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Divine action, timing, and presence

Each beautiful soul, every child of the Beloved, is on their own journey, their own path, with Love’s care and carrying. 

Every day becomes a new opportunity to see the Divine in ourselves, our lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters. 

The soul is tender often desiring to hide from the world, the noise, even our inner chatter, almost afraid to come out and show its beauty to the Divine due to the myriad times when it has come out and been met with coarseness, rejection, goals, expectations, should’s and shouldn’t’s, and the like. 

Today consider in your life three areas that often obstruct and perhaps co-opt the emergence of your soul and its tender emergence to meet the Divine and merge with Love. 

Divine action is often different that what we expect. We may even know that our best laid plans are not Gods, yet, we can still hold within ourselves a belief that God, the Beloved, will show up in a certain way in our lives. Our Beloved is showing up often disguised in another, an event, nature, a happenstance meeting, and other ways. Divine action is not always easy to discern because our spiritual path is a path of change, of adjustment to a complete and all encompassing Love that is breaking forth for us, within us and around us. That Love, is guiding us toward a new and transformed place and relationship with the Divine, which we slowly accept as we open our soul and our lives to a Divine action we never could have imagined. Just as Joseph was shown through dreams, Divine action in ways he couldn’t imagine, we too are being guided in ways and toward things, we often can’t imagine. And we often look for Divine action to show up within and around us in ways we expect… we need to get ready for something different.  

Divine timing is another area that often can throw us off balance. As humans, we have plans and schedules, agendas and seasons, stages of life and goals and all are held and carried deep within us. Our tenderness of soul can be quick to hide when the course-ness of our lives pace demands a certain march. This is where we have to be attentive to Divine timing which again, is not what we imagine and or hope it might be. Tapping into Divine timing requires a lifetime of experience, of missed expectations, and not getting it right, at least from a human perspective. We can learn over time, to lower our own expectations and know that Divine timing is becoming our timing, over time. Although it’s very difficult to do, we must remind ourselves that our soul is slowly being freed from the constraints of time. Although on the surface, that sounds good, our human-ness can feel un-hinged as bit by bit we recognize the eternal presence of Divine Love. Again, we may expect something different but often our “different” is based on valuing time based on our ability to plan and control it. Since Love is always and eternally present for us, as we release ourselves into Love’s embrace, we simultaneously, methodically, move away from our expectation of Divine timing. Since time is such a handy human construct, and we honor it, and in a sense worship it… it can become a form of Spiritual bypassing if we tell ourselves that our timing is Divine timing and then try to reason why we are using our time wisely for God’s purpose or some other inner narrative. When Timelessness shows up, do not be afraid, allow yourself to embrace and be embraced by the Holiness. 

Divine presence is often commotitized by the assumption that we should expect that Divine presence is always there. We hold an expectation of what Divine presence should feel like, act like, be like, look like. At times Love shows up predictably and yet more often than not, we are so surprised by Love’s presence that we don’t even notice it. We narrow our expectation of Love to fit into what we think we need or deserve, and often narrow it further to protect ourselves from various hurts.

On our spiritual path, we are being shown Divine presence day by day, bit by bit, in full glory through a narrow opening. Often we intellectually think we should feel God’s presence and rather than not feeling it we may need to accept that our aperture is being expanded… and we can’t imagine how Divine presence is or may be showing up. Our history looks to what we know and or what we’ve experienced but again, Divine presence is so vast and so encompassing that we can only sip and taste the fullness and our lifetime becomes the experiential classroom for our souls. 

We can join with Jacob’s sentiment as we say “Beloved, You were here the whole time, and I didn’t even know it.” Amen 

As we begin to “fly closer to the flame of Love,” many people notice very real physical sensations—warmth moving through the chest or spine, gentle trembling, waves of emotion, tears without a clear story, deep stillness, or an unexpected lightness in the body. Scripture already names this bodily knowing of God: the disciples on the road to Emmaus ask, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” (Luke 24:32), and at Pentecost the Spirit comes not as an idea but as fire resting on real human bodies (Acts 2:1–4). Love, in the biblical imagination, does not stay abstract—it enters the nervous system.

In the language of Kundalini, such experiences are often described as awakened life-energy becoming perceptible in the body—felt as heat, subtle currents, pressure, or spontaneous changes in breathing. Breath practices across contemplative traditions help us notice what is already happening: as the breath softens and slows, long-held tension releases, and spiritual awareness is often registered as tingling, warmth, pulsing, or spaciousness.

Sufi mystics speak of ishq—burning love for God—in which the heart becomes a furnace and the body itself joins remembrance (dhikr). Swaying, trembling, tears, and a sudden tenderness in the chest are not treated as distractions, but as signs that the Beloved is drawing the whole person—body and soul—into nearness.

