As the day approaches when we and many, many, many other people celebrate, and thank God for, the birth and life of Jesus Christ, let us be mindful of all we have in common with Jesus.
We are all human.
We all have, as He had, a part of the Holy Spirit within us; a connection to the divine.
And we all have a yearning, and the lifelong ability, to grow in wisdom, love, and service.
Humans imagine.
So what? Dogs, at least, and likely other animals have dreams and I guess those dreams include experiences involving imagined situations and things. Maybe dogs dream about people just as people dream about dogs. And perhaps many animals, at least as part of their danger detection instinct, also consciously imagine things that are not actually there.
But humans also create. What creatures other than humans consciously imagine fulfilling moments and entire lives in something as complex as human society and do their best to create those moments and lives? What other creatures consciously, intentionally, and at length imagine and create from what is imagined, such as composing music, lyrics or poetry, choreographing a dance, painting an entirely imaginary scene, writing stories or producing movies about imagined events involving imagined creatures and machines in imagined worlds, or inventing the wheel, engines, light bulbs, airplanes, prosthetic devices, computers or the Internet? Is there any other animal which, like many humans, sees few limits to what can be accomplished through imagination, experimentation, diligence, perseverance and cooperation?
Whether or not one believes God is the original, eternal and all-powerful Creator, isn't there something akin to God, an agency of Creation, in every human being? And, if so, isn't there also individual responsibility to other people and species and the planet which is our home?
Holy Spirit — are You there?
“What does your experience tell you?”
My experience tells me that You are there; that You are present. But You appear not to be there in the experience of many people.
“I am there for — I am within — every person. But everyone is unique and some people do not experience my presence. That’s all right. I love them, too, and provide grace where I can.”
Are You always there for every person?
“Yes. And I will be with you as part of your spirit through your last breaths and when your spirit departs your body. And what would make you think I would leave you after that?”
Stewardship of one's body is an essential responsibility accompanying the gift of life. Listening to one's body and doing one's best to discern and provide what it needs is part of that responsibility.
Without breath and circulating blood, the human body is inanimate flesh. With them, the body is both puppet and partner of an individual's personality, intellect, and spirit. While we have the gift of life, your body and mine are like our spirits' Charlie McCarthy marionettes in that they do our bidding as best we have trained them to do and they bear our mistreatment and neglect. But our bodies are, and deserve, much more: our consciousness, intellect and spirit depend on our bodies for all physical senses of perception, all physical pleasures, every action in the physical world, and all spiritual growth, fulfillment and pleasures in this life.
Whenever I love how I feel - when I feel that at that moment everything is all right just the way it is - I get the experience of heaven.
When do I most often love how I feel?
In whose presence, or in contemplation of whom, do I love how I feel?
What is it about those people that evokes this reaction; that causes me to love how I feel when I think of them, and especially when I am with them?
How can I more frequently discover, or create within myself, the circumstances in which I love how I feel?
What attitudes, judgments, and conduct must I avoid lest I spoil the experience of simply loving how I feel?
One of our almost constant, often unconscious, choices is how to balance activity and rest.
Reasonable rest is as essential to health as reasonable activity.
Rest is not doing nothing.
Rest is not idleness.
Rest is fundamental to self care.
Ignorance, inability, failure and lack of comprehension, others' and our own, are often, and from early ages, judged harshly. In ourselves, perhaps that is because those are the qualities, and boundaries, of the selves we have outgrown, or would like to have outgrown. When we judge others, perhaps our insecurities are showing. In any case, from late childhood, people usually try to avoid ignorance, inability, failure, and incomprehension, or deny them.
I recently helped care for my step-grandson Jack. He was ten months old. He couldn't pull himself up to a standing position. But he kept trying. Reaching up and holding onto a coffee table, he'd pull himself up so his bottom was a half inch off the floor - and fall back. He'd try again, get his bottom an inch off the floor - and fall back. He kept trying and failing until he moved on to try something else.
