Still Small Voice

On getting the message I need, not the messenger I was hoping for...

Yesterday was my birthday. I started my 38th year on this planet with a hike in one of my favorite spots near my house. The sun was not yet up when I left the house, and I had the privilege of watching the woods around me slowly come to life. To my eyes, the woods just before dawn were drab, unsaturated. It was almost grayscale. As the light filtered through the clouds, though, the color slowly seeped into the leaves and the grass, and the birds.

As I walked, I asked the Divine for a message. Some word or phrase or experience to guide this next year of my life. Of course, in the back of my mind, what I was really wanting was some amazing creature to cross my path. Something out of the ordinary or special in some way. A coyote or a fox, or maybe even a mountain lion! (We get those from time to time, you know.) I wanted something big, something unmistakeable. (And I wanted it to sit still long enough that I could take a photo of it.)

We see deer all the time around here, but it’s important for me to remember they’re still incredibly magical creatures.

Despite hiking a little over three miles with my head on a swivel, I didn’t catch any exceptional critters. I did, however, see some deer, and caught the tail end of an armadillo rustling about in the brush, but nothing felt like the special message I was hoping for. As I walked, and the light filled the woods with color, and the warmth of the sun filled the woods with the most beautiful smells, I heard a voice so soft and clear, I knew it was the message I was looking for.

“The only thing I’m ever trying to say is that I love you.”

As I saw the world around me fill with life, I realized that the big, or obvious message I was looking for was literally unfolding all around me. Yes, seeing a unique or special animal is exciting for sure, and there may be some message in that, but what about the message of the soil and the trees and the brush that make a home for those animals? Are the trees and shrubs we pass by on our daily commutes any less miraculous simply because we see them everyday? I don’t think so, but I know that I treat them as such.

Danielle once had a client from outside the US tell her how excited she was that we got to see squirrels all the time. She didn’t have them where she lived, and to see a squirrel in real life was on her bucket list. It’s totally changed how I see these little critters.

And if I’m honest, I know I do the same with this miraculous love from the Divine. It’s literally everywhere, inescapable, it’s filling every atom and every cell. It flows through my body deeper than my blood and my breath. It is the thing that is giving me life moment to moment, and yet I hunger for some “bigger,” “deeper,” “more impactful” message. What message could I ever receive that is more than The Universe’s Infinite and Unchanging Love for me?

I let all these thoughts stir in me as I made my way under lichen covered branches, over dry creek beds, and around patches of prickly pear cacti—color still slowly filling all of them as the sun rose over the trees in the east. Soon my mind was contemplating how this revelation intersects with the religious tradition I’m a part of. It’s easy to simply spit out John 3:16, and chalk it up to God loving us so much God sent God’s only Son to die for our sins, but I know that that story doesn’t actually make any sense in the context of the message I had just received. And to be frank, I’ve known for some time that substitutional atonement theory—the theological idea that God demanded sacrifice in order to restore humanity’s relationship to God—is a load of horse shit.

If I hold fast to the revelation that the Divine has only ever been trying to tell us how much It loves us, then the way I read the bible, particularly the old testament, has to be shifted. Growing up, I was told that Old Testament God was angry, vengeful, and generally kind of a dick, but then Jesus showed up and changed all that. But if I believe that small voice I heard on my hike (and I do), then that doesn’t track. Richard Rohr once said that Jesus didn’t live and die to change God’s mind about humanity, but to change humanity’s mind about God.

The whole story of the bible shifts when we read it knowing that God is trying to show us God’s love for us—and we take into account how resistant we as humanity all are to that fact. Jesus didn’t die to save us from our sin and separation from God, but instead lived as life that gave us an example of how to live in such a way that allows us to feel and experience God’s love for us in a meaningful way.

You see, Love is a funny thing. It’s reciprocal, it’s flowing, and it functions like a feedback loop. The more I experience God’s love for me (inflow), the more I show my love to others (outflow), the more I show my love to others (self-emptying), the more I am filled with Divine Love (self-fulfilling). If at any point in this flow there’s a kink in the hose, the whole thing starts to dry up. I do believe that God, the Universe, Allah, The Divine, Whatever You Want To Call It, is the initiator of this flow. “We love because God first loved us.” But we if we aren’t loving others, our ability to feel and experience God’s love for us will be greatly diminished, and soon won’t be noticeable at all.

I love that this little gut only has one antler. So freaking cute.

If we, however, feel even a trickle of the Divine’s Radical Love for us, and in turn share that love with others—not just by having warm fuzzy feelings toward people, but actually doing something for them—what starts as a trickle builds into a raging river of love in no time at all. Jesus of Nazareth was a model of this kind of self-emptying and fully embodied love. Jesus was quite literally showing us how it’s done when it comes to living in Divine Alignment. By the time of his crucifixion, God’s love was a torrent tearing through our material reality, moving Jesus past the finite and binary definitions of “Life” and “Death.”

This outpouring of love slowly filled the world with color, just like the sun rising over the trees brought the woods to life. How easily we forget that the world is full of love and light. This isn’t to say that there aren’t dark and terrible things happening in our world today, simply that for every dark and terrible thing, there is a light rising to meet it, to reveal it’s true essence, to redeem it. We are not asked to ignore the darkness, or pretend it isn’t there, we are simply asked over and over again to be aware of the light, and even to be the light.

I realize how often I confuse the message with the messenger. I wanted to have some over the top magical experience with an unexpected critter, but instead I just moved through the woods noticing the simple and understated beauty that was all around me. The message was what was truly incredible, a powerful reminder that everything that’s happening is happening for Love. When we let that Love it, the color comes back into our world, when we give that Love away we find ourselves as part of the Divine Flow. Simple. Beautiful. Powerful.

As I was finishing up my hike, only a handful of yards from my car, I looked over and saw this massive red shouldered hawk on a powerline. There is so much beauty everywhere.

Here are some fun things you can do with me over the next few weeks!

Come ride bikes with me here in Austin! No registration needed, just come have some fun!

I’m teaching my all-time favorite workshop at one of the best Yoga Studios in the world!

Register Here!

This is a Hybrid workshop, so if you’re in Austin, you can join in person, and if you’re not, you can join online!