Life Chose You. Do You Choose Life?
How a near-death experience redefined for a non-Christian Christian what it actually means to be “God’s chosen”.
“You don’t choose your life. It chooses you.” — Paulo Coelho, Adultery
“…but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that abides…” — John 15:16
Back in May of this year, I was in a really scary car accident. The other party hit me from the right rear side in an intersection. My bulky SUV bounced from side to side against the pavement and somehow landed upright.
My vehicle is totaled. In the aftermath, hassling with insurance and figuring out whether I could sell the parts, etc., the experience still buzzed within my bones and flesh for a couple of weeks, as though all my nerve endings were exposed.
Some people who saw the wreck told me I flipped completely. I don’t remember being all the way upside down, though I do remember all the contents of my car and shattered glass from my driver’s side window floating through the air around me, like in one of those action/suspense movies.
Whatever the case, at one point, I and my trusty 2004 Envoy were hurling together through the air. Miraculously, when we came to a halt on all four tires, I was unscathed except for a few minuscule scratches from flying shards of glass.
I don’t know why the accident happened or if there even is a reason. I’m the type who’s always searching for the “why” in everything.
Right before it all happened and throughout that entire morning, I had been thanking the Universe that I still had that car, that for years it had been so good to me, and praying that it would last me through the next year or two until I could afford a new one.
I was noticing the beat up old cars in the neighborhood around me as I drove, giving thanks that even though I didn’t have the newest model, I had a good, reliable vehicle. Now, I am devoid of vehicle and will likely never see another road trip with my faithful old companion.
Isn’t it ironic?
There has been no decision made as to who was at fault for the accident — no one was cited. Even the thought that it could have been my fault brought me to tears. I remember standing there in shock as the overwhelming reality of the whole mess hit me, along with the realization that I no longer had a vehicle (I only had liability coverage).
My foremost concern emerged in the fact that I no longer had a car and had little to no prospect of affording a new one within the next year. At this point, I was sobbing. The police officer assisting me smirked, declaring that I was going to make him cry, too. He kept saying, “Hey, it’s just a car. All of these are just material things. You are alive, and everyone is okay.”
He was right. I was alive. I am alive. We are all okay. Miraculously, it seems.
I recall the reaction of my priest and friend when I told her of the incident a few hours later: “Well, if you ever doubt you were meant to be here, you can just remember this experience! Thank God for the many angels protecting you.”
I’ve had a rough year. I’ve spoken about it in my writings countless times over the course of the last thirteen months. I encountered loss after loss after rejection after loss. There were episodes when I wondered if I’d ever make it out of the black hole of despair into which I’d fallen.
As with many of us, in times like these, I often doubt the existence of God. This year was no exception. In the darkest moments, we commonly find ourselves asking the all-to-familiar question, “Well, if God is Love, than what the f*&$#!?”
Though I was raised in the Christian tradition, my faith journey has taken me through numerous landscapes of other religious traditions. In periods when I felt Christianity was completely empty and that all spirituality was aimless, wisdom teachers from other religious backgrounds swooped in to soften and reopen my stony heart.
Still, even with the thousands of years of spiritual tradition that teaches there is a Source energy that is fundamentally Love, I continue to have days in which I think all of it is a great crock.
Notwithstanding all of my doubts about the nature and existence of God, after the accident, I can’t shake the sense that there has to be some purpose in the fact that I’m still here and untouched. The feeling won’t leave me. It’s akin to a feeling that has been here all my life: the feeling that I have work to do. For some reason, I continue to exist.
I can’t help but think that in those few frightening seconds of being jostled within a fraction of losing my life, it appears that Life chose me. With all of the infinite possibilities of how reality could have manifested, Life continued to pour through me. It continues to choose me now.
When life uproots you and tosses you around like a tumbleweed across the desert, it tends to spark the Big Life Questions. Naturally, in all of my wind-tossed furor, I’ve been thinking a lot about these things: What is God? Does God protect me? Does God love me? Does God choose me?
