Spiritual Information
The next time you ask yourself the question “Why doesn’t God ever answer me?” the correct answer will be “Are you kidding?”
How can you ever hear God if you’re always talking? If you don’t take some time to listen in silence? If you’re expecting the heavens to open and the Voice to answer you in short, concise sentences of ten words or less, you’re out of luck. You’re not Moses. This isn’t Mount Sinai. Even Moses didn’t get everything he wanted.
He got what he needed.
The problem, from all of our points of view, is that we’re like Moses in another way. We get what God want us to have. We don’t get what we tell God we need. How can God not listen when we think we’re so unquestionably right?
I’ve spent a lifetime telling God that It screwed up by giving me such a lousy body. Why couldn’t I be like those big, strong Aryan farm boys I grew up with? It was good enough for God that I have a crooked spine, joints that snap in syncopated rhythms and a lifetime of day dreaming about the wonders of a full night of painless sleep.
Eventually I learned to deal with it. Sure, it took a few decades of whining like a baby. Then the angels finally got through to me. Some very human, very wise and plain-spoken teachers also came into my life. I learned that if all the physical problems I have are the worst it ever gets, that’s pretty darn good.
So, I can’t run the Boston Marathon. Or New York or Chicago or any other race. So, I’m not supposed to walk up steps or do a multitude of physical things most people take for granted. Big deal. I cheat. I still take steps. Badly. A few at a time. Not exactly like the runner I wanted to be.
Some things just don’t matter in the long run.
It matters that we listen to the spiritual information put in front of us. If we’re told a blizzard is coming our way, do we stock up on food and other necessities? Do we stay home? Are we off the streets and out of harm’s way? When we’re told a heat wave is coming, do we have enough water and fluids to stay hydrated? Do we keep out of the sun?
Do we pay attention to the fact that God is giving us all of the information we need? We’ve been taught how to cope in some circumstances beyond our control. The government and news channels are constantly giving us the information we need to deal with many of the situations at hand.
It’s up to us to recognize that this is practical spiritual information.
Forty-something years ago an Eastern Orthodox friend invited me to Sunday liturgy with her. Somewhere along the ride she started talk about the mysticism in the service. How all the people there were mystics. They were all in search of the divine mysteries.
Life is a series of divine mystical experiences. Not only for those people at that particular liturgy. Nor only for Orthodox Christians.
When we open ourselves up, when we listen with our whole beings, we learn that life abounds in spiritual information. Sometimes the answer is No, as St. Rose of Lima was reportedly told by God after asking repeatedly for a particular favor.
That’s life. Like when we were children and asked our parents for candy even though we knew they would almost certainly refuse us. Maybe we could fool one parent, but if the tough parent were nearby, there was no candy to be had.
Every so often it feels like God is playing rough with us. We’ve done everything right. We’ve followed the rules. God is supposed to give us what we want because we say so. Maybe we were given spiritual information long before we asked for any favors. Long before we believe life went South instead of going our direction.
My experience is that the people who hurt the worst by not listening to the spiritual information previously given them appear to be men and women from comfortable backgrounds. Some come from financially comfortable families. Some come from families that were never faced with great mortal challenges such as illness and death. In either case, they are people who for all the world had really great lives until the day something happened.
We can’t say that the mighty fall hard because in my life I know that isn’t true. As a teenager I knew a very wealthy family that suffered immense losses from illness and death. They were good people. When they were dealt life’s blows, they took that spiritual information and grew from it.
Absolutely the same is true with just ordinary folks, so where we are on the social strata has nothing to do with it. It’s all about our ability to keep our eyes open.
We have to be like hawks. We have to constantly fly our skies, scanning the land below us for signs of spiritual food.
Imagine, as has happened to so many good women and men I have known, you ask God for something and hear No. Some I know have taken that No and grown. They turned it into a Yes from the soul. Other people have taken that information and grown cold, stony hearts.
What do you do?
