Seeing The Divine In Our Lives
Flickr photo by slgckgc
Seeing the Divine in our lives…
This is a short personal story of witnessing the Divine in our everyday lives. I pray that it fills you with what you need and at the very least offers you HOPE and INSPIRATION for your healing and your life.
It was the summer of 2004 in Baltimore, MD. I was going through a very difficult time. My health was headed downhill again, emotionally and spiritually I was bankrupt.
I was ripe for taking the next step in my journey. Often it is when we feel we can’t do it anymore that the space opens up for transformation.
I live in a small condominium with a shared courtyard in the center of our building. In the center of the courtyard is a pear tree. The root system of the tree is in a container and not in the ground.
This pear tree blooms beautiful white blossoms in the spring, carries on with green leaves through the fall and then sheds its leaves for winter.
I noticed our pear tree was not doing well in the summer of 2004. I don’t recall any blossoms in the spring, then came the summer and the leaves were turning brown and falling off. The tree was sick.
Tried as I might to continue to care for the tree; I couldn’t do it anymore.
Summer turned into fall and I was headed to my first session at a healing school called the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism. My experience that week at the healing school is hard to put into words. There was so much love, so much beauty and light. I knew I was home, only it was a different kind of home, one that I had never known before.
The school session was over and I came home to Baltimore on a cold October morning. It was dark, I was tired, and on California time. Couldn’t go to sleep, so I did a spiritual practice we were taught at school called the Remembrance. It is an ancient spiritual practice of opening your heart to God and repeating His name.
When I was finished I was drawn to go look out my sliding glass door in my dining room.
I looked out and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I rubbed my eyes and thought I was dreaming. I thought it was snow! I took another look and then opened the door to go outside on my 2nd floor deck.
And then I saw it, the most magnificent, beautiful, white blossoms I had ever seen. The whites of the flowers were bursting forth in the cold crisp air of the dark night. They were glistening and twinkling as if they were speaking to me. The branches were extending themselves as if they were trying to reach me.
It was then that I knew, I knew what this was all about. The tree was dead and now it was alive. This witnessing touched me so deeply, I bent over weeping and received something special in my heart, almost like a whispering to the deepest place in your heart from the Divine. The message is complete and is so much more than what you ever could have imagined for yourself.
This tree was sick, was empty of leaves, and in a container that could not adequately support it. Now it was living.
This is from God.
Open your heart to the Divine, call upon his Name and be expectant of a response.
It is said when you walk to God , God runs to you.
On a final note, our pear tree was replaced this summer with a new tree. Our pear tree gave us all she had, but it was time for her to move on, she grew too big for the small container she was in.
