Earnestly I seek You Psalms 63:1
ESV 1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
A more accurate statement cannot be said of me! My Soul Thirsts for You. I have been a seeker of God and the Truth for most of my life. That includes the childhood years. I have come to this earth this go around to really KNOW God in a way I have yet to Know. There has been the deepest of yearnings in the very core of my being. It is to Love and to Be Loved.
Initially my search began in the Christian Church. I was raised a Southern Baptist in the US Air Force. Sometimes we simply attended the Protestant services, which were generic in structure so the Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian denominations, and so on were accommodated. However, whenever we were anywhere near a Baptist Church it was there my mother shepherded my brothers, sister, and me. I enjoyed being a part of this community. I learned of Christ’s love for me. I learned of forgiveness. I learned that NOTHING could ever separate me from the Love of God…Nothing, not even myself. I learned what it means to be a true servant. Servant. The very heart of who I am.
The church taught me about community, too. In the 1960’s when the world was in turmoil over the Viet Nam War, it was the church where we gathered our strength and our solace. I lived in a community filled with all branches of the military and we drew strength from one another. We went to school together, to church together, shared meals with one another, were there for each other should one of our family members not make it home alive.
The 1970’s ushered in my teen years. I turned thirteen (13) in 1971. Changes were assailing me in so many ways. I had my first real kiss as we transitioned from living in the lushness of Wiesbaden Germany to the arid climate of Albuquerque, New Mexico. People were protesting in huge numbers against the Viet Nam War. The end of it came a year later. Unless you were part of the military community, you could not even begin to know the jubilation we felt when President Nixon said he was bringing everyone home! Most of my friends were wearing bracelets for the POW’s & MIA’s and we were hoping we would be able to take the bracelet off soon. I had a bracelet for Sgt. Ryan and he never came home. I remember the day I took it off and put it in my jewelry box. I cried for him and for his family.
My search for God &Truth continued. We were in the middle of the Sexual Revolution and the Women’s Rights Movement. Abortion became legal when I was sixteen (16) years old. I will never forget that day. We were assailed with tremendous force on what we were to believe, how we were to behave, and so on. I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of God and Truth. What I was seeing was Anger & Frustration. And then there was the “Alternative Lifestyle” going on all around us, swirling in the ethers. The Drug Revolution. I embraced it wholeheartedly. I tried just about every drug available at the time. I quit going to church at fifteen (15). I bought metaphysical books and devoured them with a fierce hunger. I listened to FM radio all night long. Music was the gateway to a whole new way of thinking for me. I purchased the Satanic Bible. I read anything I could on Astrology, Witchcraft, Numerology, Eastern religions. You name it and I dabbled in it. Numerology was taught to me by my eighth grade math teacher. I was exposed to Transcendental Meditation in the tenth grade. I always felt I was before my time. Not many people seemed to be on the same path as me and I felt lonely. Still, I kept searching for God and for Truth.
Fast forward a few decades and my search continues; only now I am not alone. While I was in college in my thirties (30’s) and studying computer science, a new and wonderful thing happened to all of us…the INTERNET! It was just released by the military (that is who created it after all)in the middle nineties (90’s). None of us knew what a great liberator and unifier this new technology was going to be. One of the first browsers, after AOL, was Excite! And I got an email address immediately. Soon after Yahoo came out & took Excites position. Then there was Google, and we all know what happened after that. We are GLOBALLY CONNECTED and it is exciting!
Now I am really not alone because we are in the throws of a Spiritual Revolution. My soul sings with joy because of this. Like-minded souls are connecting. We are gathering strength. We are affecting social and political policies. We are beginning to shape economics. No other time in history has shown the wide-spread generosity and concern for others as the time we are living in now. Social enterprise business models are being established in rapid numbers. The term Conscious Economics is beginning to creep into our everyday language.
“A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises can be structured as a for-profit or non-profit, and may take the form of a co-operative, mutual organization, a social business, or a charity organization.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise
“We are so close to a world that works for everyone that I can taste it. The right kinds of enterprise design, money and finance, government, local economy and social-ecological accounting are at our fingertips. We only need to make enough consensus through dialogue in diverse communities to bring this about. This requires open-minded and mindful people who operate out of maturity and mutual respect.” Torrey Byles [http://consciouseconomics.org/defining-conscious-economics]
It is an exciting time to be alive! And you know what? I have finally found Truth and I have found God. The Divine was inside of me all along. I just didn’t know it. I believe it is part of my mission, my dharma, to pass along what I have learned. Yes, I am still a servant and I will serve humanity with the gifts, talents, and strengths I have been blessed with. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief. I have found You, God. I have found Truth and my soul is at peace. My niche is called Namaste Healing Center and Thrive Farm, an organic permaculture urban farm (social enterprise)and I work with the forlorn, the forgotten, and the very people that Jesus came to serve. I am honored to have been chosen for this work and I give it my all. Namaste
