Village Evenings

  

          I have been sitting out in the long twilight here at Unity Village, watching the fireflies and a cat-sized rodent who I understand is the local woodchuck (looks like a cross between a prairie dog and a beaver, with more on the beaver side.) The weather has been muggy and warm, though not as warm as tomorrow will be. My room, gratefully borrowed from a dear friend for a couple of weeks, is cool with the air conditioner, but small enough that sanity requires a brief stroll now and then to clear the cobwebs.

            Its been a good time, even this first week. I’ve settled in, paid my Unity bill, started my writing class with a teacher whose books are favorites of mine. What a joy! I’ve looked at various types of housing for the fall and sent off resumes’ for jobs. I even walked over three miles this morning, although I didn’t intend it to be that far, and my arthritic hip and knee aren’t happy about it. 

            It was a beautiful walk, along the upper meadow, through the woods, and along the lake – I saw many different trees and flowers strange to these western eyes. There are bluebirds, tons of robins, deer, and frogs as well. Those I know. I can hear many unknown bird calls, too, with only the robins and the chickadees as familiar notes. The cicada’s are beginning to come out, and in later weeks will be deafening in volume. Not yet, thankfully. There is even an exquisite black-winged damselfly that hangs out around the creek that runs through Unity Village: very lovely, very fragile-looking, black wings with white dots on the end. I wanted to photograph everything and write a book, “Wildlife at Unity.” So much of Unity is these woods, lakes, and meadows…

            But as I sit here tonight in the apricot haze of a Missouri sunset, I can’t help thinking about how I have come to be here. From the time of my calling to ministry to this day, I haven’t changed course; instead, I have opened up wide to meet an unknown future. It has been a fact of my life, this coming; unavoidable, unmovable, and surprising...not easy, and I certainly wasn’t very patient with many parts of the process, but I’m here, and my inner being acknowledges this reality.  My heart and spirit may be in my White Mountain home, but a part of me claims the Village as its bedrock, even with my passion for the west.

            Through this process, I have changed, more than at any other point in my life. Opening up to others; indeed, opening up to life has been part of it, exposing the conflicting pushes and pulls of my inner being. Expansive yet still shy, warm and loving yet still solitary, gregarious on the one hand and a hermit on the other; intellectually curious, poking at ideas and submitting them to my own inner truth-sense, yet still wrapping them with intense feeling, allowing their ability to carry whatever they claim to resonate within me or fail in the process. There’s a lot going on in my interior, and I’m grateful for the solitude to let it work itself out.

            I miss my home and my partner, yet I need the Village. I need this space, this place.

            And so it is.

Praying up a brave new world

That's me on an 85 ft. pine that had come to the end of its 130 years...and my smile of pure relief. 

            As the entire country is aware, we’ve had a massive fire at our doorstep for the past week. The Bear Wallow fire was one of Arizona’s largest, currently at 389,000 acres, but containment is on its way, and incredible efforts by amazing people are limiting the impacts on everyone.

            At home here, we’ve been spared the smoke and ash, and much of the fire danger, since the prevailing winds are taking it away from us. Everyone has been putting in extra prayer time since the beginning of the Wallow fire. Larry and I are immensely grateful that we have had the time to rake, scrape, burn, and even fell a couple of dead trees. It has been an exhausting, accomplishful, holy time.

            I can remember praying from my earliest childhood. In the beginning, it was the Lord’s Prayer. When I became a teenager, it included specific images of what each phrase in the Lord's Prayer meant, and plenty of asking for that special boyfriend, success in school, or my zits to go away. I believed in that kind of prayer

            As an adult, though, I began to have problems with traditional prayer, especially those prayers that focused on trying to create things that never happened – or prayers whose success was predicated on my being good, and Jesus dying for my sins. Why didn’t God answer my prayers? Either God was deaf or I was doing something terribly, terribly wrong! After all that pleading for my heart’s desire, even I knew there had to be a better way. 

            Where I found answers was in nature. Sitting on the edge of the lake, looking up at the night sky, and layer upon layers of stars reaching back to the beginning of time, I experienced a different kind of prayer, an outpouring of yearning and awe without words, a delicious and silent celebration of my being part of that immense magnificence.  It changed me forever.

            Now I do less asking and more listening. “Your father knows what you need before you ask.” (Matthew 6:8). This powerful statement is repeated in many ways throughout the New Testament, yet we have been brought up to believe that God somehow doesn’t work that way. But think about it:  Can a God who is ALL, who is everywhere, including within me as my essential nature, not know my intent, even if in the stress of the moment, my end of the conversation certainly indicates the Divine needs some clues?

