A Podcast: Trusting Your Interior Self and Listening to God's Guiding with Rev. Dr. Lil Smith and Aaron Manes
Do you still think people believe in God?
Aaron Manes, Spiritual Director as well as Creator and Host of the podcast series Reconstruction Calls, recently asked Founder and Director of Retreat House Spirituality Center Rev. Dr. Lil Smith this question.
Her answer(s) on this subject are rich, and encouraging.
Ultimately, yes. People do, but many times their images and expressions of God change somewhere along the way. When traditional church communities and culture no longer resonate, it can cause feelings of loss and sadness. Ground once firm and unshakable suddenly shifts. For some, it might even feel like the “bottom falling out.”
“In these moments, we find ourselves in a place where words are meaningless,” Smith says. “Because they don’t have experience around them or the experience around them has not be a positive experience.”
In other words, the outside no longer matches the inside. This can feel downright disorienting, scary and even traumatic.
“When someone feels disoriented after having experienced a deconstruction of old paradigms, the truest form of reconstruction is,” says Smith. “When your internal trust of God matches your external experiences of God.”
Smith encourages a myriad of ways to replace a sense of fear with awe and wonder:
Developing new God images and metaphors
Trusting your interior, or soul is made in the image of God
Creating a language that is intimate and meaningful when talking with and about God
Mysticism
Building relationships with interfaith friends and neighbors
Listen to Smith and Manes talk about the hope found in finding new ways to connect with God.
“Let go of the expectation of recapturing something you used to have in order to grow,” Smith recommends. “At some point, we all have to be in a space of disorientation, or we aren’t ever going to grow in they ways God is calling us.”
As Jesus says over and over again in the Bible, “Do not be afraid.”