The desert mystics observed the same descent of prayer from the head into the heart. Writers such as Evagrius and John Cassian describe prayer settling into the body as deep stillness, warmth in the chest, a softened belly, and a luminous, attentive quiet. For them, this was not spiritual excitement, but the slow re-ordering of the whole human person in God.

There is also a deeper meaning often hidden inside these sensations. Across traditions, they are understood as God’s way of getting our attention—not to impress us, but to remind us who we truly are. In biblical language, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The human person is the dwelling place of God. In Jewish and Christian imagery, the body becomes a living sanctuary; in mystical language, we are the containers of divine life. In Sufi poetry, the human heart is the house of the Beloved. In yogic language, the body becomes the chariot through which divine consciousness moves. Love stirs the body to awaken the soul to this forgotten truth: you are the place where God chooses to dwell.

It is also important to say gently and honestly that, at times, this closeness to Love can feel overwhelming. The same fire that heals can feel intense. Emotionally, people may encounter sudden grief, joy, fear, or deep tenderness rising all at once—sometimes faster than the heart feels ready to hold. In both Christian and Sufi writings, this stretching of the heart is part of how Love enlarges our capacity to receive.

For this reason, the wisdom traditions emphasize gentleness, grounding, and accompaniment—slowing prayer, returning to simple breath, ordinary daily routines, and, when possible, walking with a trusted spiritual companion.

And it is equally important to be compassionate with the body.

If physical sensations become frightening, extreme, persistent, or confusing—such as strong pressure, pain, dizziness, heart symptoms, or neurological-type sensations—a medical review is wise and responsible. Seeing a doctor to rule out physical causes is important and does not indicate a lack of faith. The spiritual life does not ask us to ignore our bodies; it teaches us to honor them as the very temple, chariot, and dwelling place through which the divine meets the world.

Jesus did not protect God behind religious language, institutional power, or spiritual credentials. He communicated God in the open.

He spoke in stories pulled straight from ordinary life—farmers and seeds, women baking bread, laborers waiting for work, fathers and lost children. He refused to make God a technical subject that only trained professionals could interpret. Instead, he translated the deepest truth of God into the shared vocabulary of human need, joy, failure, hunger, grief, and hope.

In doing this, Jesus effectively “open-sourced” God.

No gatekeepers were required. No insider status was needed. No spiritual license had to be earned.

God was no longer controlled by temple systems, purity codes, elite theology, or moral ranking. God became accessible in public—in kitchens, fields, boats, street corners, dinner tables, and hospital rooms. Anyone could recognize God because Jesus described God in terms of what people already knew: forgiveness, welcome, repair, mercy, persistence, and joy.

Even more radically, Jesus did not only talk about God. He handed the work of God to ordinary people. “Heal the sick.” “Feed the hungry.” “Forgive one another.” “Love your enemies.” God’s life was no longer locked inside sacred buildings or authorized leaders. It was released into human relationships.

In Jesus, God is no longer a closed system.

God becomes participatory.

This is what makes the gospel so unsettling to religious power and so liberating to everyone else. If God can be encountered anywhere mercy is practiced, dignity is restored, and power is shared—then no institution can own God.

Jesus did not simplify God.

He made God shareable.

Walking humbly with God often involves active inaction … God show me how you wish me to be still that I might hear you and be guided by you 🙏 help me to know when inactivity is fear in disguise of prayer.

Help me to know when activity, doing and going are hubris and help each of us to know, especially help me to know when to move, how to move, where to move, that I might stay with you in thought, prayer and action. Thy will be done in me and through me 🙏

Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

There is no question that we are each beloved by God. The deeper question is whether we are brave enough—and humble enough—to receive such love from the Holy of Holies. Divine love does not arrive as flattery or reward; it comes as an unveiling. To accept it is to consent to being known beyond our defenses, beyond our striving, beyond the story we tell ourselves about worthiness.

The mystics remind us that God’s love is not earned but endured. As Julian of Norwich wrote, “The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.” Yet this gladness requires courage, for love exposes us to transformation. Meister Eckhart speaks to this inner poverty when he says, “God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.” To receive God’s love, we must loosen our grip on control, achievement, and fear. Teresa of Ávila echoes this holy vulnerability: “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much.”

Scripture bears witness to this same paradox of bold humility. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), not by overpowering us, but by inviting our consent. God’s nearness is not coercive; it waits at the door of the heart: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). And when we dare to open, we discover that love has always been seeking us first: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 John 4:10).

To accept divine love is an act of quiet heroism. It is the humility to stop proving, the bravery to remain open, and the faith to trust that being beloved is not a future achievement but a present truth. The Holy of Holies does not demand our perfection—only our willingness to receive.

Loving God, surround me now in my worry and wondering that I’m not enough, in my desire to achieve, in my wanting to have things certain ways… May I be transformed today, each day but especially today to open myself to the love you are pouring out for me and allow your love to guide my moments today to love others in the ways they need, the ways you will. Thy will be done, Thy will be done in me, through me, around me, until nothing is left but you! Amen.