Every day I sit in the silence. Longer in the morning, about ten minutes. Then throughout the day I will have many breaks just to sit and recharge. I am like my phone; I need to plug into the power source or I will go dead. And you know what Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.”
There is truly nothing new under the sun. All the teachings have been given and can be found underfoot and all around you. But you must take one and begin to resurrect yourself with it. The strongest teaching is that we are the Self but we have forgotten it in our desire to do it ourselves.
The tao of the teachings cannot change. It is we who must get in line with it. The older I get, the simpler it all is to me. I cannot do this alone, for that is when I get lost in dreams of my own strength. It is good to be weak; it is good to mourn; it is good to lean on the everlasting arms of love with a capital L.
My personal life is embarrassingly empty. I used to read the poems of Emily Dickinson a lot and I could see myself in her. She could not face the world directly; she hid from it. But she encountered God in every line she wrote. Confession is good for the soul.
At the end we have nothing to give but ourselves. That is all we have. I believe that when Jesus said His kingdom was not here, we could not believe it. So we continue to put ourselves out there only to find rejection and scorn. It was that way for Him. Why not us?
So I am coming to the end of this essay not written by my intellect. It is a gift to be simple, as the old song said. Amen.
Vicki Woodyard