If Only...

“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”    ~Teilhard de Chardin

From the moment we’re born there is a part of us that longs to return Home, to a place we can’t name. We live our lives haunted by a longing we aren’t entirely conscious of.  Our hearts yearn for a sense of belonging that nothing in the material world can satisfy, at least not for long.  We spend our days and years searching and adapting ourselves to values and beliefs that are not our own, with the hope of feeling we fit in…to be happy, to be loved…to belong.

​What price do we pay in our quest to belong…what parts of ourselves do we let die along the way? Often the best parts, the parts that make us come alive!  The part of our selves that colored outside the lines, that asked questions, that believed in what couldn’t be seen. The parts that define our unique way of being who we were meant to be! All in the belief that we’re broken; that there is something wrong with us…if only I could be a size 2, if only I was good enough, if only I was a better person, if only, if only, if only.

I don’t believe we are broken.  I don’t believe we are separate from God while we are here in human form. Think about that. What if our spiritual journey really was only eighteen inches…from our head to our heart? That within us, there resides a Divine spark, a part of ourselves that never dies, which is always with and of God. I believe our greatest challenge and our most profound joy comes in re-connecting to that part of ourselves that knows us by heart…loves all the parts we lost along the way, loves our goodness and even embraces the part of ourselves lurking in the shadow.