Dress for dancing!

I believe it was Hafiz that said "come to God dressed for dancing, or be carried on a stretcher onto God's ward"...

It's been a week since I last posted. It's been a week of sadness as our country decides to bomb Syria. I attended a climate change rally at the weekend and a peace vigil in the week. I cried in my welsh class yesterday because my heart broke to see all the babies there and to hold them in the same heart that holds Syrian innocents. It's been a week where meaning has been hard to find and peace has felt elusive.

It's also been a week where the sign on my wall "ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find"... has pissed me off so much. Even though I claim to surrender to God's will I can't help but define what form my providence might take. I would, for example, expect that since I earnestly throw myself into service of God that my rent, bills and food might be covered (nothing fancy... just the basics). And I might imagine that, sure, I need to do something for that so I put myself out all over town looking for work. No work comes. The days tick by.

I still my mind and pray about it and what comes to me is that winter would be the perfect time to write my books - how can I write books when I am worried about the rent? I ask my God - "ask and it shall be given" - ask people to fund you to write it, offer them a book in return. So I do... I put out my video, my paypal link, my vision.

And wait... and wait... gentle, beautiful donations come in. I hold them lightly and lovingly and feel so grateful for them. But my ego sees what I don't have and not what I do have. Each passing day nears me to rent day and I can only deeply see and feel the deficit.

This is the same time as I am due to go to Dublin on Saturday and the tickets have been bought by the organisation I volunteer for but I cannot for the life of me find my passport. I turn my house over twice, my partners house, my car and my old workplace. No where to be found.

These are utterly insignificant problems in the grand scale of things but I tell you what it's the little stones in your shoe that gets to the pilgrim!

I found myself raging at God... "I am worth more than this! Why wait til the 59th minute of the 11th hour every time? I am worthy of a home! I am worthy of warmth! I am worthy of food and clothes! Why?!?!?!" and I could feel God smiling and all fear left me. THAT was what my Higher Power wanted to hear - it sounded like self will but actually it was an uprising, upstanding, estimable statement!

And then I realise that while I thought surrender might bring about some nice work so I can pay my bills - the truth of it is that I needed to own for myself the sense of worthiness. I also needed to not have the work come in so that I should think creatively and commit to writing my book. I also needed to not be all holy and self sufficient because unless my hand is forced I never ask for help but do it all by myself (but willing to help others - which is a power/control imbalance if I ever heard one).

I needed to lose my passport so I would sort through my boxes and clear out all my old papers and receipts. 4 bin bags of them.

I found my passport. I have paid my rent today. Not quite the 59th minute of the 11th hour but I had about 30 minutes to spare.

This is only a small example of first world problems but I hope there is some message of reassurance in it - that we may not know what the plan is but there is a plan. It may be that in short term there is suffering so that we rise up to meet our full potential.

To come to God dressed for dancing is to surrender. To resist the dance is to beaten into submission by self will and egoism. The destination is the same.

The only difference is acceptance. what IS is what is. Suffering is created when there is a discrepancy between what we think we want and what we have.

My choice today is to decide whether I want to wear myself down to a sick and exhausted wretch that needs a stretcher... or whether I choose to dance.