One of my favorite Scriptures is in Exodus, where Moses cries out to see "the face of God", but he has to wait for God to pass by, and Moses is only able to see the backside of God. For me, that has always been a picture of our ability to see God in hindsight.
I went on Sabbatical during Christmas, 2010, and it was only after I had been home for a few days that I remembered a dream that I had during December, 2003--exactly 7 years before my trip to Arizona. I had been having lots of dreams of mandalas, and a few of paintings, and I "knew" that I was supposed to begin painting again, even though I hadn't done anything visually creative in nearly 15 years. I began working again with mandalas, but there has always been these other two "paintings" that I remembered from those dreams. I just never got around to painting them. And that's what I remembered when I got home from Spirit Falls, those two paintings. One of them is the painting you see here. And it wasn't until then, that I KNEW it wasn't just a dream about a painting, but a dream about a trip--a trip I would make 7 years later!
That's God in hindsight: kind, compassionate, merciful, and life-giving, a God of mystery who loves to invite us into the mystery anyway possible--sometimes through dreams, and sometimes through our own creative works.
I am reminded that God is and always has been in EVERYTHING, and God has always worked with, and continues to work with, whatever is available, especially in our simple creative acts.
One of the reasons I never got around to painting the picture in my dream is because it was too whimsical and fantasy like--just too "fun" to really be "art". I remember in the dream that the picture was titled, "Surprised by Joy."
And that's one of the best things that happened during my trip to Arizona. I was surprised by JOY! That joy remains, knowing my spirituality can be - and IS - infused with mystical wisdom and contemplation and the evidential revelation of God all around me in science and evolution.
All the pieces have come together, and I have been truly surprised by joy!
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