As long as I respond, God can continue to shape my own individual path in me. God is forever introducing me to new and exciting challenges. God only asks that I respond. I need to be flexible and open to the new creation and the new call that is forming within me. God can form a huge pitcher out of me and fill it with water to pour on the dry stones. I must wait to be renewed and reshaped. The more clay is worked, the more pliable it becomes in the experienced hands of the potter. I must remember that I, too, am called to be a potter, creator of love. I feel a deep peace and sense of something being created, or being brought to birth. Perhaps the Mother God will show me her face and show me how the clay becomes the potter.
Edwina Gateley
Often we anxiously seek the will of God,
as if God had gleefully hidden dreams for us
deep in unfathomable places.
As if it were God's intention
that our whole lives be spent
in endless searching for signs and directions
buried in obscurity.
The will of God is that which brings us
peace and fullness of life.
The will of God is the seed of our dreams
ever gestating with possibility
and longing to leap forward
scattering new and surprising blessings
in our gray reality.
We build walls around our hearts, around our homes, around our land, around our borders to keep out strangers, the different, the other; to protect ourselves from getting hurt or from having to share our space with others. We guard our hearts, our land, and our country with great vigilance until the very guarding obsesses us and we become so outwardly focused and defensive that we lose touch with ourselves and our humanity. In our efforts to protect and defend we become disconnected and fragmented.
God is breathing gently,
God never hurries,
Is never anxious or pressing,
God just waits,
Breathing gently upon us
With great tenderness
Until we look to God -
And, knowingly,
Nod.
We cannot know the God of the guts and the gutters unless we have traveled deep enough within ourselves to touch and experience our own guts - where God lives, and unless we have reached out far enough beyond ourselves to smell and sit in the gutters - where God squats.