Watching Jack that day, marveling at him, deepened my understanding of the biblical message that only by returning to childhood can one mature in matters of the spirit and enter and experience heaven. However smart, able and accomplished we may be in the physical world and in society, only by accepting our ignorance, inability, failure, and incomprehension — only by child-like innocence, curiosity, and perseverance — can we most fully experience spiritual growth.
Pain is a part of life. Pain is rarely invited: it is usually unwelcome and often dreaded. But pain, including emotional pain — grief and heartache — is also a great and essential teacher. Pain is a strict teacher, but if we will stay in class and pay attention, pain reminds us that any particular pain is only a small part of Life. Pain instructs us not only in the need for self-care — for the sensible stewardship of the gift of Life — but also in the danger of self-pity and the importance of an outward perspective. Pain enables us to understand others' pain; to grow in empathy and compassion for others; and to see the importance to ourselves of helping others and new ways to do so.
If I believe that there is some part of God within every person, how can I worship God without affirming, and striving to strengthen, my connection with that shared and holy Spirit in every other person, no matter what their background, their capacities, or their beliefs about God or anything else?
Someone was the first person to say, “Life is a bowl of cherries.”
W.C. Fields is quoted as saying, “Life is a bowl of pits.”
Perhaps they are both right, in that life is a vast bowl of seeds, each moment being a seed for the future.
The context – the covering – of the seed may be beautiful and delicious or it may be ugly and distasteful. Covered or not, there is a seed in each moment. We can just throw it away. Or we can do our best to appreciate its potential and to use it in the way that seems most likely to bear the sweet fruit of love, growth and contribution.
Suppose that one is convinced that there is within every human being a part of a vast Holy Spirit of love, truth and peace – a part of God by any name - and thus, perforce of logic, within oneself.
Suppose that one feels bound to protect and nurture that part of the Holy Spirit within oneself and within each person one meets or ever may meet.
Suppose further that one comes to perceive a call, impossible to ignore or to refuse, to represent the Holy Spirit within oneself and to serve that Spirit in every other person; to become the best agent of that Spirit one can see to be.
How could being an agent of that Spirit be a part-time job?
Why would one want being an agent of that Spirit to be a part-time job when doing so quickens one's awareness of the presence and guidance of the Spirit and that awareness in turn brings such confidence and peace?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
Triumph isn't once and for all. Triumph is incremental. And the battle against evil can appear suddenly, subtly, and close at hand. In our daily choices, in our discernment of what our values call us to do, let us be alert to the fact that, hour by hour, step by step, the only thing necessary for evil to advance can be for one person to do nothing.
Let us stand ready to ask ourselves, "What us going on here? Is it for me, here and now, to do nothing?"
To stop evil can be as simple as identifying it and refusing passively to tolerate it. To stop evil may be as simple as realizing, and saying, "that doesn't seem right to me." It need not require judgment of anyone else's character, let alone creation of conflict. Indeed, love, patience, compassion and courage are, and always will be, essential to stop evil.
Sadness
Loss
Grief
Discomfort
Pain
Yearning
Anger
Resentment
Confusion
Fear
Anxiety
Disappointment
Failure
Regret
We cannot find peace by avoiding these experiences.
We cannot fully grow without fully experiencing these feelings.
Indeed, we cannot fully grow in empathy and in our ability to represent the Holy Spirit without accepting that these feelings, these experiences, will return again and again.
But the Holy Spirit is always, always present and available to strengthen us and to guide us.
Yearning can be a very powerful experience. Both yielding to yearning and resisting yearning can be uncomfortable. That we yearn does not mean we must have, or do, that for which we yearn. The prudent response to yearning is not to let it control us or overwhelm us. It is not to let it compel us to any action we may think will make the discomfort of yearning go away. Indeed, allowing yearning to determine our actions, let alone to eclipse our responsibility for our choices of action, can be like rewarding bad behavior: yielding to yearning often produces more yearning.
