V :: If He Opens a Door for You

I ended my retreat with two concepts that were entirely new to me. One is from Wayne Muller:

Resolve to go through an entire day assuming that you are trustworthy, that all your feelings are accurate, that all your perceptions and intuitions are reliable.

Legacy of the Heart

Give that concept three hours of journaling. Give it four, to really work on you (as I told JMD when she recommended Sufi mysticism: If there’s no homework, it didn’t happen). The result for me can best be summed up with the phrase

Get Ready
She A’coming

The second concept was born of knowledge that I am loved by God. I sought nourishment, comfort, and intimacy from God. I was delivered of unearned and unearnable love. And that God wants not just obedience, not just submission, but that I bring my full self to the table: all of my gifts, internal and external. And to treat myself with the care and respect, privately and in relationships, accordingly.

If He opens a door for you, thereby making himself known, pay no heed if your deeds do not measure up to this. For, in truth, He has not opened it for you but out of a desire to make Himself known to you. Do you not know that He is the one who presented the knowledge of Himself to you, whereas you are the one who presented Him with deeds? What a difference between what He brings you and what you present to Him!

Ibn ‘Ata’Illah The Book of Wisdom 1:8

My journaling exercises on trusting myself had ventured into the territory of the quick, internal glimpses I take to filter myself. How I think I should be, or how I should react. My mental role models.

I needed a new archetype so that I could move in the world with the knowledge of unearned love. Someone who could carry the weight of it, someone I could relate to. Someone in my own faith tradition. I chose Muhammad’s favorite daughter, Fatima.

There’s the Christian question, WWJD? I’m not asking What Would Fatima Do? But rather, with what would she approach this? What emotional reserves does she bring to the table? What is in her mirror?

Her decisions, her agency, must have been planted in the sweet earth of security. Of faith and stability. Of the unearned love of God, of a prophet, of her parent.

I will imagine the confidence that must have powered her heart. The courage, resolve, and dignity born of her deep. in. the. bones knowledge that

She. Is. Enough.