Happy April!

Our daily communion with God is the absolute most crucial thing in our lives.

Because we do everything else in our lives so mindlessly, we cannot enjoy this daily communion and often leave it out of rotation. How can we sit down for prayers, contemplation, or meditation and expect to quiet the mind when we don't make that a habit with any action we perform? Whatever avenue you have chosen for worship suffers because of lack of commitment, scattered energy, and putting God Second, third, fifth last; only you can decide where God is in your life. We have forgotten that our allegiance belongs to the creator, not creation. As always, analogies will eventually break down, but if you are intrigued, continue reading.

I am giving this from a female perspective as I reside in a female costume during this life. Feel free to change the vital body parts to fit your personal preferences. The point will be the same. Imagine, if you will, that this most interesting man you have been secretly interested in asks you out to dinner; you are elated. You do all the necessary grooming and preparations for this much anticipated evening. The evening arrives, you meet at a nice restaurant, place your orders, and you are ready to pull him in with your charm. But things quickly change; he pulls out his phone, starts Snapchatting, Instagramming, Facebooking, and then starts looking at all the other females in the restaurant, saying, "she is beautiful, oh my, look at her body!" Pretty sure you would quickly become disenchanted with the long-awaited "enchanted" evening. The evening would end, and there would follow a range of emotions that would take you down a rabbit hole of your dominant emotion. This dominant emotion will vary with folks, but samples would be anger, sadness, unworthy, jealousy, to name a few. Chances are, you would feel bamboozled out of your anticipated evening.

The truth is this is the way we act with everything we do. As a result, we bilk our way out of living a life with meaning. Do you do one task with full attention and mindfulness? For example, when you eat, do you eat and not scroll social media or text other people? Do you brush your teeth and only brush your teeth? Do you poop without your phone in your hand? Do you just read and only read? Do you talk with someone and give them full attention? Do you listen with total absorption? Can you sit in silence? Do you sit in silence? I'm sure you can see the point that is being illustrated. We willingly participate in many distractions (scrolling, texting, chatting, watching, eating) that keep us from being present in any activity. If we are incapable of being present with our daily activities, how can we be present when we sit for our daily time with God, which happens to be the most important daily activity that we perform. The truth is we can't. If you desire to have a better relationship with God, you have to start being present and mindful with the minor tasks.

My challenge is to pick one activity and do that activity with no distractions for one month. Notice what happens to your other activities. Are you more fully present with your other activities? Pay attention to your daily communion with God. Do you feel more settled, more peaceful? For example, brush your teeth and do only that, eat a meal while participating in nothing else, wash dishes and do it in silence. There are so many options; pick one and do it. Don't let your life become like the man who was so consumed with the other ladies; he failed to see the potentially ideal mate in front of him. We become so distracted with life that we fail to see God is closer to us than our hearts.

In Loving Service,

Ranjani