Wonderings, Lessons, and Gifts

I am 9/10 teacher and 1/10 artist on a blogging journey to coax out my creativity where I’m convinced my shy soul dwells.  Teaching and learning have little distinction for me.  I often ask my students to teach something in order to learn it better.  Writing this blog allows me to explore what resonates and put myself in the teacher/learner seat.  My blog title comes from the adventure, joy, and beauty I experience when my heart waves pick up the presence of the Divine.

            I’ll be looking for your resonance through my wonderings, lessons, and gifts that somehow formed while attending my interior school of wisdom. 

It excites me to think that your heart-waves will on occasion oscillate with mine.  Sharing it with you provides a way to share what I have received. This blog also supports my writer’s desire to show up at the page.

            Indeed, I believe that the Divine is always present everywhere.  Sometimes experiencing this presence comes unbidden,  but usually we sense it from paying attention. Something within each of us is divine and knows how to spot it’s kin and origin.  This part of us is essentially greeting the Divine when we resonate with something good. For me, resonance, teaching and learning relate closely.

            The word “educate” comes from the middle English word, educere which means to draw out or lead forth.  This has exciting implications that contrast with our modern idea of education as the process of stuffing information in. Instead, the original idea of education operates on the idea that we come ready-made with wisdom and the role of education is to help us draw it out.  One of my favorite experiences in life is leading a creative writing workshop and pointing out to new writers what beauty and wisdom just came out of their pen.  They see it and marvel it came from within them. And how do they know it’s beautiful and wise – even Divine?  It thrills as it resonates! 

            I love the experience of reading great writers who articulate an idea that feels like it is reminding me of something I already knew.  How did they know this intimate thing before I knew it?  They drew from their deepest wisdom and shared from our Divine origin. Something in me recognizes it.

            One of my favorite examples of resonance comes from a story about one of my hero’s, Huston Smith.  This man now in his 90’s grew up as a missionary kid in China and became a renowned expert of religion. I caught the passion for all humans’ faith journeys from him. I read an interview with this man about his depressing experience as a professor while at MIT.  There engineers, scientists, and analytic philosophers surrounded him with their commitment to empirical data, statistics, and abstract reasoning.  One colleague told him cleverly though hurtfully, ¹“The difference between us and you is that we count and you don’t.”   They had little respect for his experiential approach to religion which honored mystery more than proof.

             The interviewer asked Smith about his version of “proof”. Smith replied that he knew he had come in contact with truth when excitement ran up his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.  Our whole body resonates.    

            Wonderings help us hold the questions that provide space for the big waves within us. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s wise little book, Letters to a Young Poet, he encourages the young man to love the questions.  Wondering without jumping to answer is an appropriately humble posture toward the Great Mystery.  Lessons speak of receiving others’ wisdom – wisdom from ancient sources to modern masters.  Lessons also suggest the intention to learn, to practice, to seek. Spiritual practices start as lessons and can become tools to use in our quest to be fully alive – the ultimate spiritual goal. 

            I finish with gifts because often the stunning surprise of beauty comes unbidden. I have a relational spirituality. The concept of Gift reminds me that I am the receiver, that this business of resonance and listening focuses on the Divine Other. There is a balance between our practice and restful receiving.  All of the faith traditions encourage their followers to grasp that humans are not in control.  Gifts reminds me of both the generosity of the Divine and my humble smallness – our existence as good and lovely as it is, is still small in relation to the whole.

            May you experience the vibrations of the Divine until we meet again.    

¹Tales of Wonder Adventures Chasing the Divine (66)