            So if we aren’t asking for something, especially when we feel we need it, how do we pray?  And why, if God already knows our needs?  One answer is that we pray to discover within ourselves the answers God has already given us.

            I find I do less asking and more listening these days. One method of listening that I use is through meditation. I love meditation. My favorite form of prayer is from within meditation. I find I need to shuck off the world so that I can plumb the quiet depths of my soul and reach that God-spirit within me. Meditation helps me reaffirm my connection with God and listen from within my deepest self for God’s answers.

            Prayer within a meditation practice can be very powerful, and very different from the type of prayer we use to convince a reluctant God to do something for us.  Meditation allows, listens. Prayer is our end of the conversation. The combination of the two is our opportunity to acknowledge the great gifts we have been given, in the knowledge that they are truly already there, present in this abundant universe, even if we don’t see them yet. Its our way of offering loving support to the other beings in this Universe as well.           

            These days I reach for something more than asking in prayer. My list is gone (well, mostly). Instead, I focus on listening for what God has to say.

            However we pray, focusing on positive prayer directs the meanings behind our thoughts. If we are consumed with preventing disasters, curing illnesses, or correcting wrongs, especially in others, we are focused on those very pitfalls and problems! And, yes, the Universe will respond. But a positive approach, one that takes into account that God is already here, working on our behalf, allows the Universe – and us – to bring them to fruition. The intention to affirm what already exists, even when we can’t see the results yet, is a powerful tool for prayer.

            In the end, there is really no bad way of praying. There are more effective ways, and perhaps less effective ones. I’m firmly convinced that God gets our meaning in our hearts more than our words.

            And so I give thanks that the Wallow fire is contained, that there are many blessings, realized now and coming to those affected by the fire; that we have such splendid firefighters; and that many lives have been spared. I am grateful for the Divine Order of this Universe, and for the gifts of this experience.

“Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you have sent me.”  John 11:41-42.

           

Co-creating with God

"Out of Many, One"  - oil painting by Gwen Meyer Pentecost 

“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.” 

             That quote by Arthur Rubenstein is a great start for our discussion about the third universal truth in Unity, “We are co-creators with God, creating reality through thoughts held in mind.” Arthur has something here. Haven’t you noticed that when you feel joy, your day goes better? And if you’re grumpy, sure enough, the world responds with more of the same? Your expectations seem to be self-fulfilling prophecies.           

            At first glance, you might wonder how we co-create with God. Isn’t that a tall order? Well, if “There is only One Power and One Presence in my life and in the Universe: God, Goodness, Omnipotence;” and “We are created by and our essence is of God,” as we discussed in the last column, then of course we can co-create with God! In fact, as Arthur Rubenstein pointed out above, we do it all the time.

This principle goes back to one of our co-founders, Charles Fillmore, who wrote at the turn of the last century, “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.” It’s a universal truth. Another way of saying this is expressed in the title of Mike Dooley’s book, “Thoughts Become Things. Choose them Wisely!” Thoughts are things; they occupy space in the mental field. This isn’t a new idea, and Mike did not invent it, although he has certainly championed the cause with his appearance on “The Secret,” his inspirational books, CD’s, and so forth.

           Thoughts are things because they employ our mind – and some say the Universe - to create the conditions wherein what we think is attracted to us…good or bad! Actually, we attract ourselves to what we think…and in that sense, we create our own Universe. So what we think and how we shape our thoughts becomes very important. This is especially true when we blame others for our circumstances, when we give away that responsibility for how we show up in life.

            Negative thoughts and feelings are harmful to our consciousness.  They destroy how we look at life and how we handle the issues, large and small, that come to us. They are derived from what Gary Simmons (“The I of the Storm”) calls the shadow side of our personalities, those self-perpetuating cycles of mistrust of ourselves and others…and wind up creating exactly what we fear.

            Yes, our feelings and perceptions define the world we experience. This spiritual principle, though, goes deeper than that. It tells us that we are responsible for our lives. We are responsible partly because we are of God and we have the power – As Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do…” (John 14:12).  We have the power, if we but use it.

            We are also co-creators because what happens to us isn’t a matter of the Great Puppeteer Up In The Sky working with strings or twisting dials to make us do what He wants us to. We have free will, and so we co-create with God the world we make. We are responsible for our lives.  We cannot change what other people do, say or think; we can only change our attitudes about them.

