A Mandala Made of the Details of Life

I cannot say I experienced any dramatic feelings. I did not. ~Foster CoD

On speaking of his confessional experience, Foster gives us the above quote. Dramatic feelings are indications of "all at once" experiences. I love those. They are filled with triumph, possibility, flourish, resolve, and overwhelming emotion. You feel like you are really getting somewhere. But as God draws us to a deeper life, He wants us to pay attention to the smaller details. There, of course, will always be place for the grand and magnificent, but our everydays are filled with smaller things.

And it is here that I am seeking to re-establish my walk with God. Correction, I pray that is where God has me going to get deeper with Him. I remember a book that really impressed me, A Forest Unseen. In the book's introduction, Haskell, likens the beauty of 10 square meter spot in the forest to a mandala. He reflects on the beauty of a mandala built grain by grain of colored sand to make a magnificent whole, a representation of reality that is breathtaking. Haskell examines the forest in this relatively small space and picks out the details integral into its function on the whole, the whole construction. And in so doing, he discovers a life of the forest he had not seen before.

There is a forest of which I am a part, that I need to investigate. Pull out the details, experience them, practice them, learn the rhythms of the drum that God is playing for me. Then maybe I'll stop pushing so hard to get to destinations, and I'll simply live in that ecosystem.

Lord, why am I trying so hard, and feeling like I'm falling so short? Perhaps I'm putting too much pressure on myself. What do You say to me today, oh God? The joy of the Lord I prayed at the outset of this meditation, and I pray it here to end. Let the joy of the Lord be my guiding light. Give me hope, Lord, for today. Dispel what is errant, and let retain what is true.

In Jesus Name,

Amen

Eph 2:8-10

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