Let it Be Squeezed
Once a man gave some olives to another who has never seen olives, and said, "These have a lot of oil in them." The person cut the fruit but could see no oil- until his friend showed him how to squeeze the olives in order to extract the oil from the pulp. So it is with God. Everything in the Universe if saturated with [God's] presence- the twinkling stars, the rose, the song of the bird, our minds. God's Being permeates everything, everywhere. But one has to metaphorically "squeeze" God out [God's] material concealment...
all who are willing to snatch time from the greedy material world to devote it instead to the divine search can learn to behold the wondrous factory of creation out of which all things are born.
Yogananda
I wonder what today might be like if we decided to experience God in the inhale and the exhale, in the strawberry we bite into, in the eyes the neighboring watering flowers next door, and in the smell of a lilac. Try it and see what happens. Could we be faithful enough even to let it in the places where breathing is the last thing we feel like doing? For many of us, it's easy to breath in the smell of a rose, but what about breathing when you are pushing that wheelbarrow across the lawn full of dead leaves with all of your muscle and might? Or breathing when you are in the middle of it with your husband whose words are touching your deepest wound? Or when your child is so mad he decides to duct tape his door shut? (Yep, that happened this morning!) After the duct tape, I found myself in the bathroom breathing. One breath at a time. When it is tough in life it is like the story of the olives from Yogananda. When we cannot see the oil immediately in the olive we might think it is not there. As it is very difficult sometimes to trust that God or breath is in the harder-to-breathe-in moments. When we hurt, sometimes we hold our breath and when we do, we have chosen to run our lives on our own will. I don't know about you, but for me, that just doesn't turn out so well. Rather than strip the duct tape down and yell at my son (what I might have chosen if I had chosen not to breathe) the mess would have gotten messier. But instead, I turned around and walked towards God by simply breathing. And now, my son is out back playing with the neighbor's dog in the sunlight.
With every breath God is with me, whether I like it or not. I get to make the choice to turn toward the breath. It is up to me to receive it and then let it be squeezed out...into me and into the world around me.
Comments