Kabir,
A mystic in the 14th century,
Had these words.
He said the flute of the infinite is ceaselessly playing and its sound is love.
Throughout the ages,
Enlightened masters have urged humankind to not only trust but prove the power of the divine energy of love.
And chief among them,
Jesus.
He came forth as the supreme announcer of a love within us all and throughout the cosmos and he said you can set all of the other theological laws and codes aside and he said just simply do this but do it well.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.
In my humble estimation,
Much of institutional Christianity that has followed has simply paid lip service to Jesus' call to this kind of love.
Very often promoting the idea of an angry God keeping records on us all with consequences that aren't pleasant but yet loves us.
A continual parade of heartless policies and processes and so much that has increased the divisiveness within the human family.
So much so that I sense this is what Anne Lamott was getting at when she declared you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do.
And yet there is this deep mystic Christianity that we celebrate,
That we support,
That has remained true to the deep teachings of that great master and is still promoted by various scholars,
Theologians,
And leaders in certain facets of Christianity.
Chief among them is a man I've enjoyed studying with a bit,
Richard Rohr,
A Franciscan priest down in Albuquerque.
Very powerful thinker,
Very much in alignment with what we're about.
And I want to put some words up for you to feast on that he said.
The people who know God well,
The mystics,
The hermits,
Those who risk everything to find God always meet a lover,
Not a dictator.
God is never found to be an abusive father or a tyrannical mother,
But always a lover who is more than we dare to hope for.
How different than the account manager that most people seem to worship.
God is a lover who receives and forgives everything.
And yet sadly most of humanity simply equates this love of which we speak as simply a romantic or emotional feeling or experience,
Rather than a cosmic energy and a healing power that we have access to.
And sadly as we lose track of that aspect of our nature,
We fall prey to the lesser psychological aspects of our nature,
Often called the ego.
The ego defends against love,
Even though the greatest truth of you and me is love.
The ego defends against love because the ego is grounded in a sense of inadequacy and unworthiness,
Which then becomes the ground for the fear and the sense of separation that constantly is exuded from this egoic state of awareness.
And so when the ego considers love,
It distorts it.
Rather than its pure healing energy,
It brings these distortions and our biggest challenge is to discern them and release them in our own expression of this highest state of our being.
The defenses for instance,
The walls we build,
The masks,
The coldness in our lives,
The demands that we sometimes place,
The strings we attach to our love or to love itself.
And then the dependencies,
The clinging that often suffocates a relationship.
We bring all of this into this sacred thing called love and our great job is to release those distortions and then bring forth a greater mindfulness.
Mindfulness that in every transaction and every interaction,
Virtually every experience of our lives,
We are choosing.
And we are choosing either fear or love.
And to also be mindful of the many masks that fear wears.
The masks of resistance,
Alibis and excuses,
Avoidance,
Practicalities,
Gotta be practical,
And stubbornness.
So many masks fear wears.
And yet all the while something within us awaits the time when we step beyond the ways we defend and protect our lives and seek to let the greatness of our essence guide us and empower us.
We need it so fully.
You see God is love and they that dwell in love dwell in God and God in them.
And the sacred core of your being is the God within.
Therefore the truth to remember is that you are love.
What you are is love.
What I am is love.
And we can begin to explore and stand for and trust the greater dimension of our being which is love.
To notice when the ego jumps in because it seldom packs its bags and leaves when we decide to be about our spiritual business.
But we can expand beyond that.
We can transcend that and create the opening through which love works and serves in our life.
Now this applies to virtually every area of our life but I want to share some of them in particular that are really important ones for trusting love.
And the first of them is when you have to decide,
When you have to decide,
Trust love.
Trust love.
The more we practice living with an open heart and attuning ourselves,
Rescuing ourselves from the pitfalls of fear and attuning to the love of our nature,
The more the voice of love,
The still small voice,
The voice of guidance will rise up more fully and regularly within us.
It's powerful and important to listen to that voice,
Especially when we find ourselves at turning points in our life or crossroads.
It's very important to trust love because very often the voice of guidance will challenge us and we'll experience that the head and the ego dive in to say,
Oh yeah but,
Not now,
Oh yeah but,
That can't be.
There's this reason and that reason and all the while there's that something within that knows and so very often it seems easier and safer to brush it aside.
I experienced this in 2017 when in my meditations I became troubled with the voice saying it's time to shift out of what you've been doing for all these many years and it's time to enter into a different kind of ministry.
It's time to shift and explore and give yourself room for something else to develop and grow within you and that was one of the most difficult decisions of my life and I know it has been difficult for you Dr.
Patty and probably is equally difficult for Dr.
Raz,
Reverend Barry and so many of my colleagues and people who served well but there comes a time and so when you have to decide what do you listen to?
Where is the leadership?
Is it here in the head or here?
Here.
Oh there may be practicalities to consider but as heart math and other research efforts are showing your greatest power and wisdom is your heart not your head and our lives begin to take the upward path when we listen to the heart.
May create great changes and I referenced Dr.
Michelle's outstanding message of two weeks ago.
Listen to it again about change and yet when we trust love then life takes us truly forward and so when you have decisions ask this question what is love's leading here?
What is love's leading?
What is my heart's leading in this?
And go that way.
Next,
Trust love when things look the worst.
Trust love then.
Now that's quite often when it's most tempting to abandon love and enter into some other strategy whether it's aggressiveness or retreat or panic whatever the case may be.
When things look worst not trusting love causes us to shut down from healing energies that are available nonetheless and when we shut down from those healing energies we also move ourselves out of the flow of what we in this teaching called divine right action.
