The Touch of the Divine

[thetatiana]

President Eyring said something in last fall's conference that has stuck with me. He challenged us to write down each day all the ways the Lord has worked in our lives, or touched our lives, that day. What a wonderful exercise! And every day since that I've sat down to think about it, it's been true, the Lord has blessed me that day specifically with something I needed. Not anyone else but me, me, me, lol!

It's so weird and paradoxical how, by serving the Lord the best I can, by doing His will, I'm given so much joy and all my selfish needs and wants are met! It's like, the more I give, the more I have to give. I'm astonished and gratified by this. =)

The other day as I was studying Arabic via an immersion course, suddenly I understood everything that was being said in an uncanny way. I realized this is what is meant by being given the gift of tongues. But why should that happen for me? What purpose is being served by my learning Arabic? I thought I was just doing it for fun and to have something to be studying. To engage me with my son's faith community so I can someday perhaps read and understand some of the Qur'an in the original language. It's an idle fancy, and one that may not last. But perhaps it's more important than I realize, in some way.

I feel God's help all the time now. Well, any given instance could possibly be random chance, but I feel that someone is there helping, someone is responding when I reach out with love, someone is helping me reshape myself into the person I want to be, who I deserve (in some unknown way) to be. (Certainly I've never done anything special to deserve it. Yet I feel specially loved and cherished for who I am, in something like the same way I cherish my 7 new children.)

I realized this morning that I love those 7 younglings, I am as happy in their company, as probably anyone I've known my whole life long, lol. Why is that? I was trying to analyze this aspect of my heart. What's so adorable about those six-week-old individuals of another species? Part of it is the miracle of motherhood, I think; the way that juvenile features (and relative size) tend to endear themselves to mothers in general, and mothering is a strong part of my makeup. Second is the tendency to want to protect the weak, which I think came from being abused as a child. The weak elicit all my sympathies, and I want to prevent them being exploited or harmed in any way. Part of it is their little spotted tummies, and their cute pawpads, and their little pink snouts. There's something so appealing in those things, those markers which babies carry. Then there's their vulnerability. It disarms us.

I thought, "maybe it's because they can't hurt me," but that's not really it. They can hurt me in several ways. One is just the scratch marks and bite marks I can inspect on my forearms, hands, legs and feet. They draw blood routinely, but I find it cute for some reason. I actively encourage them to attack my hands and feet by wiggling my phalanges to draw their attention. I love to rub their little tummies while they're chewing on my fingers and clawing my hands and wrists in a playful way. I only extricate myself if they hurt me so much I can't take it. =D Then I say "ow" while laughing at the same time.

Also I realized they could hurt me emotionally enormously if, say, they got sick or particularly if I accidentally did something to cause them harm. I'm constantly counting kittens to be sure there's not one snuggled under the covers that I could inadvertently roll over on top of, or something of the sort. Whenever I push furniture around I count first to be sure I know all of them are safely out of the way. Imagine how horrible I would feel if I did something that harmed one of these tiny ones. They could hurt me that way very deeply indeed.

Even if I just allow one of them to get hurt somehow, like if they climb somewhere and fall too far to the floor, that would devastate me. I've got pillows all over the floor so if they fall they hit something soft. Once Joshu fell from the tabletop to the hardwood floor and hurt his hand. He didn't use it for several hours and I was so worried about him. Luckily it got better. I invoked all my painsharing powers and spiritual healing powers to make it so, and alhamdulilah he started using it again after a few hours. So it's not the fact that the kittens can't hurt me that makes me love them so.

Maybe it's Carson McCullars' idea of "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" that one must practice loving first on easier things before tackling the love of a human being. But you know I've always felt instinctually that there's very little difference between a kitten and any other mammal. We're all very close cousins, and shared a common ancestor only a few tens of millions of years ago. As much as we like to think of ourselves as lords of all creation, humans are still very much mammals like other mammals. 90% of our makeup, maybe, we have in common, since all the most vital and basic things such as needs and sensations like air, water, food, warmth, love, pain, discomfort, joy, contentment, we share with our cousins. We even speak the same body language. Who can deny that a curled up purring kitten with a full tummy is in bliss? It's possible to read their feelings right off their faces and movements, not because we "anthropomorphize" them. We don't have to do that because they're already anthropomorphic, just as we're already felimorphic. We're close kin. We experience life in roughly the same way, particularly the most important things. None of them will be writing a blog, but who can deny that nearly all the feelings I can express in one are things they also feel? So I deny that a kitten is much less complicated a thing than a human baby. The difference is in what we open ourselves to perceive about them, not in the raw beings themselves.

So there I feel I'm hitting closer to the truth. A huge amount of the reason I feel such a powerful love for these babies is contained in the way I let myself see them. I wonder if it would be patronizing to begin to see human people around me a little more as I view the kittens? Like, when the babies make a mistake, I forgive them instantly. They're just little things, after all! They have to learn. They're not developed fully yet. The same is true of all us human beings, who are actually baby gods. We're undeveloped, and we make mistakes because we have to do that to learn.

They're visually extremely appealing, but this is also in the eye of the beholder. What is it about juvenile features that makes us go "awwwwww"? It's clearly something happening in our own brains, and we can learn to see each individual's intrinsic beauty. When we see them as the Lord does, we will surely see infinitely precious beings with their own unique beauties, their own heartbreaking histories. When we know someone, anyone, from the inside, when we know who they are, who they have been, who they feel themselves to be, we can't help but feel deep empathy for them and a powerful wish to serve them, to foster their happiness, their growth and fulfillment. When you add the understanding that each of these beings has a glorious divine nature, is a god in embryo, someone whom we would be strongly tempted to worship if we saw them in their future form, then even more surely is it true that they deserve our respect and love now, when that divinity is so fragile and nascent. Now when we could make an enormous difference in the path of their development by influencing them for good or ill this moment. Surely I should train my inner eye to see these beauties in all beings, to see the truth.

So I'm left realizing that the love I feel, or lack of it, is due mainly to my own approach to other beings. I ask in faith that my Heavenly Parents would please excise the part of my heart that resists loving others as they deserve to be loved, and that They would please show me how to see everyone around me as They see them, so that I might treat their infinitely precious babies the way I want my own babies to be treated. I ask this in Christ's name. Amen.