{"id":1992,"date":"2018-05-07T07:18:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T11:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1992"},"modified":"2018-05-07T12:43:27","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T16:43:27","slug":"finding-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/finding-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding God"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>What did you lose and what did you find? I always pose these questions. But maybe what I should be asking all the people who share their smiles and stories is, What DIDN\u2019T you lose? What is it that survived throughout all your pain and suffering?<\/span><\/p>\n

I went to see an old friend who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did, in a similar household to mine. Neither of us had been exposed to religion as children. Yet, as young girls, we each prayed on our own. And we watched our other friends get confirmed or bat mitzvah-ed. \u201cAs long as I can remember I have been on a path to know God better,\u201d my friend told me. \u201cI always had my own connection to God, to Source, to All There Is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When we left home for college, we lost track of each other for almost two decades. During that time she explored the spiritual world and grew a strong commitment to God. I\u2019m so in awe of this. Other than my kids and my inherited dog, my connections hang on fragile threads.<\/span><\/p>\n

My friend is now a psycho-spiritual counselor and interfaith\/inter-spiritual minister. Originally trained as a social worker, she went into a seminary and ended up teaching ministers-in-training. From all spiritual paths and traditions. Even atheists. How did she come to love serving God this way, I wondered?<\/span>
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t just get struck with a spiritual practice. It\u2019s a discipline,\u201d she said. \u201cLike working out, you have to do it every day, seven days a week, in order to maintain connection.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked, \u201cWhat changed your world?\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cHaving my daughter. Having my grandson. Losing my sister. Being diagnosed with cancer, being a three-time breast cancer survivor,\u201d she replied.<\/span>
\n\u201cYou lost your health. And your sister. How do you reconcile this with God, with your faith?\u201d I asked.<\/span>
\n\u201cI believe that nowhere in any sacred text are we promised by God (or any entity or spiritual master), no death, no suffering, no war or sickness…. What I believe we\u2019re promised is that God is there to comfort us. When I cry out in anger, \u2018God, how could you…?\u2019 I will be comforted.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We walked around her yard and she told me she felt connected to earth through the trees, birds, and rocks. There were rocks everywhere. In the garden, on the path leading to her little rock-studded house, and particular piles of rocks that she proudly pointed out. She said, \u201cGod is the energy or conscience that moves through all of us and everything.\u201d In my own current state of still thawing out from years of feeling like frozen mud, I\u2019m considering this.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What didn\u2019t you lose? What survived your times of pain?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What did you lose and what did you find? I always pose these questions. But maybe what I should be asking all the people who share their smiles and stories is, What DIDN’T you lose? What is it that survived throughout all your pain and suffering? I went to see an old friend who grew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1432],"tags":[1553,1560,1557,1559,1555,1556,1554,1558],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1432","tag-connected-to-god","tag-connection-to-source","tag-exploring-spirituality","tag-finding-god","tag-god-comforts-us","tag-reconciling-with-god","tag-rocks","tag-what-did-you-lose"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}