It seems I never spend time
with the late afternoon breeze
so filled with pine,
or walk high into the peaks
to feel Your sun upon my head
and breathe the chill of snow
that has cooled the mountain air.

It is in those golden hours
that I think Your new-born thoughts,
shining with starlight
in the azure blue of the August sky.
And I am with You,
feeling the peace of knowing
my place among the elk and deer,
the moose and the falcon
that inhabit the wild wooded hills
of Your domain.

So I go to be with You,
To talk and tell You of my life;
To seek Your wisdom,
and the sunlit embrace of Your love.
Upon Your holy mountain
I will rest my soul,
always held
in the vastness of Your spirit.

In every moment of our life, we have the opportunity to know communion with this reality, to know it within ourselves, to access it and to find the peace and comfort of it. As we do, we have that higher reality that we speak of as the Father to bring into the world.

Father’s Day is a time to celebrate both our earthly father and also the heavenly Father that is within each one of us. That reality is present for each of us, whether we are a man or a woman, just as the heavenly Mother is present for each of us, whether we’re a man or a woman.

I had another little argument with my editor. I used the term “Queen of Heaven” and I capitalized it. She told me that the “Queen” should be a small “q.” She was, understandably, upholding a traditional view of what does and doesn’t get capitalized. In that traditional view, there are specific names for God that deserve capitalization and others don’t. My view is that every person is empowered to find their own relationship with the Divine and to name the Divine for themselves in a way that connects them at a heart level to that reality. And when we use a name for the Divine in that way, it deserves to be capitalized.

Traditional views of God tend to stand in the way of real connection. Political correctness stands in the way of real connection. Personally, I can’t relate to father-mother-God. Do we really have to give Father God and Mother God equal time? Are they worried about that? And I can’t relate to a name for God that has a hyphen or a dash in it. Or a slash: father/mother God. I can feel the clear connection when I come before the Father. I can feel the clear connection when I honor the Divine Mother. And if there is a reason to connect to them both at the same time, I’m sure there is an honorable way to do that.

Something happens for a person when they have access to what we speak of as the Father within them. When that’s present, no matter what happens, there’s always an opportunity to access the “more.” When you run out of steam, there’s some more steam in there. When you run out of love, there’s more love. When you run out of ideas, there are more ideas. When you run out of a way forward, you find a way within you. And when you find the way within you, you can find the way that’s in front of you. It gets difficult if you’re looking for the way in your life and all you are relating to are the things in front of you. There’s a correlation to the way that’s inside and the way that’s outside.

There’s the biblical story of Moses and the children of Israel coming up to the Red Sea. Picture Charlton Heston, if you will, with Yul Brynner hot on his heels in the movie The Ten Commandments. As the biblical story goes, Pharaoh and his armies are chasing Moses and the Hebrews. Facing the Red Sea, Moses receives this message: Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord. (Exodus 14:13)

Whatever transpired back then, the significance of that instruction for us is the instruction to come to a place of stillness in ourselves. Stand still, be still, come into a place of communion, access the Father that’s within you, access a higher love that’s within you, the source of your strength, the source of your wisdom, the way for you. In accessing the way that’s there for you inside, magically it does appear outside. There is something that opens up. If you try to blast your way through whatever is outside and make a way for yourself on some kind of arbitrary basis, you have a failed mission on your hands, and you have a recipe for discouragement.

Facing the consternations of life—all the difficulties and whatever might be blocking your path—there is a telling difference between the person who finds the way forward and the person who is stopped, and this is it. I don’t care what you call it, I don’t care what religion you are, or not, or what spiritual path you are following. The difference is the individual’s real ability to access the Father that lets them live a creative life and the lack of that connection brings failure at a personal level. It’s the difference between finding the way and being frustrated and stopped. So in this moment, feel your connection to the Father. Accessing that reality inside us, we have it to give outside.

It is as clear as day to me that this is not some religious idea. I’m not trying to convert you to a religious path. I hope you can feel that. We each have the opportunity to access a reality, not something make-believe. If it weren’t a reality, why would it be there for you when you turn to it? Why would it be that when you come to a place of true stillness of heart and peace of mind and then turn in the direction of this inner reality, that you’re flooded with a sense of peace and well-being?

I understand that sometimes people can’t find this reality. They meditate, try to quiet their thoughts, and try, try, try, but don’t actually access the Father. And likewise, you can become extremely emotional, full of religious fervor, and when the fervor dies down, you’re not really in any place beyond where you were when you started, if it’s all froth. But anytime someone has truly turned in heart and mind to the reality of the Father, there is something that comes into the experience that is undeniably real and significant. There is indeed a way—a way for our life, always, no matter what it looks like on the outside. When we access that way on the inside, our way forward opens outside.

The prayer that Jesus brought to the world towards the end of his life on earth was a prayer of communion with the Father. It was his prayer addressed to the Father, and also a reflection of the prayer of the Father expressed through him. And it’s translated this way in our King James Bible:

 …that they may be one, even as we are one.   (John 17:22)

There is talk of oneness in our world today, and many fine people who are calling for a path of oneness among people around the world. That is certainly an honorable and valuable thing to do. I think of our friends on Humanity’s Team. Their core principle is oneness.

If you talk to the executive director of Humanity’s Team, Steve Farrell, he will be quick to tell you that the experience of oneness is spiritually based. Any attempt at oneness that isn’t spiritually based ends up being tyranny. One world government equals human tyranny without the reality of the spiritual. It takes truly waking up to the Father for oneness to become a reality in the experience of people.

