I like to joke, on frustrating, maddening, difficult days, that I'm lucky I have got religion. As a favorite gospel song of mine says, "I've got good religion and I'm not afraid!"
Unfortunately, what most people in our modern world are afraid of IS religion. What's surprised me recently is learning how many people are also wary of the word spiritual. Yet, spirituality is an inescapable fact of our existence. Spirituality is the way we make meaning out of our lives. For that matter, religion is too. It's not that most of us lack religion or spirituality, it's that we don't think of our perceptions that way, but truth be told, most of us DO follow a religion. It may be as simple as "Don't leave home without eating breakfast," or as complicated as "God doesn't exist." Whatever the belief may be, we cling to it. We may even fight for it; we certainly think we are right about it.
This is, probably, the human condition, this clinging and supporting of a belief system. So why not choose a life-giving, harmonious, peace-enhancing belief? Since we've been blessed with the ability to choose, why not choose a "religion," or a spirituality that serves the good?
As I studied recently about the Love of God, or more accurately the Love that is God--the God that is Love--I had a moment of anxiety. What if I'm wrong? I thought to myself. What if God isn't really love? What if all those humanists are right and I am wrong?
My conclusion: I don't care if I'm wrong! The religion I practice, the spirituality that I strive to live, creates harmony in my life in true, tangible, practical, real-time ways. I'm not sitting around hoping that heaven is better than this challenging place called earth, I am actively finding that focusing my thoughts and learning about Divine Love brings healing, hope, power and strength to me IN THIS MOMENT.
I may well be wrong, but believing improves my life. I hope my belief improves the lives of all those around me. And when I'm as grumpy, cranky and irritated as I am on a day like today (snow on my crocuses! baby up all night crying! no time for myself! a misunderstanding with friends!), I'm grateful I've got "good religion." If I couldn't make a postive, life-giving meaning from this mess, well, I'd be stuck in it! But the faith in something greater pulls me up out of the muck and mire, like the first flowers of spring press through the cold, hard, stony ground, to great the warmth, compassion and kindness of the sun!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Nothing Clever
How many of us think of ourselves as nothing special, just a basic person.We read books, take classes, exercise and diet (maybe), all in the attempt to be better. So much of that attempt is really about DOING better, which definitely counts for something in this world. BEING better...a better being...that's a whole other story. So many of us,(myself included, at least from time to time), bemoan the fact that we are't perfect. We don't DO perfect, but do we BE perfect? Can I, or any of us, REALLY see ourselves as we really are, as God sees us, without jugement and interpretation, without history and biases, without other peoples' projections and expectations? What if perfect means what the dictionary says it means, i.e. complete, no missing parts? What if complete is what I am in my soul, right now? If I - or any of us- believed that, that we don't have to be clever, smart, pretty, or anything in particular, other than what we are right now, life might be a different place.I don't have to "do" perfect, clever or anything else. All I need to do to have a full life is : pay attention, listen, be fully present, and know that my core essential being is complete in every moment.Other people have said all that, of course. I want to live it; it's both simple and hard, but it could make all the difference...Rev. Susan
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Get a Handle On It!
Years ago while travelling India, I remarked on the way Indian women swept their storefronts, front stoops or walkways, using small hand-held brooms; you know, the kind you find in Ye Old Amish Homestead. Delicately wrapped in colorful silk saris, the Indian women would hunch themselves in half and sweep large areas with these short handled brooms. It looked excruciating to me and I thought, “Get a handle on it!” It seemed like an obvious and helpful solution. Why break your back?
This image has come back to me several times in my life as a fitting metaphor for how I often find myself struggling with an antiquated pattern, behavior or method to clean up the messes in my life – how I unnecessarily break my back rather than do a simple thing: ask for help.
Today was one of the worst I’ve had in a long list. A restless rodent scratching in the wall of one of our closets kept me up all night long. Today, after paying the exterminator 200 bucks, I was licking my chops at the thought of a much needed night of quiet ahead, and what to my utterly dismayed ears I hear? - the same infuriating noise coming from behind the three holes he drilled in the wall.
Next: after picking my car up from the service station yesterday, it broke down on the way to work this morning, making me late for an important meeting. After paying the service station another 250, the car broke down again on my way home from dinner with a friend. This, while my husband is reading novels in the warm California sun – a trip I insisted he take to get some much needed R&R, ha! There’s more to my sad, sad list but you get the idea.
After gritting my teeth, pounding my fists and suffering with a recurrent stomach pain, I thought, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I get a handle on it? This is all the “small stuff” the stuff you’re not supposed to sweat. It took me all day to remember to ask for some help, to truly get a handle on my foul mood. I paused just long enough to say two simple words, “Help, please.”
I didn’t address it specifically - in case “God” isn’t available, I want to leave it open to: “Goddess”, “Ganesh” “Gratefulness” or “Giant Maple Spirit.” It’s not that I’m so utterly uncommitted; it’s just that what matters to me now, is making the admission that I do in fact need help. I need a handle on this dinky little broom I’m trying to sweep Arizona with. I need to stand upright and keep going, not break my back with old habits of martyrdom and negativity.
