I just have to smile.

All made in THE IMAGE and likeness of God

As I have written somewhere before, prayer comes more easily for me in Kenya. I am not quite sure why and maybe I even doubt if it is prayer at all, but feelings of duty or righteousness or ego. Maybe prayer comes more easily in Africa with less stimulation around? I don’t know. I do have more time to sit, reflect, and be with nature a little more. But prayer, as I am learning, may be more about just sitting and allowing God to see and know me. Not to pray TO GOD but allow God the space to visit me, to see me. I try to be a mirror and reflect God back to God. I try to look at God and see, as in a mirror, myself reflected back from God.

In a sense I begin again, and again, and again, my “spiritual life” – whatever that is. I think, as many have said, instead of we humans trying to become more spiritual, we are all already spiritual beings, needing to become more human. So this morning I began once again. I contemplated the beginning. “Let us create humanity in Our own image and likeness of Ourselves.” It is a good place to start (or to start again!). I just sit with that. That is where my faith begins. I have often turned my faith into a belief system rather than a longing for union with God. God apparently believes that I am “ok” and “very good”. I have a place to return to. I have an original identity that is somehow Divine. My longing and my hope is to return to that. But, I am told, I can’t do it myself. I can’t wish or pray it to happen. I allow. To return to that original Union, I breath in the Spirit that has already been given to me, where there are really no dead ends, no mistakes which God can’t turn into good and teach me.

I am smiling this morning because: (1.) I am happy here. It is a great morning and there is no one around. (2.) I am so full of myself sometimes, full of crap mainly, that I just have to smile, and cry a little too. (3.) I have been given a gift – being able to come to Kenya. I can never forget that, no matter the frustrations, petty illnesses, fears or setbacks. EVERYTHING is a gift. I have to just smile.

“All you can give back to God is who you really are
When God surrounds and fills your “poverty,” as we Franciscans call it, you know you can never do better than God. If God can accept it and forgive it, then I can too!” ROHR