OK, the journey has a little gardening moments in it–I picked 1.5 gallons of raspberries yesterday morning.  The season is upon us!  That is good news by the way.  I do enjoy harvesting what is planted each year.  Now onto spiritual matters….

I have been wanting for years to be more awake to the spiritual world around me.  I’ve known that for this to be true I needed to be more awake to the fact I am a spiritual being housed momentarily in a human body.  The perplexing thing for me has been more about the day to day part of living–how is it connected to our spiritual self or is it, etc.  I know that God has been little by little introducing me to more of this spiritual side in the past many weeks and months.  I’ve found that I do like to take charge of me and what I do, rather than being totally submitted to God.  I also have found that I don’t “take charge of my decisions”  with the intent of abandoning God’s leadership, I simply find taking charge easy and I do it automatically.  Afterwards I come to God for His blessings upon what I’ve taken.  This practice is what God is wanting me to address.  A perfect example of this for me is a project I accepted to work with from Boise State University.  I was contacted by a couple people I highly respect and asked to support a project they are building from a 4-year federal grant.  I accepted quickly as I typically love this type of thing.  However, now that I’m into the work of it I see why I should have asked if God’s blessings were on it ahead of saying yes.  It will consume the rest of this month with the work it will require.  It is not a bad thing, but it is not what I know God wanted me doing with “our time”.  As I was praying about it this morning I got His message very clearly.  “Check with Us before saying yes to what you enjoy.  The feelings you have are not always in congruence with our focus for you with us.”

Spiritual Listening is a new thing for me.   I really do want to be sensitive to The Holy Spirit in my life.  All of my life until the most recent time has been lived thinking I’m not worthy to house the Holy Spirit.  I knew somehow He lived within me but my time was mostly spent pushing away the thoughts of this because I would be overcome with the shame of what I thought I was.  Now that Christ has more fully awakened me to the new creation I am, the reality of The Holy Spirit’s presence is a natural outcome.  I have much to learn in all of this.  “Lord help me be a good learner, listener, and responder to You and The Holy Spirit in this day.