Dawn, Hawley Lake, by Gwen Meyer Pentecost

            Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  I agree: we can’t hope to hold the same outlook and solve the problems within it.            When I’m lying on the couch in a blue funk, changing those thoughts and feelings is very hard to do without going back to the first and second universal truths:  God is all powerful and all-present; and as I am of God, I have that same power and strength within me to deal with whatever issues face me. When I know without question that I have the Christ Spirit inside me, that I am a child of God, loved by God, those thoughts remind me of the strength at my core. They give me self-confidence born of my divine lineage.

            OK, these changes aren’t always easy, but they’re worth taking on. After all, I co-create my own world, and I want it to be the best it can be. So I look to my thoughts and feelings as the moving force that helps shape my life. 

            Like the previous two Unity principles, this third principle is not unique to Unity or to New Thought, but is a universal truth expressed in religion and philosophy around the world. Like them, it focuses on our relationship with God. The difference is that this truth outlines our responsibility in creating our own lives, for good or bad.

            You will decide on a matter, and it will be established for you, and light will shine on your ways. --Job 22:28

Exploring our relationship with God

       As I write this, it is snowing! Granted, not much, and its nowhere near freezing, but the big fluffy flakes are the real deal nonetheless. (sigh) May 10.  No wonder Spring comes late here. 

Spring at the Manse...that's Larry, working on a project.

       I have been buried under a couple of projects, and to my delight, have been producing a couple of articles for our local newspaper, not to mention outdoor projects and (ahem) turkey season, so I'm a bit behind with everything. Below is my latest article for the paper, plus some recent photos of spring (such as it is) here and a trip to Sedona. I hope you like it!

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           "I am, to some extent, like many seekers. I seek the happiest, healthiest life I can have, and the most spiritually satisfying one as well. But how do I find my personal path to spirituality, and the practices and guidelines that fit my own heart? Out of the 21 major religions and hundreds of variations on them, there are a dizzying array of choices.            

From the Christian heritage, we have the Bible, with its Ten Commandments, revered for 3,300 years, but even the guidelines in the Bible aren’t clear-cut. In addition to the Ten Commandments, Moses brought a number of other ordinances from Mt. Sinai (Exodus 21), and the 613 Mosaic laws, most of which we do not follow today. Did you know “an eye for an eye” is among those edicts from Mt. Sinai? Exodus 21:23-25. Some of those laws are horrifying to us in today’s world, like rules for slavery and selling one’s daughter, but they must have been a vast improvement over the absence of law in those ancient times. 

            Humanity’s social consciousness wasn’t very well developed during the Bronze and Iron Ages when those laws were written. Even the Ten Commandments, current then, aren’t enough for living spiritually today. They are more focused on what we shouldn’t do, not how to deepen our spiritually. We honor and respect them, but we need more.  We need spiritual truths.

            So lets take a different look at some universal, spiritual truths that might answer the needs of this world 3,300 years later.

            Unity teaches five basic principles, or what are considered to be universal truths throughout the world about spirituality. We begin with the statement of faith: There is only One Presence and One Power active in my life and in the Universe: God, Goodness, Omnipotence.  There is only One Presence, acknowledged by many names around the world. In the view at Unity, the One Presence we call God has also created and is incorporated into every part of this world, every bush and tree, every animal, every rock, every human being. God isn’t just Up There, God is within everyone and everything as well. God is everything, right down to the smallest atomic particle and empty space full of energy. The energy itself speaks of God.

            That’s pretty powerful stuff, and indeed it has been said that Unity’s choice of the other four spiritual principles exist only to further explain the ramifications of that one.

            What are we in this relationship?  The second basic truth is: We are created by and our essence is of God, therefore we are inherently good. This God essence, called the Christ, was fully expressed in Jesus. The concept of the Christ being the God essence within each of us is a cornerstone of Unity’s teachings; in fact, it is an essential part of New Thought beliefs. The direct connection with an indwelling God is a major theme throughout New Thought, quite different from those religions that use priests or other religious figures as the ways to connect with God. We “go direct to Headquarters,” to quote Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity. We teach that everyone can have a direct relationship with God.

            The other New Thought idea in this universal truth is the goodness of God’s creation, namely, us. We are not born in sin but born of a divine nature.  Jesus didn’t say sin, Paul did. There is no essential evil in us, or original sin for that matter, for we are of God, created by God. Would God have created a flawed expression of Itself (Himself/Herself)? We are only flawed by how we exercise our free will, not by an inherent quality. We are inherently good! 

