1.

When I wrote the blog about God’s romantic voice, I was aware of how many people are yet to reconcile with what the word “God” even means. Religious trauma/wounding is a very real thing. Furthermore, it may be less challenging to describe what God feels like. As I was going through my healing journey, I came to my own understanding about my relationship to this power I grew up calling “God, the Almighty”. There have been a handful of experiences in my life that have come close to a description I could articulate on what God feels like. One such experience was the first time I stood in front of the Ocean. I was beside myself with emotion – I was enveloped in gratitude, awe, reverence, love, goodness and mercy. All I could do, and all I did in that moment, was cry.

Being raised Catholic, Catholicism and Christianity were my first introductions to God. I had a dichotomous experience of God, one that was religious and the other spiritual. The moments where I felt connected to God during mass were also accompanied by moments of disconnect as well. I was not able to explain this to myself or to anyone really back then as a young girl, but it always bothered me. When high school came along, I went to a catholic boarding school and the disconnect as well as the discontentment increased until I experienced something that was transformative. One of the priests we had at the school encouraged the students to participate in the church by preaching the word of God. We would get the opportunity to teach it and actively interact with the word of God before, during, and after mass. We even had ‘revival nights’, which were nights we learned to pray, and these nights were outside the typical framework of church/mass. I had never been made to feel like a part of God in this way or like I spiritually mattered.

2.

As a matter of fact, my “smallness” seemed to be highlighted more during mass until this day. Church/mass always felt like a lecture, like something I was not qualified to experience or lead until someone else gave permission. Whether they meant to or not, my insignificance seemed to be thrown in my face until this Priest changed everything. I was mind-blown!

It shook up my world at that time because Sunday mass stopped feeling like a rote routine, quite frankly, it had always been one up until that point. Because of this Priest, being with God started to “feel” like an inclusive and interactive experience that encouraged self-agency. I remember the first time I actually preached on one of the two readings that are done during mass, I was so nervous and excited simultaneously. But the feeling that was loudest was that of utter joy, I was present to that moment. I stood in front of my fellow students, staff, and faculty as both vessel and conduit.

I felt…joyfully connected. This moment, among many others that followed under this Priest’s leadership, started me on the journey of lessening the dissonance I had been experiencing. Up until that moment, I had only been made to feel that I could experience God through someone else, ONLY. But I was empowered to read the word and let God speak to me as well as through me. God gave me the Grace and strength to share which only solidified my confidence within myself and in God.

As it is with all things related to G, hubris is a recipe for disaster so staying “connected” to God helped me understand why humility matters.

3.

Church/mass ever since this experience became something much more than a routine, or sitting in a building to hold mass in. I was “born again” that day so to speak and started a spiritual journey devoid of religiosity but focused on my evolving as a Soul.

Now, as for the ocean moment I mentioned earlier, well, that was amazing too. I grew up in a landlocked country, which means we did not have oceans in Zimbabwe. I had never seen an ocean in my life. Lakes and rivers, yes but an ocean is a whole mood. The first time I ever saw an ocean was in Cape Town, South Africa when I was visiting family. The second time was in San Francisco and in both accounts, I remember immediately feeling the presence of God. I also remember feeling and recognizing my smallness, because of the vast body of water I was beholding.

In true Tsitsi fashion, I also started to imagine being wiped away by that water and I spiraled into other horrendous thoughts which I will not share lol. But I did behold the smallness I felt and instead of being drowned in feeling small, that feeling set me free. I experienced the true meaning and essence of the word “awe”. I was given the chance to contemplate the significance of my smallness that day. In the first story I shared about high school, I had been made to feel like God could only be accessed through someone else.

There was a condescension (intended or unintended) that bothered me, I just didn’t have the words to explain it back then. God was taught to me as having created me in his image and yet it felt as though my access to him was something I needed to be “qualified” for.

4.

That is how church felt sometimes, like a constant reminder of my smallness, my insignificance, and not in a constructive, soul-stirring way. But with the Ocean accounts, I felt significantly small, like the ocean could destroy me if it so willed because it could, it can and it has destroyed many before already. And yet, my smallness felt necessary, humbling, and magnificently life-affirming. No condescension detected, just pure Power – just love.

The difference between the high school experience and the ocean experience is that, as I stood in front of that body of water, both the ocean and I were wondrous creations. It felt to me as though we were both beholding each other, honoring and exchanging an unadulterated kind of love, and BEING with each other.

I felt simultaneously the Power of Destruction as well as the Power of Creation – I felt both were present within me as much as they were in front of me. And what followed after realization was this odd sensation within my body. Since our bodies come from water, the dread I initially felt transformed into a beckoning.

I thought ‘Oh my God, I come from this, I AM it’. I felt both my bigness and my smallness calling to me, and it delighted me, then I wept. There was something peaceful about knowing that I could be swept up and swept away by this very thing that I come from, that we were both created by the same hand, by God – truly, “how Great thou Art”.

5.

The significance of my insignificance at that moment served to reaffirm the power that I AM. These ocean moments happened years ago, and yet I am still feeling the benefits of what the ocean gifted me that day. The choice to BE power, even when I don’t always feel or act like I am powerful. The choice to observe (with reverence) the destructive and constructive aspects of power within all things. To this day, it still tickles me to know that though the ocean can wipe me out, it doesn’t, but as mother nature trues to tells us it sits with that promise though. But so do I.

At all times, I sit with the promise of the power to destroy or to create. That is why it is imperative that we behold insignificance, that we contemplate our smallness in order to fully know our worth. Consequently, knowing that we matter teaches us and fortifies us to not only honor that power within ourselves and in others. It also teaches us to wield that power with humility and to act Significantly. I choose in as many ways as I can to seek awe and to behold the unbowed.