For whatever reason this morning, I found myself thinking about this line from star wars – may the force be with you. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Star Wars movie; they were never my favorites. It is funny though how lines from movies you have never seen somehow manage to get into the recesses of your memory banks. I am not even sure what triggered that thought for me. Maybe it was the conversation I just had with Reggie about Tim Tebow, Louis Farrakhan, dogs, and the moon. Who knows? What I know is that the force is with me or as Zoë would sing if she were awake with me this morning, “I’ve got the power.”
The same energy of the Infinite Presence that works through me is working through everything else. The same Infinite Presence which created me, created the water, earth, plants, animals, stars, moon, planets, etc. The same energy that makes the planets move, the tides come in and out, the clouds move is the same energy that helps the blood flow through my body. It is the same energy that keeps my cells regenerating.
So what keeps me from seeing what I see when I see it? I ask this question of my students all the time. “What keeps you from seeing what you see when you see it?” This is generally followed by something Confucius once said about how the last thing to discover water would be a fish. How much do I not see in the world that is right in front of me or that I have become blinded to? How much pollution is in my world that keeps me from seeing or hearing what is there for me to see or hear?
Sometimes it seem as if I am in a constant process of depolluting my mind, heart, and spirit so I can be more in tune with the Infinite. My hope is that as I do this, I will improve my spiritual hearing and vision. I will have ears that can hear and eyes that can see. Perhaps more importantly to me, I will have ears that can see and eyes that can hear. For me, there is this intimacy with the Infinite which happens when that occurs which I cannot explain or put into words. It just is.
So why would I be the last thing to discover the water I am swimming in. Perhaps because it is so pervasive that I am oblivious to it. or perhaps it is that I am not patient enough to wait for the smoke to clear or the water to settle for me to see what is there waiting for me. Perhaps I have internalized lies of the institutions, organizations, and community in which I live to no longer hear, see, or sense the force that is within me.
It is when I stop and allow the clouds to clear, the water to settle, the silence to come over me that I am most in tune with the force that is within me. It is then I am most in tune with the spirit, it is then I find myself singing “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.” It is in those moments that I not only know the force is with me, I can feel the force being with me.