Reflections by Chuck Cluff, Atherton resident since 2004
Passage: Psalm 139:14
Every athlete knows about biorhythms. No matter how hard you try to be constant in performance your body does not always cooperate. There are times when everything works and happens perfectly: coordination, energy, results. At other times things just don’t go well at all. Some of our issues are mental/psychological, but others are the inescapable alterations of our human natures. All of nature is cyclical. These physiological biorhythms effect everything, all of life. The seasons portray the changes as do the different ways we feel without any outer occurrence explaining it.
Biorhythms depict the cyclical pattern of physical, emotional, and mental activity occurring in our lives. Our human natures, like the tides, experience a constant ebb and flow of energy that affects our living. These cycles show as moods because they involve the changing of our feelings; sometimes up, sometimes down, without any awareness of anything having changed to explain the vacillation. What’s going on? Probably nothing we are doing! Our physical bodies are doing their thing; causing the ebb and flow of our emotions because the body does not stay the same. Our physiology is constantly interacting within itself. Body chemistry is changing all the time.
This ebb and flow is experienced in our spiritual lives too. Many of us would like to be really close to God all the time. We have had special spiritual experiences that set a high bar in our minds as to what closeness to God can be. We want that all the time and think it should be all the time, and because it isn’t we consciously or subconsciously blame ourselves for our spiritual lives being less than what we believe God wants them to be. But guess what. It will always be less than that, as long as we have these biorhythmic bodies! What a relief to understand that! We are not able to transcend our human natures. God doesn’t expect us to. Wow. This is why we don’t always feel the same with God; our spiritual biorhythms do not let us keep feeling the same. Look at the difference we feel because of having a good or bad night’s sleep. Duh!
We don’t need to be so hard on ourselves for not being up all the time. We don’t have to wonder why we are not as consistent as we want to be. It will never happen; not while in these bodies; not while having these earthly human natures. We can determine with all the fervor we can muster to be consistent but there is something going on more than our determination; the cycles of our human natures. They are a part of being on planet earth. So we need to live with it without downing ourselves for not being as close to God all the time as we think we should be. Our consistency will always be affected by our natural humanness. And don’t we think God knows that? As we grow spiritually the less the ebb and flow will be noticed in our feelings and moods, but it is still there. These body and mind rhythms affect our concentration and ability to stay focused on God, even as we want to when meditating, praying and worshipping. But this is to be expected. We can thank God for the special times but know they will be infrequent. That’s how it is
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