Photo by Michael Fousert on Unsplash
How to Experience God in Everyday Life
even if you're not sure what you believe
I’m not always sure what I believe about God. But I think I know what it’s like to experience something of God or love-energy in everyday life—moments of connection, beauty, or quiet guidance—even when I’m not sure what I believe. That's enough for me.
- Anonymous
I pray to God even as I don't know what I believe—or even if I believe at all. The act of reaching out, of speaking or listening, is way of opening to something real. It's sending my feelings to the universe, and sensing that something, maybe someone, is listening. I do it all the time.
- Anonymous
It is that participation of the Spirit that leads to our being, in each moment, something more than the deterministic outcome of the forces from the past that also play so large a role in shaping us.
- John Cobb
The word “God” means different things to different people. By “God” I mean a universal Spirit of love at work throughout the world—both a love-energy and an ultimate Consciousness in whose presence the universe lives and moves and has its being.
As Consciousness, this Spirit can be addressed and encountered as a Thou. We can pray to God and feel that someone is listening. We can seek guidance from God. We can give our lives to to God's callings. We can feel called by God to build communities of love and justice, beauty and care.
As love-energy, the Spirit can be felt and participated in, even by those who do not think of it as a Consciousness. We can be breathed by God, animated by God. This animation is not one-sided. We are not controlled by God. But we are enlivened by God, and life becomes more intense, more satisfying, more meaningful.
Drawing on the Alphabet of Spiritual Literacy developed by Frederic Brussat and Mary Ann Brussat, I suggest that we are inwardly animated by this love-energy of God in at least thirty-seven ways. You will note that “love” is itself one of the thirty-seven ways, and that there are thirty-six others. This is because the love-energy of the Spirit is known and felt wherever life is enriched, deepened, and brought into fuller aliveness—and love is not the only way this happens.
Life also flourishes through attention, through a sense of mystery, through playfulness, through beauty, through listening, through yearning, and through many other qualities of heart and mind. In all of these, something is awakened, quickened, and sustained. And in this awakening, the love-energy of God is present and at work.
What follows is a list of these thirty-seven qualities, each accompanied by a brief descriptor. Spirituality and Practice offers much more depth and nuance on each of the thirty-seven: poems, quotations, art works, essays, Click here. But for now just read them slowly. Let them speak. You might linger with one or two at a time. You might notice which ones come easily, and which call for your attention. In each, in its own way, the love-energy of God is already present—waiting to be felt, and lived.
Attention (a quiet, receptive noticing of the suchness of things)
Beauty (feeling the felt radiance of what is)
Being Present (resting in the immediacy of now)
Compassion (feeling with the suffering of others)
Connections (sensing the web that holds all things, feeling connected to other people, other animals, to plants and to the Earth)
Devotion (offering oneself to a good cause in love)
Enthusiasm (feeling the energy of being fully alive)
Faith (trusting the depth of things unseen)
Forgiveness (releasing what binds the heart)
Grace (receiving what is given without earning)
Gratitude (giving thanks for the gift of life)
Hope (leaning toward what may yet be)
Hospitality (welcoming the stranger and the new)
Imagination (opening to possibilities not yet realized)
Joy (delighting in the goodness of being)
Justice (seeking fairness with courage and care)
Kindness (extending small acts of gentle goodwill)
Listening (listening to others loving attention and without judgment)
Love (enjoying the deep care that nurtures life)
Meaning (discovering significance in experience, even amid suffering)
Nurturing (tending what is fragile and growing)
Openness (keeping the heart’s doors unclosed, openness to new ideas)
Peace (cultivating harmony within and around)
Play (entering the freedom of creative spontaneity)
Questing (living into questions that matter, includes questioning and doubt)
Reverence (honoring the sacred in all things)
Shadow (acknowledging and befriending what is hidden within, including one's own sinfulness and suffering)
Silence (resting in stillness and depth)
Teachers (learning from those who guide and challenge)
Transformation (welcoming the ongoing work of creative becoming)
Unity (affirming connection amid difference)
Vision (seeing with the eyes of possibility, having perspective)
Wonder (standing in awe before the mystery of life)
X – The Mystery (embracing what cannot be grasped)
Yearning (feeling the pull toward the more)
You (affirming your own sacred and unrepeatable life)
Zeal (giving yourself wholeheartedly to what matters, zest for life)