Day 2: The jolt of sudden awareness

Liminal dispatch, 03.19.20

Love other people as well as you love yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.

Romans 13:10 (MSG)

In Ignatian spirituality, a common refrain you’ll hear is, Finding God in all things. It’s sort of like a Jesuit tagline, but it’s got some holy heft. I grew up Lutheran and have bounced around quite a bit over the years, so this concept was new to me when I first encountered it four years ago.

The idea is not to fixate on the notion that the Divine is in all things in the sense that it causes things like hurricanes, famines, or pandemics. This would make God a sociopath, which God is not. Rather, God in all things is more a mantra that calls us to a bright, radical, open awareness. The impulse of the Divine, the Jesuits (and others) say, is to connect, to be deeply and intimately known, and to make itself known to us.

Where is God in this moment? How can I keep my heart, ears, eyes, mind, and body open to notice when Spirit is showing up — in any moment, any circumstance, any being, any experience?

I am noticing a jolt of sudden awareness popping up in myself and all around me. Without as many layers of busyness and frenetic running around, we catch…