Love is your call. Everything else is background noise
Faith is a practice, a way of life, how you travel through the world.
It’s less about rules and regulations and more a mode of transport. Faith is something you engage rather than live up to. You sink down into it, not try to be good enough for it. Faith is a function of devotion.
The Biblical text tells a story of a man named Peter who had a vision while he was in a trance, or as the greek originally put it, an experience of bliss, ecstasy, some kind-of spiritual trip. While in this trance, he saw the skies open, a sheet full of four-footed animals, reptiles and wild birds fall from the sky, landing right in front of him, and heard a voice say, 'Get up. Kill. Eat.'
But Peter protested. He was a devout Jew and had consistently and carefully kept all the purity laws according to his religion - about what animals they could eat and how they were to be killed and prepared, and who they could eat it with - and he wasn't about to change his ways, which to him, meant being unfaithful and was an affront to his devotion. He told the voice (whom he called Lord) that he couldn't and wouldn't do it.
Nope. No way.
The voice said back to him:
"Nothing is unclean if God declares it to be clean."
How many things do we call unclean that God has declared holy? How many ideas and people and communities and practices and thoughts and movements have we declared to be unworthy, unclean, un-godly that are actually, and graciously, miraculous? How many things have people and institutions and communities and family members and more have dismissed about you, and declared over you, because they've been devoted to the structure and form of something, rather than the essence it always intended to reveal?
The story continues that while Peter was trying to make sense of what he saw, three Roman men knocked on his door and said that they needed Peter to come with them to the house of a Roman official to speak with him.
Now, remember, Peter had just told the voice in his vision that he had no intention of defiling the purity laws. These purity laws were about food AND people. Just as eating something deemed unclean made you so, so did going into the house or eating a meal or associating with someone who wasn't of the Jewish faith.
Something was happening inside Peter. His devotion to form was being challenged. He left his house with the men and travelled with them until he came to the home of Cornelius, a Roman military captain, where a large crowd had gathered. They invited Peter to come inside, eat, speak, and commune with them.
Peter said:
"You all know that it is against the Jewish laws for me to associate with or even visit the home of one who is not a Jew. Yet God has shown me that I should never view anyone as inferior or ritually unclean. [Nothing is unclean if God declares it to be clean.] So when you sent for me, I came without objection."
Every leap of faith begins with the radical awareness of where you are, and yet, you still have to make the leap.
When life sends for you, when presence knocks on your door, as she always does, when you feel the Divine stirring even in places you never thought possible, go without objection, take that leap of faith, live the life love is leading you to.
We've been deceived. The things you practice in the spirit of devotion are not the measure of your holiness or cleanliness. They have always and ever only been the vehicle to bring you to here, now, to yourself, to others, to the heart of life, to life happening in you and around you, to love itself in all her glory, to the love that you are. After all, you're not called to be devoted to a practice; love is the call. Everything else is background noise.
Remember: Love isn't something you do, love is who you are. Love is who you are becoming, and love is how you are becoming it. When in doubt, lean on love. It will lead you to truth.
From my upcoming New Year’s series, "Held Together" this week with a subscription in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