“Help please” means that I remember I am not alone – somehow... and I’m not choosy about how either. Bring it on! I’ll take that help from every benevolent direction it can possibly come.
What’s triumphant for me is to reach that place where I realize I am holding a short-handled broom; the very brief moment it takes to become aware that there is another way. And to remember that when my reserves run dry, I can seek replenishment at the source. Suddenly, there is room to breathe and the “small stuff” that felt so laden and big right sizes itself and I get a better handle on it. by Rev. Katherine Silvan
“Lord have mercy on me, so I may have mercy on myself.” Rob Silvan
This image has come back to me several times in my life as a fitting metaphor for how I often find myself struggling with an antiquated pattern, behavior or method to clean up the messes in my life – how I unnecessarily break my back rather than do a simple thing: ask for help.
Today was one of the worst I’ve had in a long list. A restless rodent scratching in the wall of one of our closets kept me up all night long. Today, after paying the exterminator 200 bucks, I was licking my chops at the thought of a much needed night of quiet ahead, and what to my utterly dismayed ears I hear? - the same infuriating noise coming from behind the three holes he drilled in the wall.
Next: after picking my car up from the service station yesterday, it broke down on the way to work this morning, making me late for an important meeting. After paying the service station another 250, the car broke down again on my way home from dinner with a friend. This, while my husband is reading novels in the warm California sun – a trip I insisted he take to get some much needed R&R, ha! There’s more to my sad, sad list but you get the idea.
After gritting my teeth, pounding my fists and suffering with a recurrent stomach pain, I thought, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I get a handle on it? This is all the “small stuff” the stuff you’re not supposed to sweat. It took me all day to remember to ask for some help, to truly get a handle on my foul mood. I paused just long enough to say two simple words, “Help, please.”
I didn’t address it specifically - in case “God” isn’t available, I want to leave it open to: “Goddess”, “Ganesh” “Gratefulness” or “Giant Maple Spirit.” It’s not that I’m so utterly uncommitted; it’s just that what matters to me now, is making the admission that I do in fact need help. I need a handle on this dinky little broom I’m trying to sweep Arizona with. I need to stand upright and keep going, not break my back with old habits of martyrdom and negativity.
“Help please” means that I remember I am not alone – somehow... and I’m not choosy about how either. Bring it on! I’ll take that help from every benevolent direction it can possibly come.
What’s triumphant for me is to reach that place where I realize I am holding a short-handled broom; the very brief moment it takes to become aware that there is another way. And to remember that when my reserves run dry, I can seek replenishment at the source. Suddenly, there is room to breathe and the “small stuff” that felt so laden and big right sizes itself and I get a better handle on it. by Rev. Katherine Silvan
“Lord have mercy on me, so I may have mercy on myself.” Rob Silvan
Monday, March 14, 2011
Love Only Wants to Shine
The other day I sat to meditate on these words, “Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) and became overwhelmed… Grateful… not everyone gets to feel this. I don’t always, or even often, get to feel it… but there it was… growing… bringing tears to my eyes, bathing me in comfort, joy, gratitude, peace, love, from the depths of my spirit to the fullness of my heart.
I was at once receiving and accepting this Love while also generating and radiating it back to God and to the whole world from my entire being (and beyond).
What made me open in that very moment I do not know? It lasted only minutes but I learned (or was reminded) so much about love. I felt the quality of grace unmerited, undeserved, unearned both as heir and source. I am so deeply flawed but I felt that love as perfectly, completely, deeply and without question of whether I deserved it. And for those moments I felt this also for all people, without judgment, without expectation, without comparison.
I can’t make myself feel it now, but I can remember that it exists, not just within me but in everything and everyone… I can try to express love without the expectation of reward (now or in another life), without the concealed intention that if I love God enough, or in the right way, God will favor me, reward me, make my problems go away…I can let the faint light of that love that remains be expressed without anticipation of being loved back and with no fear of what others might think…like the warmth of the sun of course it only wants to shine.
-Reverend Lisa McMillan
I was at once receiving and accepting this Love while also generating and radiating it back to God and to the whole world from my entire being (and beyond).
What made me open in that very moment I do not know? It lasted only minutes but I learned (or was reminded) so much about love. I felt the quality of grace unmerited, undeserved, unearned both as heir and source. I am so deeply flawed but I felt that love as perfectly, completely, deeply and without question of whether I deserved it. And for those moments I felt this also for all people, without judgment, without expectation, without comparison.
I can’t make myself feel it now, but I can remember that it exists, not just within me but in everything and everyone… I can try to express love without the expectation of reward (now or in another life), without the concealed intention that if I love God enough, or in the right way, God will favor me, reward me, make my problems go away…I can let the faint light of that love that remains be expressed without anticipation of being loved back and with no fear of what others might think…like the warmth of the sun of course it only wants to shine.
-Reverend Lisa McMillan
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