The Quickening: Surrendering to Divine Grace
If you take a moment to listen to spiritual leaders around the world, they all speak of a quickening. The world, as we perceive it, is accelerating. Our consciousness is evolving at the speed of light, and our world's advances reflect the incredible pace at which we're moving.
Last night, I dreamt that this quickening isn't a gradual uptick on a chart, but a pulse—a heartbeat. It has moments of a freight train hurtling through space and time at incredible speeds, and moments of being suspended mid-air, weightless and waiting to be carried.
This morning, as I write beside the big windows in my kitchen, I lay my head on the table to catch a ray of sunlight. There I saw a beautiful green bug—something that looked like it belonged in the fairy realm. Bright green with long wings that beat quickly and effortlessly. I watched her, trapped in my house, a foreign place, bobbing along the window. She could see nature, sense it, hear it, but couldn't touch it because of the barrier that seemed to be everywhere, no matter where she flew.
Only with my help could she fly free in a moment's notice. What she couldn't see was that she was right next to the open door—she just needed to turn around and fly out.
I watched her as I contemplated this idea of quickening and how it relates to Divine Will, to Source, to what we call manifestation. Perhaps the best name would be Divine Intervention.
Such a thin veil of glass between the bug and where she belonged, where she yearned to be—outside in her nature. Yet from where I stood, the solution seemed so simple, so clear.
Very gently, I took a cup and paper. I had her safely contained for just a second, though she was frantic and afraid. But really, she was suspended in divine grip, held only for a moment before she was free.
It's incredible to think that our relationship with the divine works this way. We are the bug, and we don't see how close we are. We don't see what's available to us from where we stand.
The Beauty of Surrender
The beauty of a spiritual practice—of deciding to have a relationship with God, the Universe, or whatever you choose to call it—is that we readily surrender to not knowing. The quickening becomes an opportunity, not to get swept away by the tide, but to allow the cup to hold us while we're moved to the place we long for and belong.
So the question becomes: if we are the bug, what does our inner state look like? Are we choosing to be frantic, afraid, and wary? Or are we cultivating a sense of ease, slowness, and trust in the process?
It's a simple concept, yet we fight this truth every day, trying to over-engineer life and battle our way through it as if we can break through the glass ourselves. Consciousness is interested in experience—there is no judgment. How we channel this energy, how we choose not to control or manipulate it, is how we materialize the things we desire.
The Path of Partnership
I believe our role is to first accept that we are the bug on the window. Accept that there is a divine force to relate to. Turn inward and embrace that relationship, becoming an active partner in cultivating a direct dialogue with divine source.
In the process of going inward, we must slow down, calm down, and become the stillness within the quickness. Then we accept that we don't always know the best path forward. However, in that stillness, there is clarity—a voice that guides us toward the path of least resistance. The question is: are we listening and responding?
In my culture, we're taught to wake each morning and stand before God, thanking Him for giving us our soul back, for our ability to experience life in a body. This prayer, the Modeh Ani, responds to the fact that 5,000 years ago we were given the Ten Commandments. The first is an invitation from God to enter into relationship, and the Modeh Ani is our response—our acceptance of the invitation to be in relationship, to live and experience life as a soul with a body, and to embody our gifts in this world that so desperately needs them.
Today's Resolution
Today, on Shavuot—the day we accepted the Ten Commandments—let us remember that a relationship with God, this being carried toward our desires and destiny, is a two-way relationship. We need only to accept it and allow it to unfold.
Like the green bug at my window, we may feel trapped by invisible barriers, frantically seeking what feels just out of reach. But the divine perspective sees what we cannot: that freedom, that connection, that fulfillment we seek is often just a gentle turn away. The open door has been there all along.
Our role is not to break through the glass with force, but to cultivate the trust that allows us to be gently held, moved, and guided. To be the bug carried by divine grace, surrendering to the quickening while finding stillness within the movement.
This is the resolution: that in our partnership with the divine, through surrender rather than struggle, through trust rather than control, we find ourselves exactly where we belong—free, connected, and aligned with the very source of all creation.