No need to move mountains, make history, change the world…
The real work you have to do is to:
Listen to your life.
No need to move mountains, make history, change the world. No need to find a guru, be the first in line at the latest conference, stand in the front row at a worship event with the "best" lineup. No need to perfect the steps, get it all right, memorise the rules and execute them flawlessly. Release yourself from a performance-driven existence.
Your work starts here:
Be where you are.
Accept who you are.
Love yourself - all of you.
Listen to your life.
You are happening, now.
Every day you're faced with making choices that could potentially change the course of your life. You have bills to pay, decisions to make, people to live with, a body to nourish/heal/move/make-peace with while also sharing it with others in all the ways that a body can be shared. You have change to navigate, ordinary things to get through, sleep to prioritise, kids to parent, a partner to partner with, work, family, everything, everywhere, all at once.
Life is a lot. It can seem that listening to it isn't going to get you very far, very fast.
But listen, it is where you start.
I know... there are those who say that who you really need to listen is the voice of God. I was taught the same thing. I've said about my own decisions and actions:
God told me.
I was led through prayer.
God spoke to me through God's word.
But tell me, how do you know?
How can you be sure that it's "God" talking to you and not your subconscious, your bias, or what you want to hear? How can you be sure you're not just regurgitating rhetoric? How can you be sure you're not involved in some kind of cult, and you've been brainwashed?
And then there's this,
How do you listen to your life? What does that even mean? In all the different things that are happening in the world and in any one life, how can you hear it all, even when you attempt to listen?
That's what this series is about. Listen, God's voice is not separate from your life. This is a series about how to hear God inside your own life, inside your own soul, inside your own bones; how to listen for the Divine in the hum underneath it all.
The Biblical text is full of stories about God saying all kinds of things to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. It's clear that God speaks. What's been lost in translation is how and where and what the voice of God sounds like and the kinds of things God says.
It seems to be that the idea that "God said so," is simply a reason and a way to abdicate our responsibility to live our own lives and make our own choices. Because at all times, in all ways, through all things, the message of Divinity seems to be this:
Here is your life,
I am here with you in it,
And I want you to experience it for yourself.
My favourite quote of all time is by a man I have never met, but look up to immeasurably… Frederick Buechner once wrote:
"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. "
REMEMBER: Don't wait for something to happen, for blessing to arrive, for permission to be granted. You are happening, now. Your being here is all the permission you need; you being you is in itself a blessing.
Xo
Liz Milani xo
Instagram: @thepracticeco
From this week’s series titled "You Are Happening Now," with a subscription in the App. Hope to see you there.
