Letting God Swim Us ...

Originally uploaded by unaman

My healer/teacher gave a tender, heart-filled lecture yesterday via a teleconference. Perhaps 50 or more seeking souls were listening. You could not hear a one of us because the sound was muted except for our teacher's voice. But you KNEW and FELT the connection of an entire community was ever present and alive during this hour and a half. It was deeply intimate.

I was still in pajamas, stretched out on my overstuffed chair, blanket wrapped around me, tissues strewn around from bouts of blowing snot due to a sinus infection. My ears were glued to every word, in spite of my hacking cough, and this too was sacred.

My favorite part of her lecture had to do with a Zen tale about how fish could make it through rough waters ... it's because they let the river swim them. Perhaps this is what is meant about being "in the stream of life". Later, in response to a listener's question about how to overcome seeing things as separate, our teacher made the reference back to this story, altering the metaphor just a bit ...

"We let God swim us."

I took to this like ... [pun intended] ... a fish to water.

If I am God and each one of us is God and every living thing is God, then there is no "God out there or up in the air" . God-ness exists in every single thing, which makes every single thing a One-With-God thing.

In Step 3 of the recovery 12 Steps, we turn our will over to the care of God, as we understand God. Taking my will back and resisting surrender is akin to the fish that try to go against the raging current in the other direction because their way is better than how the river is intended to flow. When I let God swim me, I trust the direction and the flow, even when I feel like I might get knocked down by the rapids or pulled to the bottom by a strong undertow. I can trust that I will be carried and that I will not drown. It is only when I separate from God and believe my way is best that I risk getting swept away or sucked under.

This is, I believe, what our teacher referred to when she spoke so passionately about trusting what life brings us. For it is in this trusting, that we understand that God has never left us. The life we've been waiting for is the one we're already living.

Wherever I am in the stream, be it the calm pool at the bottom of the waterfall or the raging white water rapids, I can trust that is exactly where I am supposed to be.

And all I have to do is let God swim me...