As I've grown spiritually (and I do think of it as growth, though maybe it's change, or evolution, or devolution–in any case, because it gets better and better, I experience it as growth), it feels, even when I'm letting go of beliefs or practices, like I'm expanding. What was gets absorbed into what's becoming.

Borders move outward or disappear completely. Once significant dividing lines fade. People I would never have listened to now instruct me. I stop trying to define the divine because the divine is always more than anything I can articulate; the divine defies definition.

 Expansion!

Unlike stillness, which I've always yearned for, expansion simply happened, and it took me a while to recognize what it was. Initially, I thought it was loss. I "lost" the church of my youth. I "lost" my position as a church pastor. But what I gained was a vastly expanded understanding of the grace and mercy of God. What I gained was an expanded church and an expanded ministry. It was much more, not less.

This continues. Why would it stop? I'm a follower of the Great Open.

"When love renounces all limits, it reaches the truth" (Kabir, as translated by Rabindranath Tagore).

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.