What is your name?

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
-Howard Thurman

Tonight, I am thinking about the sacred dreams for our lives that we hold close to our chests like newborn babies.

The ones that take courage to name.

Tell me the name of your dream. Come in close, whisper it to me. I will guard it like a little flame on a candle. I will offer you handfuls of kindling.

There is a thing uncrafted, a way not made, a wild unwritten thing I feel the aching loss of, and I think you know the thing. The thing we are missing, the thing that could make us all a little more whole inside.

I was raise on stories of things undone. Of time that moved too fast and circumstances that wore down at the life we had in mind, like the water that wears at rocks. Sister brother, I know the sound of your cannots, cannot was my first language. My first response to anything was a good reason for nothing. And I spoke fluently for years. I am ready to hear the names of things I have not heard. I am even now learning to speak the name of a thing myself.

I want to know the truth of you. Tell me who you were and what you did in that dream you didn't want to wake up from. Tell me the youness of you when you are proud. And I want to tell you the truth of me too. I want to be known.  I want to be manifested like a revelation.  And not just my hope for my life, it's bigger than that, it's my ((I am)) that I want to be known for.

There is a reason that God calls Him/Herself  "I am."  It's the most powerful thing we can say. It is the act of choosing to manifest yourself. It is ratifying the moment of your birth. It was the impulse to be that was so loud it made a Bang that made the whole universe.  I see you there. What a miracle you are. Tell me your name and mean it.

According to hadith, God said "I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created a creation, then made Myself known to them, and they recognized Me."

I recognize something in you.

The divine impulse behind creation is the desire to be known. Everything in existence is God manifesting Her/Himself so that She/He might know Herself fully, in all the forms She could make. This is God playing out Her full potential. God learning about what She can be.

In Hinduism, there is the concept of Lila, God-play- the belief that everything in existence is just God playing.

The world is to be enjoyed. We are here to learn about our true nature, to manifest ourselves beautifully into anything we want to be. To be known, and to be loved by those who know, and to love the ones brave and trusting enough to be known by us.  And not with solemnity, but with playfulness.  All of this, somehow, is for the fun of it.We are here for the mere pleasure of being here. In this form, in this way, for a time, until we find ourselves expressing differently.

Getting to know someone is divine work. Letting yourself be seen is sacred.  And behind and under it is that primal fear and anxiety- what if there isn't anything interesting to know, what if who I truly am is unlovable, what if I am not enough, as I am. Friend, you are everything, made perfectly.  You are full of God. You are sacred as you are. Everything in the universe is enfolded in you.  Be brave, have faith in the vastness of your being, and learn about your nature in everything you see. All God Godding. All You Youing. It is sufficient. It is enough.

So there's God, opening Her feathers like a peacock at a cocktail party, and here we are trying to contain our vastness in the little cavern of our bodies. There is a reason for the pressure pushing out of your chest, God is calling something into existence in you, through you. And sweet one, you are watching that television or blogging till dawn just to drown out the impulse to come alive, but coming alive is your nature, it is the desire imprinted in every atom of that sacred body of yours. And it is exhausting not to.  As hard as the thing you are called to do may seem, stopping it from happening is harder.

Have you ever felt the easiness of being in the right place? Have you ever experienced the world making way for you? Everything coming into position to support you? I wish that for you. I believe you being you more fully will be easy. I believe you will feel everything get softer around you, maybe not all at once, maybe it will take a little time, but then you will realize, effortlessness. It is the gift that God gives to a piece of God that is riding the wave, in the flow, accepting itself.

But as it stands, there is a thing uncrafted, a way not made, a wild unwritten thing I have not read and I feel the yawning space of it. You have a piece, and we can't be whole without you. God broke Herself into pieces to see the shapes, to feel the pleasure of breaking open, to see what's inside.  And you sister, you brother, are a piece. A piece of God that only you can manifest.  And we are missing you. We are looking everywhere. Though you may not know it, though we may not know it, but I know. We are saving your place.