Yearning, as master, can cause much trouble, suffering, and regret.
The prudent response to yearning is to discover what it reveals that requires our attention. It is a call of the spirit within each of us to consciousness.
Like temptation, which reveals our values, yearning reveals our wishes and our needs - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Yearning, as teacher, leads us to learning and provides energy for the journey of Life. It is a doorway to growth and, as such, welcome.
People are complex. Each of us is complex – unique in our experience, particularly in our intuitions and in our dreams. Our conscious selves are complex, but our whole selves are vastly more so. Each of us is like a suite of six best, most intimate friends living together. First, besides the conscious self, there is the autonomic nervous system, which keeps to itself but can’t be ignored because it keeps the lights on and the refrigerator stocked: it sustains Life – and can override the other roommates’ wishes.
More directly contributing to the conscious self’s perceptions and growth are four other roommates: the unconscious mind, memory, creativity, and that part of a holy Spirit – which may be no more and no less than Love – which is within every human being. These four best, most intimate friends guide us, through our intuition and dreams, to healing, peace, and growth.
Whether and how we seek, pay attention to, apply, and share that guidance is our God-given right – and responsibility.
Who wants to have a vicarious relationship with the Holy Spirit?
I dare say no one does.
Everyone who seeks a relationship with the Holy Spirit naturally seeks their own, direct relationship.
To seek the Holy Spirit is inherently a private and personal endeavor. To seek together, in this meeting or elsewhere, is to admit that we are seeking; that we do not know, or we seek to know more. This morning I see an analogy in archaeology: one can dig alone and surely learn – including learning where digging is not productive. But to dig as a team is more likely to be motivating, fun, and, by sharing techniques and findings, productive and fulfilling. So it is here in Quaker Meeting: as each of us seeks to deepen their own relationship with the Holy Spirit, we gain support, we enjoy giving support, and we have more fun, learn more and are more deeply moved by seeking together.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen."
Hebrews 11:1
For now, all I'll say about "things hoped for" is
that they are inherently subjective: they change, often quickly, within us as
individuals, and of course they differ greatly between us as individuals.
"Things not seen" are different. That phrase seems objective (at least to
those of us blessed with eyesight).
"Things not seen" can be inferred to mean things impossible to
perceive and, so, things at best imagined and perhaps only taught but not
understood.
Another way to understand “things not seen” – that they are just
invisible things – opens the door to experience as evidence. Even
the late Christopher Hitchens – an atheist who said, “what can be asserted
without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” – accepted human experience
as evidence: “I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they
feel that there's more to life than just matter.” Hitchens believed, famously, that experience
is different from faith: “To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience
is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.” He was speaking of blind faith. Faith is not blind – indeed, is best found –
when it is based on one’s own experience.
What people experience cannot be seen. Except for somatic markers like heartrate and
brain activity, what we experience cannot be detected, let alone seen, using a
magnifying glass, telescope, microscope, EEG machine, lie detector, or any
other device. Yet experiences, physical
and emotional and even in dreams, are real. Joy, grief, relief, fear, triumph, pain,
fatigue, hunger, thirst, frustration, guilt, temptation, ecstasy, conviction,
intuition, curiosity, yearning, peace, love and hate and imagination – our own
and others' – are all real. Many experiences
are familiar to all of us and can be evoked by others – not just by artists, leaders,
and poets. But experiences are
inherently personal, not objectively discernible in any detail – and usually
hard even to describe with precision.
What I call the spirit within each person is such an
experience. That shared spirit – which I
call the Holy Spirit – is the realm of invisible, unmeasurable, personal experiences
of “more to life than just matter.” It
is intuition, conscience, compassion, connection, devotion, judgment. In its most familiar and important aspect, the
Holy Spirit is love – an experience honored by Hitchens thus: “A life that
partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood,
literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the
liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'.”
To call faith "the evidence of things not seen" is not to assert that people should substitute anyone else’s experiences for their own. It is to equate faith with honoring one’s own experience.
