This is how it happens, how we discover that life is synchronicity.
If we’ve been doing our work, taking our (at least once) daily time for contemplation, meditation, prayer and reflection, we’re synchronizing ourselves to the rhythm and flow of life. We’re honing our spiritual senses, so our physical senses (hearing, scent, sight, taste, touch) are keener.
One week, this is how I felt it. I acknowledge that I may have more practice than some, though I believe anyone can do this.
That week, I prepared a sermon based on Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well (see John 4). I enjoy this story’s mystical tone, and I read several versions, noting key words. Especially, I contemplated the woman’s desire for living water, something which would quench her thirst for life, so she could enjoy herself and know the Presence of God, with her and within her.
At this time, I also prepared for one congregant’s memorial, while another congregant was removed from life support, his journey into eternal life imminent. I reflected on how I knew these men and how each lived, both loving men of faith, generosity, good humor, integrity and wisdom who strove to embrace life’s joys and thrive despite illness and loss.
On Sunday morning, when I started the car, I realized that I’d left the radio on. Ordinarily, I might have turned it off and driven to church in silence. But “Dream On,” Aerosmith’s 1973 ballad, began to play, and I heard its prophecy:
The past is gone
It went by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got the dues in life to pay
I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes. . . .
Live and learn from fools and
From sages
You know it’s true, oh
All these feelings come back to you . . . .
All the feelings: All we can learn on life’s journey, if we’re paying attention to both success and failure, whether ours or someone else’s. And how like that woman at the well some are, sometimes indulging in or wasting time with activities, people, places, possessions, and/or substances which never completely satisfy our desire to thrive.
That feeling, the one which never leaves, is divine discontent. It’s a striving or longing which we can’t articulate, a feeling deep inside which won’t depart until we acknowledge and embrace it, and allow it to reveal our dreams and heart’s desires.
That feeling is the call of Spirit, the Presence of God within us, longing to be expressed. In every way, it continually calls us to synchronize ourselves with the world around us. And no matter who we are, what we’ve done before, or where we’ve been, we can use the feeling to transform ourselves and our lives, so we can thrive in the fullness of life before this journey ends.
© 2017 – Rev. Jennifer L. Sacks. All rights reserved.
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