Dear Long-Distance Swimmer,
It is the height of presumption for me to be putting down these recommendations, reading lists and thoughts.
You, of course, are going to find your own way through this "vale of soul-making" (that's Keats' term for this life, in contrast to some wag calling it a "vale of tears".)
Like a gorgeous cosmic mirror, I hope you polish that soul and make it gleam.
If there is one term I will try to stay away from it is: God. There is just so much noise out there (do you hear it already?) -- so much in fact, that any signal that may be coming from God gets lost. As an imperfect -- and often ungrateful -- praiser of that Higher Power, let me just offer some thoughts you may want to consider from someone who knew/knows far more than me: Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth-century monk.
Like many Buddhists, Meister Eckhart wrote about our need to get out of the way of God....
Know then that God is bound to act, to pour himself out into thee as soon as ever he shall find thee ready.... Finding thee ready he is obliged to act, to overflow into thee; just as the sun must needs burst forth when the air is bright and clear, and is unable to contain itself. Forsooth, it were a very grave defect in God if, finding thee so empty and so bar, he wrought no excellent work in thee nor primed thee with glorious gifts.
Thou needest not seek him here or there, he is no further off than at the door of thy heart; there he stands lingering, awaiting whoever is ready to open and let him in.... He longs for thee a thousandfold more urgently than thou for him: one point the opening and the entering.
I pray that someday you are able to take this thought and make more of it in your life than I have in mine. But know that your father here on Earth longs for you more than he can say... I can only imagine how much your Heavenly father/mother does.
(I say "only imagine" because it is all quite beyond me, yet it feels my heart knows some things it's not telling my head.)
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