We come to Friends Meeting – meetings for worship and topical meetings – not to find our spiritual path, let alone to adopt anyone else’s spiritual path.
We come together in this safe space to study the spiritual path we each have made and make each moment; to share our path with others, as they share theirs with us; to learn from each other; and to practice making our path more fulfilling to ourselves and to make ourselves of greater service to others.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “If you do not find God in the next person you meet, it’s a waste of time looking for Him further.”
If
I seek, and get good at finding, holiness in every person I meet, I begin to
foresee holiness in every person, to find joy in contemplating every person – and
more easily to love the people to whom I am closest without conditions or
burdensome expectations.
A beloved friend recently asked for my definition of the human soul. Until then, I had never tried to answer, even for myself, that simple yet profound question. Mindful that each of us has her or his own definition or concept of the human soul, today this description comes to me.
The human soul is a space, a room, between the cosmos and each person’s consciousness. It is the passageway between the pure Holy Spirit which connects all life and each individual’s consciousness. I imagine two doors on either side of this space, one to and from pure Spirit and the other to and from each individual’s consciousness.
I imagine that we leave that room through the door to consciousness when we are born and become conscious of the world around us. The soul is not the only place we find the Holy Spirit: it often passes through that room on its way to our consciousness. But it is each person’s safe harbor. We return to the soul in deep thought, in meditation, and in sleep. The soul informs our dreams, expands our creativity, and can guide our actions and bring us peace because the Holy Spirit is always directly accessible there.
I imagine that we leave that room through the door to the Holy Spirit when we die.
Until then, I imagine that it is up to us to keep both those doors open and to care, each of us, for her or his soul so as to honor the Holy Spirit, to express gratitude for its gifts, and to keep that space safe and inviting for ourselves, for the Spirit, and for anyone with whom we choose to share our experience of that room – to bare our soul.
The first advice I remember my mother giving me – well, it wasn’t advice; it was an admonition – was this: “Wherever you go, leave things in at least as good condition as you found them.”
Starting at about age 5, I applied that admonition, that habit, to physical places. Over the decades, I have come to see that that admonition can well be applied to every moment and every situation, including conversations, relationships, civic responsibilities, and self care.
In each moment, am I thinking like someone who expects to be catered to?
Or
am I thinking like a steward of peace? An
agent of love? A servant of the Holy
Spirit?
We make our lives one decision at a time by what we think and what we choose to do, by the countless thoughts and acts we forego, and by constantly repeating the process in response to the effects of what we have done. The process rarely slows us down because we delegate decisions to a mostly subconscious caucus of personality, mood, values, habits, needs, fears, judgments and desires. Consciously or not, we do grow that way: success and, especially, failure are good teachers. Yet pausing from time to time to check the accuracy of our perceptions and the effectiveness of that subconscious caucus is helpful, even essential, to aligning our values and our actions, and thus for peace of mind.
Here, for reflection and journaling, are some questions in aid of that inward examination. Though being truthful with ourselves is essential, there are no wrong answers. Take your time. Take breaks. Take one section at a time. Return as often as serves you. Thank you for your courage in joining me in asking these questions.
I. Am I open to discovering within myself new ways to understand what I think, say, and do?
Do I want to grow? In what way or ways would I like to be wiser, more effective, and better able to find peace of mind today than yesterday?
Would it support my growth, including care of my time, health, and relationships, to make decisions more consciously?
For the rewards of growth, am I willing to bear its discomforts? The discomfort of questioning? Fear of sometimes being wrong? Fear of change?
II. Am I willing to examine my beliefs and values? How often? Under what circumstances?
What do my actions reveal about my beliefs and values?
In what ways have my past acts or present habits been inconsistent with my values and priorities?
Which of my actions and behaviors are so automatic, so habitual, that they aren’t conscious choices?
Do I tend to avoid reflecting on those actions or behaviors – particularly as to how well they serve me? As to how well they serve other people who are important to me?
