“Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God.”

“Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God.” This Sufi teaching can be very challenging!  Loss of loved ones, on-going pandemic, collective uncertainties—it has been a difficult year.  On a spiritual path, we do our best to embrace whatever life brings us.

Last night, I was in a small weekly group where the members were reading a passage from The Power of Love book and then sharing how it applies to their life…  The passage we read was from Chapter Two, the interview with Sufi teacher, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee; he was answering a question on how people can deal with their suffering:

First, I encourage them to value their experience.  Love is beyond good and bad.  It is not duality.  There is as much love in the mother crying for her dying child as in a couple walking to the altar.  Love doesn’t differentiate.  In fact, St. Paul said, “Love bears all things.”  ….  For the Sufi, it is a recognition that everything comes from God. There is nothing other than God….  “Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God.” 

“Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God.” This is the teaching I’ve been working with the last few months, through the various losses and difficulties. For Thanksgiving, we put together a little video in our garden—reflecting on what it would be like to see ‘the face of God’ in everything, even the difficulties? Within three days of the recording, guess what?  Yes, more difficulties!

As my teacher, Dr. Hawkins, taught us:  if you commit to become more loving, then expect life to bring you the very people and things you will find difficult to love!  Why?  Because the point of a spiritual path is to get beyond what we want, and become a space of being, in which….

Christmas lights shine through the darkness.  Seeds from funeral flowers sprout up in the garden. The secret hope hidden in every heart peeks out and trusts the miracle of life again.

—Fran Grace, author of The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World, a book of life’s journey through many changing seasons … an embrace of love’s joy and heartbreak.