How are we doing in this regard? At what level are we knowing oneness with others? I think we’d have to admit that to whatever degree the reality of the Father isn’t real for us, oneness is an evasive dream. For some, there might be a sense of harmony at times. But the reality of oneness is so rare among people, and it’s rare because it’s rare that people actually stand still, and then live their life from that place.

That is the idea. It wasn’t “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord and then go crazy and run around through the desert.” The idea is to stand still, come to a place of peace, come to a place of communion, come to a place of knowing the Father, and then be in that place and live from that place in your life. Bring that! Not only as a daily meditation but as a living meditation, as a walking meditation, as a moment-by-moment meditation. Bring the Father in living expression, so that you can say, I’m standing in a place of stillness, and I’m bringing what comes from that into action in my life. I’m filling what I’m doing with that. I’m filling my words with the vibration of that.

I ask myself these questions. Can you feel the Father in my words? Can you feel the Father in my actions? Is the power of that at work in my field? Are people thriving in that field because that reality brings life and it brings a way? Is my world finding a way because I’m knowing that reality, not just in some special time of meditation or prayer?

This is about living your spirituality. I was considering with a friend this week how, in the creative cycles of our life, at some point, things move from deep feelings and ideas into action. It moves from something abstract and something felt into something expressed. It moves into the living of our life and the grounding of who we are with strength in our world. It moves into a phase where we get to answer the question, “Does your spirituality grow corn? Or is it an at-church spirituality, a while-you-meditate spirituality or a purely philosophical spirituality?”

The time comes when we are called to bring life with vigor; to create. And the time comes when all that has happened up to that moment is in vain and comes to naught if we don’t act—if we don’t grow that garden, write that book, or whatever the act of creation is for us. If we don’t, with vigor, plow into the living of our life, all of the values that we say we have, all the love that’s in our heart and all our great ideas, they are all in vain.

Not only will the things that came before the moment of action be in vain if we do not act but all the things that would come after it won’t occur. If you don’t plant the seed of corn, the corn won’t grow and there will be no harvest. If we do not hoe those weeds and do it as a walking meditation, bringing all that we are into that, all the good things that would come out of the garden aren’t going to come.

I’m using a garden because it’s a wonderful, accessible metaphor and also because I was walking through the garden this morning, so it’s fresh on my mind. But this is true in every dimension of our life. With the Industrial Revolution, it became harder to see our lives as investing our heart and soul in something important. It became difficult to see creative possibilities if you were just tightening one bolt on an automobile. But whatever the circumstance, you have the opportunity to invest who you are and let that be meaningful; to let your life be a living meditation.

Many years ago, I was an insole tacker in a shoe factory for a month. I can honestly say I loved it. A shoe is built around a plastic last in the shape of a foot. The shoe gets built around that last, and the insole is the first thing that is attached. A large machine spits out tacks at a certain rate when the worker depresses the pedal at the bottom. You hold down the pedal just long enough to spit out two tacks, one on the ball of the last and one on the heel. And you move the last in rhythm to the spitting out of the tacks. If you get it right, the last with the insole attached moves on to the next phase of the production line.

I’m glad I didn’t spend my whole life as an insole tacker. But for the month I did it, it was productive. It was an important realization for me to know that I could be myself and express myself as an insole tacker. It let me know that I could do anything and I can be myself. Even that could be a living meditation.

What I know is that what I bring into the world is not dependent on anything but me. If I express absolutely and without hesitation all of who I am spiritually, and I invest that into every moment of my life, there is something that comes from that. That grows corn. And when you do that, it grows corn.

The alternative is to wait around for other people. And then, when other people don’t show up like you want them to, to complain that they didn’t, and then not to show up yourself.

Choose to live a walking meditation. This is spiritual expression. An innocent enough sounding couple of words: spiritual expression. The question that is at issue for humanity is this: Will we express the spirit that’s within us? The question is not about whether we will believe, or have some kind of faith. It is not whether we will meditate or pray. The real issue is whether we will invest the highest of who we are—our highest thinking and our highest love—into our words and actions.

In the living of life, with things as they are, we reach a physical peak at some point. If that’s true, it might not be getting any better in that regard. But even if we have passed our physical peak, that doesn’t mean we’ve reached our spiritual peak. You may not be able to run a mile any faster than you have in the past and you may not be able to bench-press more. But you have higher love to bring. And some of us are only getting started. You have a high wisdom, greater kindness, and greater insight to show the world. You have more capacity than you’ve yet accessed to penetrate the field that you’re living in, and in fact, the people around you, with the love that’s inside you. That love inside you could fill you up and then move out through you and fill up the people around you more than it is today. And the same goes for me.

All too often, the tremendous power that’s inside a person, instead of moving through them with strength in a way that uplifts and grows things, moves through them in an attacking, destructive way. Instead of moving down into the earth that’s around them, it’s moving sideways, attacking people who should be their friends. So we have, in the world in which we live, all this sideways energy. We can talk about oneness and we can talk about God and we can talk about love, but it’s mostly talking if the power that creates oneness, which is the Father within us, is coming out sideways, battling the people around us. On that basis, it is breaking us apart instead of bringing us together. The power of the Father is being used for destructive purposes.

Individually it breaks us apart if the power of the Father is not moving down deep into our flesh, to invigorate the flesh and bring peace to the flesh. Our flesh ends up being in a state of chaos and agitation—stress. The world at large is the same. There is certainly plenty of stress. What do we think terrorism is about? What do we think the Orlando shooting was all about? What do we think the American elections are about? They all carry sideways energy moving in a destructive way between human beings, instead of us all being one in the Father and then bringing that love into this world and growing corn.

Join me in offering this vibrational invitation to the world:

Stand still. Open to the Father. Find the Way opening up inside you. Express the Father. Live a walking meditation born of the highest love.