This is the fourth in a series from Making Love To God, my memoir of Divine Union and contemporary spiritual relationship. The series began on July 29, 2008, with the Introduction and Chapter One, and will continue through completion. You may resonate with the material more powerfully if you follow it in order; all posts are categorized in the Making Love To God category in the sidebar to your right. May we all find the courage to strip away anything that separates ourselves from our own Divinity.
Author’s Note: I have relied on the words God, Goddess, Creation, Divine, Jesus, and Beloved to represent energy that is inherently indefinable. Interpretation lies with the reader.
The image, a painting by Eva Lewarne, is part of a series inspired by Rumi poetry. See more of Eva Lewarne’s art here.
The Invitation
from Making Love to God
by Rachel Snyder
I lost my body in a hailstorm of desire, and when all had melted, I found my soul. Tucked in between the places surrounding my heart and holding the Spirit of the All.
Here it lay for eons, trapped beneath and behind, in a desperate struggle for eternal freedom. Here the ivy grew, trailing itself and invading every crevice left open by scarring. No light reacheth that place, no scent of ripened earth, the touch of rain-drenched moss nor the angelic melody reacheth in.
O Beloved, to so darkened and dreary a place how could I invite you in, with your shimmering magnificence, all Holy and bathed with the light? Surely you would have but turned your face, taking not one further step, retreating to your heavenly home where dwelleth none but the Healed, the Whole, and Holy. How long did I think thus, keeping locked tight the entryway to unimaginable peace and salvation?
And how instantaneous my knowing when I saw that You did not turn away. That You embraced my dark and bloody places with the tenderness of the fawn, taking them unto You and transforming them with Your love. O what Love, what precious, rare, unequaled Love! How the spark traveled from my toe to my crown, finding its way into every empty space, filling my being with the radiance of a velvet twilight sky.
And when I saw You did not turn away, the darkness fell, slipping out and carried away on the wind. And there I stood in the Glory of the Light, and your gaze changeth not, for what you had beheld for all eternity rested unchanged. And with the darkness driven from my earthly home, I arose into the arc between Heaven and Earth, resting unattended, upheld by the Light.
How light is my step when You carry me! There is no other, nor could there be, who brings me to such heights, who shows me colors crimson and gold, violet blue of peacock’s tail, soft saffron steeped in silver spray. Does the trembling never stop? For even your stilled embrace does not it quell! A trilling, quickening, I rise heart first in rapture.
And my worldly work lies fallow, for it calls me not in Thy presence, Sweet One! I have touched the face of God; my hands remain twined in an eternal helix of ancient creation. For All it is here, the sun, the moon, the stars an endless blanket of Light over me.
Caress me yet more, dear God, for no earthly being doth compare in touch or timbre, your sweetness unmatched. All is Now, and joy blows through me warm and hungry, a path made clear by pure intention.
Your presence builds inside me, God, a growing without measure. How I do fly, your wings around me so! Soar me higher, Beloved, for your loft knows no bounds and no structure, but contains the infinite All I take deep into my Soul.
Rest not, go not, the Moon beckons and I rest deep in my Soul.
Three
It is no accident that the desire to merge with God rises up from within you, for this is one of the many places where Creation dwells. It is a telltale sign that even the hardhearted cannot ignore, and an invitation to claim your birthright as a most magnificent offspring of All-That-Is.
Your wounds and unhealed places speak to your human experience, and nothing more. They are neither labels nor badges of honor nor dishonor, but simply the consequences of earthly existence. They do not deserve the attention you lavish upon them. That you hide so much of yourself in shame creates nothing of value, and only delays your journey toward Divine spiritual partnership.
When you look into the face of your earthly beloved and see only beauty, know that you see your own reflection turned upon you.
The sweet heart whose radiance you feel is your own heart. The loving eyes are your own, as well, for your true partner is a living mirror in which you see every facet of your being. No matter how you may try, you hide nothing.
When you accept yourself as a child of Divinity, doors open. You find that rooms have been prepared for you and those you love. You want for nothing, and in return, you have all that you could ever desire. As grace and abundance displace separation and lack, personal fear gives way to universal love, as you embrace your singular part in a glorious whole.
Arriving there is not always easy. First you, must acknowledge the existence of something greater than yourself. Then you must give up the notion that you are smart enough, wise enough, powerful enough, to control your entire universe. You appreciate your interdependence on others in the Earth family. Only then do you begin to appreciate your own magnificence.
There was a time when my lover’s adoration of me was an annoyance; I could not yet receive the gift of his love. He told me I was a goddess, and I refuted that he, then, must be a god, as who else would a goddess share company with? He told me I was beautiful, and I deflected the compliment, assuring him I was nothing more than a reflection of his own inner and outer beauty.
He worshipped me, as men do women, and I all but scolded him.
“Worship your God,” I told him time and again. “I am just an ordinary person — a flesh and blood human being. Stop burdening me by insisting that I be something more.”
Our time together was marked by relentless displays of old wounds, pain and fear. One layer cleared, we would barely mop up and then move on to the next. Over and over we drilled deeper and deeper into our interior landscapes, dredging up mountains of debris, disintegrated fragments of old ways of being that no longer served. We each waited, terrified, for the other to storm out, disgusted with our darkness and seeking some greater island of serenity and perfection.
We separated time and again, the only way we knew to allow enough space where each of us could move closer to our own relationship with Creation. Thousands of miles away, on dark and dusty highways, my beloved found God in the cab of his truck, his traveling monk’s cell. I followed suit at the kitchen counter, the computer, the daily rhythm of children and school, and in the company of eagle and coyote.
How could it be that our best times together were the times we spent apart?
We directed our physical passions to the whole of Creation and in our own ways, night after night, we each made love to God. In that divine embrace, the purity of our beauty was reflected back to us and we reveled in the worthiness of our beings. Intoxicated with the love of the universe, we were nourished and exhilarated at the thought of sharing our newfound brilliance with each other.
The longer we stayed apart, the deeper our love grew. In our individual aloneness, we met and danced with our inner gods and goddesses. They led us by the hand, back to each other and to a place where we felt lifted and sustained by a powerful union we could not name.
(to be continued…)
words divinely wrought 