            It makes sense. When we reach for our best, when we strive to be the best we can be, we reach within us, not to the heavens. When we think or feel about God, again, that feeling is palpably within us. And as many students of meditation or “the silence” can attest, when we sink deepest within ourselves, again, we become more keenly aware of that Christ essence. Is it within us or is it us?  Sometimes the noise of living this life makes us forget that the Christ essence IS us. We can’t be separated from it. We are of God as the wave is of the ocean.

            This Christ essence is in everybody, not just Jesus. It was expressed and called forth in Abraham and Sarah, Eli and Samuel, Moses and Aaron, long before Jesus was born. We see the hint in that wonderful passage from Jeremiah 31:33, 34: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jesus knew, and lived the Truth of that God essence in his everyday life – and his death.

            Yes, there are people who don’t seem to be “good,” according to our definition. Human history is peppered with people who we could regard as evil, even when they are acting out of what they feel is right, or owed them, or what is “normal” in their lives. God also gave us free will, and sometimes in the exercise of that, we do things that are not in the best interest of ourselves or others. We choose. That is free will.

            Charles Fillmore wrote some hundred years ago, “There is a relationship with God into which we can enter where He seems “closer . . . than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” When we enter into this relationship, we become acutely aware of God as a living presence and we are lifted up by His love.” Again, we choose to become aware of the Christ presence within us. I suspect God loves us anyway, even if we don’t, at least if God is this truly omnipotent, good, omnipresence we think he is. But why not enjoy the deepest feeling of connection you can? Not just in prayer or meditation, but in everyday living? If you want to pursue this thought, Joel Goldsmith wrote a wonderful book, “Practicing the Presence.” It’s illuminating.

            Lets take another look at what this concept can mean to us: if indeed God is everywhere, within everyone, then we are one with God on the deepest level of our being. When we look at someone else, that person has God-spirit within him or her as well. That “Presence” within insists on respect, even when we disagree. It is safe to say that if we were all conscious of our Oneness with each other, we would find more peace in the world.

            In the words of Karen Drucker, New Thought composer and songstress,

“You are the face of God,

I hold you in my heart,

You are a part of me,

You are the face of God.”

            The presence of God in me recognizes the presence of God in you, and therefore the Christ in me recognizes the Christ in you.

            And so it is."

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            The above is an article written for the Religions page of our local newspaper, the White Mountain Independent. It has been edited by Rev. Michael Brooks, minister at Unity of the White Mountains.

Finding a home.

Silent Unity building, from a previous trip. I am hoping to get a photo of the new fountains tomorrow.

          I have had a very interesting week here at Unity Village. I’m attending Lyceum, the 4^th Annual convocation of religious scholars, where I’ve had the exquisite pleasure of hearing from speakers like the Venerable Bhante Y. Wimala; Dr. Paul Alan Laughlin, a member of the Jesus Project; Dr. Donald Rothberg; and a host of other exciting, brilliant presenters.  Its an exquisite pleasure, for instance, to hear a debate between Rev. E.J. Niles and Rev. Tom Shepherd, both towering intellects, on the nature of evolution. We were spellbound.

            I have lots of ideas to process, lots of different avenues of inquiry, and enough books that I should read to take up all available time for the next several years. What I also found was a home, why my thoughts are the way they are, or rather, what company I keep spiritually. This discovery happened in the middle of a discussion about the differences and similarities between Christianity, Unity, and Buddhism.           

            Lets keep it simple for this post and simply talk about how we see God. And don’t worry, if I’m wrong about any of this, my professors will certainly let me know.

            Western religions see God as transcendent:  being above the Universe; separate, superior, not a part of it. We see a God in whose image we are created, that is, we see God in OUR image, endowed with human characteristics, but we mere creatures certainly are not part of God as the wave is part of the ocean. We are inferior.  God the Father is superior, untouchable.

            Eastern religions see God, where they talk of The One, as immanent, i.e., as within the world. Everything is an expression of Oneness. God isn’t separate from nature, God IS nature. God is intrinsically wound into the Universe, permeating, saturating, infusing the cosmos. God is the soul of the whole…and therefore profoundly within us. We don’t have to look “up” to see God…we look within, we experience God.

            There is much more, of course.

            I find myself somewhere between the East and West. I believe that God is everywhere, immanent, within myself as well as everywhere else. I’ve felt this long before I came to Unity; this belief was fostered by what I learned in the woods, the ocean, and under the stars. You cannot look up at the night sky, particularly in the crisp desert air, without knowing God is everywhere, without feeling a part of the One.