It would probably be too much to answer all of these questions within one brief essay, but the one I’m most interested in for the purpose at hand is the question of God’s choosing me. I suppose, first, we do have to touch on the question of how we define God before we can understand something about God’s nature.
As I’ve explored these questions and concepts, I’ve arrived at a minimal (and ever-evolving) understanding of God as the force of Life. In a sense, yes, a Source of energy that permeates and gives “breath” to all things.
So, in the case of my accident, the question arises, “Does this Source have an interactive nature with the things it gives rise to such that it would ‘choose’ to keep me alive?”
If you were raised anywhere within a fifty mile radius of a church, you’ve probably heard it said throughout your life that God chose you, that God created you out of God’s own divine will to exist in this time and this place.
But, what does that actually mean?
Does it mean that there is a God-person, a divine consciousness that makes cognizant decisions about the things and beings it creates, as a human being would choose what color to paint their house or what to do with their day? This definition of God assumes a level of personification that is, in my opinion, too narrow and too anthropocentric, emerging from human need.
Perhaps God is a divine consciousness able to intentionally interfere in the world of its creation. Yet, I wonder if instead, God/Life, is a force that simply can’t help but create more life, manifesting itself into form in its essential life-givingness. What if when we talk about God “choosing” us, we’re actually talking about Life merely acting in alignment with its own “law”, or natural parameters of existence? (Caroline Myss makes this suggestion in a podcast interview with Shannon Algeo.)
To put it more plainly, what if when we use the language of our chosenness, what that actually means is that God/Life, acting within God’s own essential nature, manifests through us in unique ways in order to continue the beautiful artwork of its unfolding? And, what if each specific created part is chosen by the One Life in order to serve a distinctive purpose toward maintaining the balance within it?
Even though it seems less like a personified being in the sky who reached down and, with its anthropomorphized hands, literally molded us from the clay, would this kind of divine preference make the act of our creation and chosenness any less beautiful?
Regardless of whether there is a conscious thought behind the outpouring of Life into our human lives (and, I’m not saying that there isn’t)…how breathtaking! How spectacular! How marvelous that Life, in that sense, chooses to give us life as an intrinsic part of the balanced and artistic functioning of the Whole!
It makes me think that even as the sparrow and the pine tree and the fairy slipper emerge from Life, serving their purpose in the nourishment and balance of the Whole, perhaps that is fundamental and even biological evidence to support that we humans — also issuing forth from the Fountain of Life — equally have our perfect and beautiful and holistic purpose and place within All of It.
When my priest made her confident exclamation following the news of my accident, I was actually a bit shocked. I had hardly thought of the possibility myself that maybe I hadn’t met with death that day — that Life had continued to flow through me — because my purpose had not yet been served.
It dawns on me as I write this to you, my friend, my beloved planetary sibling, that it’s probably very likely that if you’re alive — and, since you’re reading this, I’m assuming you are — you have yet to complete your work as well. So, what does that mean for you? For all of us?
I believe it means that we are designed to “obey God’s will”. Before you stop reading, hear me out. I know those words are very loaded and evoke an extremely unsavory image of an authoritarian dictator in the sky.
To “obey God’s will” doesn’t mean following a set of rules or commandments. It means to listen deeply (in the common Biblical usage) to the wisdom of Life’s Flow within each of us so that we may be carried toward the beautiful and difficult things we are meant to do and be and in which we are meant to partake in this life.
It does require some discipline and a lot of letting go. It is a releasing of our own ego desires, and a surrender to the will within every thing — the will to be alive! To “have life and have it to the full.” When we commit to it, we not only allow space for a sense of joy and purpose to emerge in our own lives, but we also provide a loving, sacramental service to the Whole, the One Great Life that includes all of us.
My friend, as the police officer so gently reminded me, I remind you: you are alive! You are a manifestation of the divine, “chosen” to be a part of what that Life is becoming at every moment. And, indeed, Life continues to choose you.
I believe it was Richard Rohr in one of his many profound writings who affirmed it thus:
Life is choosing you now…
And now…
And now…
Life is choosing you, dear friend. The question is, will you choose Life?
