If I cannot call into, tap into the immensity of the university unfolding in every present moment without removing myself from it. What am I actually doing?
This is the problem that lays before those who balance the Spiritual with the Mundane such as those Mystics balancing Motherhood especially from within the spectacular place that is caregiving small children. Especially in an Age where so much of the day-to-day of that role is solo without the community and communal supports that once held us in this human journey.
It is from this place that I have found many spiritual methods of connecting with the Divine fail me. Who has time or even the ability for 20 minutes of meditation when your sleep deprived and can be interrupted at any moment? I cannot let this world fade away to experience the immensity. Except where I have very carefully had the privilege to cultivate the space through childcare and space arrangements. The weekend away of spiritual retreats can help facilitate great healing and connection. Though you still come back to the everyday. Integrating what has been able to be achieved outside of the space of everyday slowly, sometimes chunkily and sometimes not at all. Our souls instead are placed on a shelf for next time.
That is not how humans are designed to live. I truly believe that we are designed to be in embodied communion with spirit and the divine. That the divine is there offering the opportunity to connect and work with and through us even while we do dishes, wipe tears and butts. This is not a way of communication that is written much in books. It is not the monastics. It is the way of mothers and caregivers. It is the way of channeling while spinning yarn for the families needs. Or falling into deep erotic communion and gratitude with the plants you are preparing to sustain the community.
For me in this world it is channeling a message for a client while nursing a toddler and pausing to coach the six and four year old through their current emotionally charged conflict. It means being able to go in and out of the heart space that allows the Divine to flow through us. Because at any moment someone is going to perhaps be on fire, or at least need help getting a snack or wiping their butt.
It took me a very long time to be comfortable with this being the way I work. It took me a very long time to not feel like I was doing something wrong because my path and way of working is not something seen, or demonstrated in carefully crafted spaces away from the mess of living lives. As I come to a deeper understanding of self. I also came to a deeper understanding of the Divine. That though there is a need for separate Holy moments outside of Time and Space like the Retreats and Festivals that so many of us rotate our lives around. The Holy is deeply wanting to be acknowledged within the mundane, the every day moments. Can we open our hearts to experience that connection through our every lived moment? Acknowledging that this is an intention to practice and not a perfection.
So I step forward with the invitation to embody the Holy within the muck of this world? To embrace the immensity within the single moments of the our Daily Bread. This is not the Path of the Pulpit but it is the Path of the Grandmothers laying a piece of bread at unseen altars, mumbled prayers over stirring stews, and deeply held devotion to Hearth and Home unwritten and unseen, unless of course you Have Eyes to See and Ears to Hear!