            And so my thoughts about God are described under “Eastern.” There are other clues, too: I pray through meditation. I believe in pursuing love, joy, compassion, and equanimity, key Buddhist concepts. But my love for the Christ Spirit within is profound, and my respect for the man Jesus immense. I enjoy Bible history and scholasticism. I am of the Christian world, not the eastern one. I could no more become a Buddhist than become a leopard. 

            In my mind, Unity itself straddles this fence. It is both Christian in context and Eastern in values. We study the lessons of Jesus, and many of us don’t care whether the man really existed or not. We follow the teachings with our eyes wide open, enjoying the discoveries of scholars and scientific inquiry, while retaining the intrinsic value of the lessons themselves. Yet we also meditate, or go into “the silence” of prayer. We believe that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and good. And if God is everywhere, God is certainly within us, is us, again, as the wave is of the ocean. This expression is more Eastern. 

            Part of why we got this way is the fascination of our early New Thought founders with Eastern philosophy, but some of us, including myself, came to the same position independently, long before we heard of the Fillmores or Emma Curtis Hopkins, or remember much from our high school days about Ralph Waldo Emerson.

            For us there really isn’t a dichotomy between the two worlds; there is only the development of our own individual thought, which seems to be a part of both but may, in the end, really be neither.

If you want to find out more about Unity, go to http://unity.org. It will be interesting!

Somehow a Mountain...

Alaska: Looking over the icefields into the Taku Valley

     Somehow a mountain has passed under my wings,

     And I have come to myself to soar

Over the valley, hidden in the blue haze

Of summer heat.

     It only seems a mystery. God has held within my heart

For many years the knowing of my Spirit,

And my desire to serve,

       Waiting for me to stretch my wings and reach for life.

                                                 Original poem by Gwen Meyer

Loving-Kindness

Summer in Alaska

          I am bringing you today two quotes by a wonderful, perceptive lady who also happens to be a Buddhist monk. Last I remember, she was writing from an abbey in Nova Scotia. She addresses the issue of self-improvement and loving kindness towards oneself in a way that is insightful and necessary.  Her basic premise in these quotes is that positive change cannot come out of self hate.

            Now you and I know that self-hate can be an impetus for change – if you’ve ever looked into the mirror and not liked what you’ve seen, you know what I mean. But being an impetus and being a method of change are two different things. Self-hate is a poison, causing us to focus on what is bad, instead of where we want to go. Besides, who are you to be knocking God’s magnificent creation like that?

            Um, that’s you we’re talking about, by the way.

            We all have times we’re unhappy with ourselves, yet there is a better way to improve ourselves than self-hate, not just in my opinion, but in the view of many, many others. As Pema Chodron says in “The Pocket Pema Chodron,”           

            “The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.  The other problem is that our hang-ups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neuroses and our wisdom are made out of the same material…the idea isn’t to get rid of the problem but to make friends with it, to see it clearly with precision and honesty, and also to see it with gentleness. That means not judging yourself as a bad person, but also not bolstering yourself up by saying, “Its good that I’m this way”...and learning how, once you’ve experienced it fully, to let go.”

            What is she talking about when she says “our neuroses and our wisdom are made out of the same material?”  I think she is saying that there were reasons we were the way we were, that some form of self-protection kicked in that enabled us to survive, to deal with situations in the past, perhaps learned as very small children… and now, once we understand that, and we feel how it has shown up inside of us, we can let go if it no longer serves us.

            That is a very brief description of something that can take some real effort to understand, particularly the mechanism of how our habit or neuroses protected us in the past…I found therapy helpful, particularly hypnotherapy. I also found deep meditation with the intent to see and feel the behavior also successful, though I had to be very perceptive about the images that arose, and not just dismiss them as random thoughts.

            Most of all, I have found that I am not my history, and I won’t be chained to it. My future lies with loving myself in the present enough to let go of behavior that no longer serves me. I love myself enough to understand, forgive, and let go, not just of my behaviors, “sins,” etc., but of those around me as well.  My future lies with a positive, self-actualizing image of myself.

            I’ve talked about this from my point of view, so lets change this around to yours and see how it fits:  You are not your history, and you won’t be chained to it if you don’t want to be. Your future lies with loving yourself enough to understand, forgive, and let go.  Your future springs from your self-love.

              “The innocent mistake that keeps us caught in our own particular style of ignorance, unkindness, and shut-downness, is that we are never encouraged to see clearly what is, with gentleness. Instead, there’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things, then we would be happy. That is the innocent, naïve misunderstanding that we all share, which keeps us unhappy.”  Pema Chodron, “Awakening Loving-Kindness.