We are all one. One people, one planet, one energy. Whatever we do to one is done to all.
I went to a NaNoWriMo type-in on Saturday. I ended up preaching to my typewriter. By that, I mean that I kept writing a sermon that I didn’t want to write. It wouldn’t stop coming out. So, I decided to share some of it here.
“Was it the question that brought me today or is it the need for answers? I am confused and startled by what has shown so far today. The thoughts race ahead of my fingers and continue to amaze me as they show up and tell me what it means to be human today.”
“I want to write about so much more! I want to write about the spirit and God and what it means to be an expression of God running round in a meat suit and bag of bones. We are all more and less than we show. We all have so much more to give and share with the world.
My ministry has opened up to include ladies in my building. I have let them know I keep the moon phases and have no set concept of God. I allow God to be what it needs to be for everyone, without my input or constraints. I realize that I’ve borrowed from so many traditions and so many faiths that I have my own concept. I wonder if I would be classified as agnostic again, except that I do believe there is a higher power.
So is God real or a construct of the human mind? Does it really matter? Arjuna (Bhagavad Gita) knew that God existed, in many forms and by many names. But do we, in 21st century America, have a realization or understanding of God that is as cleas all that? I don’t think so.
I think that we have to accept that God is a personal thing for each of us and allow for the differences as we find them in our minds and temperaments. It is too importaant a question to set aside.
Are we a creature designed in a test tube by an alien race? Some would have you believe that. Some would have you accept that no matter if the evidence were in front of them on the table that showed something else altogether. So each of us has our own concept of divinity.
I believe that we each have a spark of “God-ness” in us. We are each an expression of that un-knowable something that creates, sustains, and orders the universe. We each belong. To commit suicide isn’t the answer, but even that, I have learned, has its place in our world. The survivors of suicide, the family members who deal with the grief and the dead themselves, all have a lesson to learn and to teach.
We each have to travel our own path and road. We each have our own lessons to learn. We each have to move with the emotions we are given or that we engender within. The lessons aren’t the “thing.” The lessons aren’t the “actions.” I believe the lessons are the “emotions” that we feel and that stay with us through our incarnations and our lives. These emotions are the lessons we came here to learn. They are what gives being human its flavor. It is emotions and feelings that we take with us as we go to the next plane of existence and carry forward on our journey into our own god-head-ness.”
“So what is divinity? Is it God or God-related?
What does it mean to be divine? Are we exclusive when we use that term? What about the murderer or the child molester. Is that person divine? Has he or she not taught a lesson, an emotional lesson to the victims and other affected persons?
Is that person not divine also???
What a hard question to ask and to answer. It is a hard concept to include the criminal and mentally challenged in our acquaintance as divine as well as ourselves. Why do we exclude some people? CAN we exclude them?
That’s a hard one. I know.
It’s tough to allow that your abuser, rapist, child abuser, murderer or thief is also a divine spark of something much larger and more important than your small perception of reality.
What a hard concept to think about. Some people will be offended that I even say such a thing. But do not all people, regardless of their path and Dharma or Karma, deserve to be called divine? Who are we to judge or condemn them? Who among you can or will cast the first stone?”
“So enough of that.
How do we improve our lives so that we can even open our minds enough to allow such a thought a possible foothold in our minds?
We live in a state of gratitude. We accept that things are as they right now, right here. We accept that we are not in charge. We say thank you to the broken twig, the bug that gave it’s life as we stepped on it. We say thank you for the plant that we eat. We say thank you to the animal that gave its life so we had meat on the table, whether a fish or a cow or something else. We say thank you to the air we breathe.
We breathe universal love in and our egos out.
We live in gratitude for the things we have and the things we don’t have. We say thank you for the lessons we learn and the lessons we don’t have to learn.
A life of gratitude has more to give than what you think about. It is more than saying thank you. It is honoring all that is and all that was and accepting as possible all that could be.
Gratitude is the key that opens the door.
I’ve heard some peoples say that willingness is the key that opens the door to change. But without gratitude, willingness is only opening the door. Gratitude is not only turning the knob and opening the door but walking through it into a new dimension. A new life and a new reality. Only with gratitude can we truly understand what it’s like to be despised as a rapist or murderer or thief. Only with gratitude can we find the divine (there’s that word again) forgiveness of the other’s path as compared to our own. ”
“There is no higher, more moral, or better way to live life.
There is only to live it or not live it. We can refuse the lessons and trials and emotions. We can mute the lessons we are here to learn. We can check out and forget to check back in, to grow and feel the effects of our learning, our lessons. The lessons we teach as well as the lessons we learn.
Even teachers have feelings about the lessons they teach. Even the teacher must grow and evolve if he or she is to move toward their own divinity.
Yes, even the teachers must learn their lessons.
And what are the lessons? The emotions that we carry over into death, into our next plane of existence, our next incarnation. Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, you know what I’m talking about.
It’s the questions that drive us and the emotions we feel about the answers that shape us.
What a ride!
What a helluva ride!”
Morgen L Marshall 