III. Do I aspire to be a person of integrity? Am I willing to put my life where my mouth is?
Where in my life is there room for greater integrity and growth?
How aware am I of the ethical choices I am making?
Do I consistently do what my ethics require, or at least permit?
How carefully do I consider the ethical alternatives I perceive?
Do my ethical options vary depending on how likely what I do will be discovered by another person?
When tempted to do something inconsistent with my goals or values, how often do I create exceptions to my goals or values? How often do I modify my goals or values? How comfortable am I with my justification of such changes?
Am I more prone to yield to a temptation to do something inconsistent with my goals or values when doing so will diminish my awareness of my responsibilities, goals or values?
What does it cost me to fail to act according to what my values – my conscience – would have me do?
IV. Do I seek a balanced life, giving my family, friends and community at least as much as I take?
If my basic life needs are being met, are my taking and giving in balance?
Which – giving or taking – is my main motivation in a decision before me now?
Is what I am doing or about to do consistent with the give-and-take balance I wish for a fulfilling life?
V. About any good thing (including the absence of horrible, difficult or simply unpleasant things): do I feel entitled to that good thing?
On what basis do I feel that entitlement?
Am I more comfortable feeling entitled to something than admitting I just want it – or want to keep it?
Am I justifying what I want when I could be cultivating gratitude for what I have?
VI. Have I done the best I could see to do today? This week?
Have I consistently tried to understand what my options are, in attitude and in action?
Have I consistently tried to see the effects of my choices – what has worked and what has not, and why – and to learn from doing so?
VII. Has something within me – my inner self, an inner spirit – aided me in these reflections?
In what situations do I tend not to consult that inner self? Why is that?
Which of my values, habits, and ethical questions do I tend not to share with any other person, even those I most trust and admire? Why is that?
Under what circumstances is it more important to me to be right than to be happy?
Cameras abound: cell phones, computers, stores, drones, dashboards, gear that people wear.
Cameras are everywhere these days. Computer cameras enable this meeting. Cell phone cameras record events, historic and personal. Life is recorded by security cameras. Drone cameras. Dashboard cameras. Police body cameras.
What if we had soul cameras? What if each person had a camera for what the soul sees?
What would a soul camera reveal, particularly in American society today?
I
imagine that our soul cameras would show people’s pain.
Grief.
Anger.
Anxiety.
Loneliness.
Fear.
Yet
soul cameras would also show people’s yearning, and potential, for connection.
People’s
struggle between self-righteousness and self-protection, on the one hand, and
openness and vulnerability, on the other.
People’s
yearning to matter.
People’s yearning to contribute to others.
Soul
cameras would show God at work in every person.
Do I expect people to admire me for getting up in the morning and doing little to contribute to others? For, as a friend, parent, co-worker or citizen, doing for others much less than my time and abilities would permit?
A tougher question: When I actually use what seems to be a reasonable amount of my time and abilities to contribute to others, do I expect people to admire me - maybe even be grateful - for choosing to do what they are already doing?
Do I notice and show appreciation for others' attitudes and actions which I would like to be rewarded, repeated, and emulated - acts of service, sacrifice, generosity, kindness, growth and self-care? Do I strive to emulate those attitudes and actions?
Life is a best efforts proposition. Our best may be only the best we can see to do: a limited perception, in the moment, of what we can do. But we can do our best to be alert to what we are being called to do, to what our options are, and to which option is best. We can, like athletes, prepare ourselves so our best tomorrow is better than our best today.
Our best efforts may fail.
But no one, not even God, can reasonably expect anyone to do more than their very best under the circumstances at hand.
In addition, consciously or not, we decide – best efforts toward what end? Just the task at hand? Service to others? Being an example to others? Safety? Looking good (or avoiding looking bad)? Power? Influence? Financial security? Health? Growth?
For the sake of our own growth, for the improvement of our best, let us examine often how and why we determine what to do with this moment.