the sky. On the endlessly cloudy days too. When our sun that is our lifeline is not visible to the eye. That is the challenge.