Find Your God
Have you ever walked through a quiet forest? Stood at the oceans edge? Beheld the majestic mountain peaks? Looked into the eyes of a newborn baby? Watched a birth? Looked up at a clear starry night sky? Or looked upon any of the magnificent experiences of this world and felt overwhelming awe and wonder?
Have you cried at a child’s funeral? Felt anxiety over the current political affairs? Observed the war, famine, disease, and weather damage from around the world? Pondered the catastrophic events occurring here in the US? Have you every prayed and only gotten silence as the answer?
We see all these great extremes of tragedy and inspiration; incredible sorrow to incredible joy. We experience hopefulness and devastating powerlessness. Have you wondered through it all: Where is God? Who is God? What is God? Why won’t God help me? Is it just a big cosmic joke?
I have.
And I am here to tell you about it. You see, my story is a familiar one in many ways. I have experienced incredible despair and wordless exhilaration; the pit and the mountain top. After many years of spiritual contemplation, I have come to realize who God is for me. It has been a long road but one that has given me the most incredible sense of the wonderment and incredibleness of our God. If you are like me, you have run into so many walls in searching for God. Maybe your religious beliefs, church, synagogue, mosque, or temple has bound you into a set of beliefs that no long ring true to your heart and soul.
I want to help you find YOUR God. I believe God is different for every human because of our experiences. However, God is the same God, we just see different aspects of the same Divine One.
My Story
A very long journey
Even from my childhood I had a great desire to know who God is? I grew up Catholic in a large family with 10 children in a very small Texas town. I was a “different” child. I was fat, wet the bed, had acne, and very different from children my own age. I was tormented on the playground. At home I desperately wanted affection and acknowledge from my parents who were unable to give it. Not that they didn’t care, because they did. Their Germanic background of not expressing emotion was our home norm. By the time I was a teenage I was suicidal. I was Goth before it even became a term. I was certainly headed down a very bad path. I was starting to “act out” as they say now. I hated myself and knew I was destined to Hell. A deep existential fear hung over my life. And I had no way to deal with it.
With my attraction to “religious” things I was considered to “have the calling to be a priest”. So, I began to pursue religious life as a Catholic priest in a religious order. Most probably, I felt this would “save” me. I attended university in a very large metropolis while living with the religious community. The adjustment was terrible but God saw this was my saving grace. I began to deal with my feelings about myself, my self-hatred, my feelings about spiritual abandonment. God placed wonderful, loving, caring, insightful people in my path that eventually helped me to “find my God”.
At one point in my last semester in university I was having a “spiritual breakdown”. I would sit and look out the window and try to make sense of all the spiritual and human confusion, anxiety, self-loathing, and fear. For days this went on. All I could see in my mind was a world of destruction, darkness, and desolation. I finally cried out to God, “God, WHAT can I believe IN?” The voice in my head said, “I…LOVE…YOU!”. I started to cry. I knew this was the voice of God. Instantly, the ruins of my world were swept away in my mind. There were fields of flowers growing and blooming where once stood the ruins of my beliefs! I cannot describe the wonderment and joy that filled my heart and soul at that moment! I knew NOW ONE belief that I could hold TRUE! GOD LOVES ME! But more importantly:
GOD love me!
God LOVES me!
God love ME!
Anyway I looked at it I knew God loves me! I decided to, then and there, make this my cornerstone upon which all of my life would be built! I took a stone in my mind and engraved on it; GOD LOVES ME!. I took the stone and placed it as my corner stone! NOW I had something I could hold on to, to pull me from the abyss, to build my self-worth on, to create my future, and begin the path of knowing who God is for me. I was saved! Even now, writing these words 36 years later, I feel the power of that moment. This powerful truth was the only thing I knew and the only idea I could build my life on. After that, everything I questioned was put up against my cornerstone. If it “fit” then I added that block. For example, if God love me so completely, then God MUST love every human equally and completely. Yes, that fit! Then all of the Bible came to life in a new way. For example, “who am I to judge my neighbor?” took on a whole new meaning.
Soon, my new expanding faith was growing by leaps and bounds! My faith could no longer be contained by the Catholic church, or the Four Square Gospel Church, or the Pentecostal movement…all of which I was involved in! I KNEW my faith to be true for me!
Taking the Journey to Know Your God
Having a personal relationship with God
Spiritual direction
Deeper Knowledge of your God
Meditation
Calmer, more grounded Life
What is spiritual direction
Spiritual directors have a special role to play by establishing a safe space for you, listening deeply nd intently, spiritually, and letting your authentic self shine through.
Ideally, we are mirrors that allow you to see yourself more clearly. We strive very hard not to impose our own vision, so as to not distort the image. All of this is meant to allow you to see what is already inside you. What is already whole.
You are your own best teacher.
God is within us all, fully, completely, without reservation or limitation. Wehave but to look. What greater form of intimacy can there be than to see our true self, your soul, accurately reflected as if you were looking in a mirror?
This is what spiritual direction is meant to accompolish.
(definition adapted from Spiritual Directors International)
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
Psalms 42: 1-2
Get to Know Me
Helping You Move Forward
I consider myself to be non-religious. While my main beliefs are around the Judeo-Christian belief system, I ponder and incorporate beliefs from many different places including Buddhism and Islam. I believe God is present in all faiths. Our duty is to find the best path for us.
Send me an email and tell me about yourself. Let me see if I can help you explore your own faith and path toward God.
My email is findyourGod2021@gmail.com
Sincerely,
Reverend Robert Rice
Church of Natural Grace
San Francisco, CA