Accessing God

Years ago I did what I believed every good Christian ought to do, and told my spiritually curious Jewish friend about my "personal relationship" with God. I should clarify and mention that my friend was an agnostic, cultural Jew who went to synagogue for the occasional bat mitzvah or wedding, not orthodox by any stretch of the imagination My gushing about God was met with genuine confusion. How can I claim to "talk" with a God she couldn't see, hear or touch? Fair question.

Over the years, if I'm being honest, my conversations with God have often seemed one-sided. Yes there are moments of overwhelming beauty and emotion when a song speaks to me so directly that it might as well be God Himself singing to me. Or the times when through a friend and a conversation, or a time of reflection, a light bulb goes on that might as well be illumination from the throne of God. Most of the time, however, the only voice I hear is my own. My friend did not find my circular reasoning terribly convincing. In her estimation, I was simply attributing my emotional and intellectual chatter to God. In all fairness, her skepticism has helped me more than the Christian pat-answers over the years.

While I suspect I'll always be less than fully satisfied with my relationship with God, I've learned two ridiculously simple things about accessing God:

1. Never get too comfortable with your idea of God. I have to be willing to continually let go of my preconceptions of God. Every one of us has some idea of what God is and who God is not. Many of us want to know God, to hear from Her, but only as long as what we hear jibes with what we already believe to be true about God. Fortunately, God's patience is infinitely greater than mine and God keeps drawing me in closer, expanding my heart and mind with an ever more gracious, merciful, compassionate and truly just vision of Godself. I am convinced that God speaks to everyone, all the time, Christian, or decidedly anti-Christian. So often the glimpses of limitless divine love we do get scare us, because they seem to contradict what we've been taught to believe about God. The good news is, as long as we're alive, if we're dealing with the divine God, the invitations into still larger visions of God will keep coming, no matter how many times we expand our hearts and minds. The more we begin to trust, the easier this becomes.
2. It's hard to listen when you're doing all the talking. How many of us would keep a friend if they treated us the way we treat God? We go to God when we're in crisis, when we get desperate enough we bargain with God, hoping to trick Him into giving us what we want in exchange for empty promises we have no intention of following through on. This seems like a generally bass-ackwards thing to do when dealing with the very Source of life itself. When we do talk to God, we tend to come on our terms, with our requests, our priorities and questions, on our schedules, but rarely if ever take the time to listen back. I'd lose a friend like that faster than you can say "basket-case". Despite my best intentions, I know I won't make time to listen unless I create a rhythm that allows for times of not thinking and instead, listening.