Tuesday, February 11, 2020

To Host or... Not.

I was getting ready for work this morning, and as I walked past a bookshelf a title caught my eye:  "Hosting the Presence", a book about how to be a person who hosts the presence of God.  This is a book I've had for years, have read several times, and marked in lots of places.  It's a good book.

But... as I walked past this morning, I thought how foreign that metaphor feels to me now.  To me, 'hosting' implies several things.  First, that I am in charge.  The host is the one who invites the guest, and sets the time, place and purpose of the visit.
Second, 'hosting' implies a defined time period, with an end.  If someone lives with you, you don't say you are hosting them - you use different words.
Third, 'hosting' implies effort.  If I am hosting someone, I want my house to be clean and tidy, my kids to be well behaved, and I want to have plenty of delicious food and drink to offer to my guest.  None of these things are my normal state of existence, and none of them happen by themselves!  (We do have plenty of food and drink, just not 'special occasion' food.)

Last month I was on holiday at the beach.  We visited many different beaches, but at one particular beach there were lots of waves, with a big calm space out behind them.  My kids were playing in the waves, but I went out beyond them and floated in the calm water, only moving enough to keep my balance, letting the water hold me up and the waves rock me as they moved towards the beach.  I stayed there for a long time, enjoying the peace - the warm sun on my face, and the cool water around me.  Close enough to hear the sound of the surf and the kids playing in it, but far enough away that the sounds were not filling my attention.  When I eventually looked around, I realised that the water had carried me a way down the beach.  Despite making absolutely no effort to move, I was now several hundred meters away from where I'd started.  I hadn't been carried out - the water was still the same depth - but I was in a different place. 

I met with my spiritual director a few weeks ago, and we talked about God and me.  As you do, when you meet your spiritual director! (If you don't know what a spiritual director is, Google it.)  He knew that I'd been on holiday, and I told him about this experience.  Towards the end of the session, he asked me if I thought this might be a metaphor I could use for my current relationship with God.  It certainly is!

I've 'come a long way down the beach' from when I first read that book.  Now I know that I am not hosting God.  Instead, I am a very small being, floating in a very big Sea.  In Him I live and move and have my being. (Acts 17:28)  My life exists within the presence of God - I don't have to work to entice the presence of God to visit my life.  I am in control of my life to a certain extent... but to quite a large extent, I am not. I can try to control my life: make decisions about how my life is going to be, and work hard to try to achieve those decisions; or I can relax, and let the currents of God carry me where they will, while I try to keep my balance and enjoy the journey.  I say 'try to', because the journey isn't always sunny days and calm waters.  Sometimes it rains, sometimes the waves dump me instead of rocking me, and sometimes it's night and I can't see the stars.  To clarify, life is often hard.  Money is usually tight, the kids aren't angels, I can make dumb choices with the best of them, and scary things like cancer don't only happen to other people.

Regardless of my circumstances, I believe I am always in, floating on, and sometimes under, the presence of God.  I don't visit God, and God doesn't visit me - instead, we are constant companions.  If I truly believe the scripture that I quoted before, that I live and move and have my being IN God, then I live my life within that Presence.  We all do!  The differences between us are our varying levels of awareness both of this fact, and of the Presence that saturates every moment and cell of our beings.  Our job is to do what some call 'practising the presence of God'.  This doesn't mean that I am practising being God - LOL! - but that I am practising being aware of, or remembering, the presence of God that I am always with.

I apologise if this doesn't make sense.  It's a tricky topic to try to nail down with words.