Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my contribution to the world. It’s not like I am trying to figure out what my “life purpose” is. It’s more about trying to stay in my natural flow. The essence of the word contribution is essentially to “flow with”. As I see it, God is The Flow and The Flow-er. From this awareness, the highest thing I can do with my life–no matter what it looks like on the surface–is to “Go with the Flow” (Vaya con Dios or Go with God.) I would go deeper into what I mean by that, but if you’ve ever been in the Flow, you know what I mean and if you haven’t, then more words won’t help.

So when I’m super clear, I can feel very confidently that the Flowing Kingdom of God is wholly present now.  I haven’t read St. Augustine’s book, “The City of God” yet, but from what I’ve heard, this Kingdom and the world that seemingly runs contrary to Flow are both here now. Going with that theory and some experiences I have had, I imagine that when we feel ourselves in the Flow, we are living in God’s Kingdom and when we are out of Flow, we’re living in chaos. However, here’s the thing. I think that the destiny of the chaos world is to eventually align with the Flowing One. They aren’t meant to stay separate. That’s why Jesus taught, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”Some other people have expressed it, “As above, so below.”

I haven’t yet figured out the best words to convey what I am trying to express here. All I can say is that I have had experiences in my life when I have gone from the “chaos world” into the Kingdom–what I am now calling the Realm of Flow–almost effortlessly. I can’t take credit for how I ended up there. It just came over me. Usually it was during high stress times that all of a sudden a peace and a knowing would take residence in me and I would just know that things were working out perfectly. I identified them as times when I was technically “giving up”. I would surrender to the fact that there was nothing I could do about the situation and all of a sudden bammm! I knew.

Realizing this makes the below statements of Jesus make a whole lot of sense:

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. — John 5:19

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.– John 5:30

Once that hit me I thought that I’d be able to stay in surrender and stay in the Flow for good. But, so far, I can’t maintain it.  The longest I’ve ever stayed in Flow was a few month stints after some traumatic experiences.  Clearly I don’t want to always go through a traumatic experience in order to surrender willingly. So for years now, I’ve been working on preemptive surrender. How that looks is that I end up praying a lot and working to identify my will so I can let it go when Life shows me that my will just ain’t getting it done.

Over the past few months, I’ve been feeling deeply that the best contribution I can be right now is to get in the flow and stay there. What that will look like, I don’t know. And, maybe that’s what’s holding up the surrender I know I must eventually live in. Intellectually I realize that the Realm of Flow is not taken by force. It is received by surrender. I don’t even question that. What I question is how to live in a constant state of Flow surrender when there are so many trying to hold the chaos at bay by force and think I should as well.

When I preach, surrender just happens. I thank God for that. Because I don’t want to get in between the hearer and what God is trying to communicate to them, I let go more in the moment. Even though I write my sermons, I will drop them or parts of them if they feel forced. My goal now is to do that in everything I do.  In the posts to come, I will share some of what I am doing to achieve this goal.