Steeped

Last week I took a kayak out from the shore of the panhandle of Florida onto the gulf of Mexico. When I had paddled out from the shore, I looked around.  About half a mile to my right and to my left it was raining hard.  I could see curtains of translucent gray connecting the dark gray waves to the sun sprinkled clouds.  I heard the thunder rumble.  [Perhaps I shouldn't have been in the water, but I obviously made it safely home, so we can just ignore this minor detail.]  The water around me had darkened to reflect the sky as if to conceal depths of secrets.  I could only see the surface and my wavering reflection looking back at me.  The waves jostled me in my small boat as the wind began to blow.  Soon it would storm where I was.  Yet, I sat contently in the momentary calm and surveyed the ocean.  The horizon was nothing but sky pouring into ocean.  The enormity of the sky and ocean swallowed me.  Here I was floating suspended between the air and the deep.  I was terrified and excited, feeling endless and feeling tiny.  I wanted to feel the comfort of the shore, yet I longed for adventure.  I was fascinated by the movement of the clouds and waves under the breath and command of the wind. I came to understand more deeply the balance of being in wonder at and fearing God in that moment.  

This moment got me thinking about how it is so amazing to me how the entirety of life is steeped in a spiritual reality.
This spiritual reality, in my mind, is the warm and healing broth of life that everything else is suspended in.  It permeates everything and holds everything.  It is the force of motion.  This is not something I woke up and realized one day; it is something that I seem to have slid in to.  I recognized bits and pieces over time, and each day I attempt to move closer to being able to recognize it in every breath.  I am not there yet.  Sitting here it is easy to recognize this beautiful transcendent fact, but as soon as someone is confrontational, leaves the toilet paper roll empty, leaves their 4 day old cereal on the table, hurts my feelings, or cuts me off in traffic, the spiritual aspect of life evaporates from my mind.  I try each day to cling to the reality that I am surrounded by human beings filled with sacred souls.  If I am in nature I am surrounded by creation made by The Spirit who breathes into each soul. Indeed, in every situation, I am wrapped in an ocean of my God; God's presence is unending.  Were it an ocean, I would be upon a raft; if I were to gaze about me, no where I would look would yield anything but more ocean.  It is humbling, terrifying, and awe-inspiring.  Yet, to compare God’s presence to an ocean isn’t sufficient. God’s presence would be the air too.  Yet, even that wouldn’t be enough, the fact that anything exists at all tremors with the presence of God. God is in all things, above all things, and all things have existence through God.