September 15, 2008

• Relationship to God

• The upcoming election

God provides rest and refreshment for all. God provides a safe haven for those who wander to distant places, whether those places are geographic or emotional, places identified by joy, by fear and anxiety, places identified by uncertainty. God is a kind of safe haven. God is not an escape but a goal, a destination, a state of being, a being that is always loving, always comforting, always encouraging, always affirming.

Your relationship to God knows many levels. You come to the Spirit Center for rest, you come for comfort, you come for greater understanding of your own lives, you come for any number of reasons. There is no basis for encountering God that is more valid than another. What is important is your acknowledgment of the need for what that Spirit Center can provide that you are unable by yourselves to achieve.

Your relationship to God is unique. Each of you has a unique connection to God, and yet every human being is given the gift of that connection. For some, that gift is taken up and becomes the staff upon which one finds support. For others, there is less conscious seeking, but the help that is needed is always present. It may sometimes be the help you ask for, and other times be beyond your recognition, but that help is always given and that help is always received. Just as we say that you cannot escape the light of God’s presence, you can also not escape that help, that support. You may not recognize that your abilities to continue come from one source or another. You may not identify how those abilities become a part of your lives, but that is of no importance in terms of God’s presence.

The Spirit Center does not encounter your lives through supplication. The Spirit Center engulfs your lives through love. Each of you can be confident that you are vessels into which God pours love and care. Such gifts from God are available and provided to every human being. No human being is unique in that regard, but what distinguishes some from another is the recognition of those gifts.

Each of you must find a way of removing yourself from your daily concerns, allowing yourself a few moment to just be—to just be open, to just listen for God’s voice. It is not a voice that is heard by many, but it is a voice that can be felt by all.

We know your concerns collectively, nationally, internationally, about the coming events in the next few months and in the years that follow. It is of little help to pray that in an election one person wins, another loses, for what is at stake is not winning or losing. What is at stake is a willingness to listen and to be guided by reason, to be open to guidance from the Spirit Center. You cannot judge an individual on the basis of what is spoken, least of all in times of such intensity as you currently witness. What is in another’s heart remains invisible to words and is only evident by actions. When another responds to needs globally, nationally, locally, in a loving and understanding and nonjudgmental manner, the true measure of that leadership may be known. No one running for such offices feels at liberty to express what truly lies within. It is therefore impossible for human beings to draw conclusions, positive or negative, on the basis of what is spoken.

But you do not need to sit idly by the side of the road and watch the procession. You can indeed learn and be informed. You can indeed be a voice of reason, a voice of caution, a voice of wisdom, a voice of accommodation, a voice of affirmation, a voice of your own faith expressed in your own actions. If you seek leadership that is filled with compassion, you must create an environment that is compassionate. If you seek leadership that is loving, you must create an environment that is also loving. Wishing for that environment does not make it happen. You must be committed as individuals and collectively with others to those very qualities that you pray will be demonstrated by those who are in power and can act upon those influences.

These guidelines are not specifically for the events you anticipate. They are also applicable to your own activities, your own goals, your own desires. What do you hold in life to be most sacred, most deserving, most essential? Your answers will be reflected through your own patterns of living. What you seek is reflected by what you do, not by what you say. If you seek an honest friendship, you must be willing to be an honest friend. If you seek compassion, be compassionate. If you seek support, be supporting. If you seek an environment where listening to others is critical, is crucial to your lives, then you must be good listeners.

Human life is not about a division between what you seek and what you actually do. The two are absolutely entwined with one another. You are what you do. You promote on the basis of the example you set. You advocate by the lives you live. If you seek generosity, if that is central to your lives, then you must be more generous. There is much, you see, you can control and have an impact on, just by making your own life decisions that reflect what you value. Presumably, your perception of God informs and directs your daily lives, and in living those informed lives, you are giving witness to what it means to seek the goals you feel are so important.

How do you step forward during these uncertain times? You must listen. You must allow others to express as they wish. You must eliminate from your own activities whatever divides, whatever separates. You must live your lives focusing on how you are the same. Can you disagree with another and yet hold that other in your heart? Can you find fault in another’s behavior and still respect another’s honesty? What you believe is not necessarily what others must hold dear, but what you believe must shape your own daily activities, for human life has value because it is guided by beliefs, and it is that adherence to what you believe in that gives strength to your own spirit.

Your soul grows through commitment, not idle action. Live by what you believe. Be open to the changes that are necessary in your beliefs, and live in a way that allows for those changes. In doing so, you are affirming the lives of others who go through their own changes. As you reserve the right to evolve on your own path, you must allow that evolution to take place in another.

It is for this reason that we always urge you to be nonjudgmental. Can you disagree with what another says or does? Of course. That is not being judgmental. If you are judging the validity of another human being, that is unacceptable in God’s own sight. When you stray in your lives from what you feel is in keeping with your perception of God, it does not mean you are rejected by God. You are loved regardless of what you do. You are accepted regardless of what you do. The behavior is always an issue of question, but never the value of another human being.

And so it is with this period of uncertainty. Affirm the value of all, and feel you can disagree openly with positions taken, with words, understanding that your knowledge of another is limited by what you observe, by what you hear. Allow others to grow. Allow yourselves to grow, for growth is essential in the spinning of your own life’s tapestry. There is a beauty to the threads that comprise that creation. Those threads may create images of infinite shape and character, but those threads are woven by every spinner with intention.

God affirms to each of you again that light eventually overcomes darkness. You must have faith that the process that you go through is not essentially different from such processes that have been experienced since the beginning of humankind. You are all moving closer to God. You are all moving closer to what is good, what is permanent, the spiritual reality that you are all a part of God, regardless of the opinions you hold or the actions you take.

Have faith in this growth. Have faith in the design of God. You were created to live. You were created to be challenged. You were created to become loving. You were created to become understanding. You were created to become life affirming. You were created to embrace. Therefore embrace your lives, embrace your challenges, embrace those with whom you agree, and embrace those with whom you are in opposition. But above all, embrace. Be loving in your actions, be loving in your prayers, and you can be assured that God’s light will indeed prevail.

Rest in the warm light of the loving God. Rest in the confidence of the prevailing light. Rest in the confidence of the prevailing love.

Amen.