That intentionality within the spiritual universe to always lead us into our highest and best if we will allow it.
If we will allow it.
When things look worst it's time to bring that love energy to bear upon our choices of course but also upon our very countenance upon the energies and upon our willingness to say yes to something greater than appearances and circumstances in our midst.
I think of the parade of experiences I've been so privileged to have as I walked side-by-side with so many of you in life that's what we ministers get to do as we grow our own lives we get to participate in the journey that you all bring and I thought of so many this week in preparation for this.
I thought of when I rushed to a hospital and joined a young couple who was having their second baby not expected to live in an incubator.
Blew,
The respiratory system not working and how we gathered,
We joined hands around that beautiful baby and we just acknowledged that we were afraid but we turned to something greater than that and and we just loved that baby and and accepted love in the midst of us and in that situation and we ended that prayer and about an hour later her respiratory system kicked in and she was fine.
I was privileged then officiated her wedding a number of years later but it didn't look great but we stood in that love and sometimes the most difficult thing to do is to stand in love in midst our losses in this life and yet still to trust love.
I'm thinking of so many I've worked with especially one lady who she and her husband had a relationship of many many decades and then all of a sudden he collapsed and was gone and the deep grieving,
She did good grieving,
She embraced her feelings and she grieved.
The other good thing she did was she dived into this teaching even more fully than she had because it's here for us gang and she dived into it and she applied it to her situation and she took classes and she continued her growth such that and she kept her heart open that's the biggest thing.
A couple of years later to about two and a half years later another partner walked into her life and they joined hands and moved into another chapter.
Out of the agony of loss still she trusted love and let it continue to bless her.
Her husband had his healing by means of his passing sometimes that's when we have to trust that love that love that has birthed you and me knows how to take us forward even when we do release this physical garment.
Trust love,
Trust love and let it support you.
Erica and I have created our own unique little kind of prayer form we call it the even though prayer form and it's pretty much affirmative prayer as you know it and it's taught here but what we want to do is we want to not deny our natural feelings and many people in our teaching feel guilty that they ever are afraid or they're ever grieve or they're ever down or discouraged and while we don't want to stay stuck in those arenas there's nothing wrong with our humanness that we have those feelings but we also have access to the more so we call this the even though prayer and what we would pray is even though I'm afraid in this moment or even though my heart aches in this moment or even though I don't know what to do what I know is the love and the light of my true self knows and I stand for this love I invite this love I align with this love I live in this love and I bless this person in this love or this situation in this love and what that does is it makes us feel like we have included what's natural to us without fighting it which just gives it more energy and we've expanded into that something greater you might find that when things look worst pray in that way also when you're guided to help trust love you know there are needs swirling around all of us you can't escape that and no one of us can meet and supply every one of the needs that shout at us in the world as we encounter it and yet what we can do is listen to that guiding light that voice of love within us that will alert us when we really can be of service in a certain situation that says help this one or do this thing do this and I encourage you to follow it because oftentimes that's when the miracles that's when the transformations can occur when somebody's alert enough and trust love enough to not sweep away these opportunities it was reported in the Huffington Post the story about justice you a yesu who a yesu in 1994 he lost his father and mother in execution they're executed amidst the Rwandan genocide and he was a young boy at that time by the time he was eight he had wandered nearly a hundred miles and ended up in the garbage dump for the city of Kigali which was the capital of Rwanda and amid the stench he ate only from the garbage and he slept in a stripped-down car here's a picture of him at the time justice who a yesu on one Sunday a visitor from the United States named Claire Effiong she was traveling there in a taxi and she felt she'd been guided to find a way to make a difference there somehow and so she was in this taxi and there she saw that dump and she saw the pill the children scavenging there and she said stop to the taxi driver and he did and then through an interpreter she started a conversation with some of the children and eventually she asked them what they wanted and of course they many answered money or clothes then little justice said I want to go to school that so touched her that she swept him up put him in the taxi took him to some friends where he could get medical attention nourishment and rest and then before leaving she said to her friends I will support the education of this boy if you'll support him here I'll support him I'll pay for all the school fees the materials the uniforms the shoes whatever her friends agreed and from the very beginning justice excelled he learned five languages he he became brilliant in chemistry and math and later on he was selected to be a part of a Rwandan scholar program that prepared young people there to apply for international scholarships and he did apply and he was granted entrance into Harvard and he graduated in 2018 here's a picture of him today by the way and he's paying it forward now he's created seven united Rwandan youth network and he's a part of uplifting uplifting Rwandan youth out of the poverty that many experience I guess the question that haunts me and I offer it to all of you is would you know when to tell the taxi driver stop would your heart be heard enough yeah when you're guided to help trust love one more when you're when the divisiveness seems overwhelming trust love as it does now in our country and in our world yet there's always a higher truth and it calls us to be its instruments to be its expression there are always ways through the heart for breakthrough I want to close with a very favorite favorite reading but first I want to tell you about some research and this research was pointed out by Mark Nepo and Mark reports the research that if you take two live cells from the heart to heart cells from different people and you place them in a Petri dish eventually they will start beating together they'll develop a common beat and Mark writes there is in the very nature of life itself some essential joining force this force is what makes compassion possible even probable for if two cells can find the common pulse beneath everything how much more can full hearts feel when all the excuses fall away it feels incredibly uplifting that without even knowing each other there exists a common beat between all hearts just waiting to be felt a common beat between all hearts just waiting to be felt so Robert Fulgham a favorite author of mine he's been here a long time ago we had him here he wrote about a wedding that could have gotten very contentious it was between a lovely young Jewish girl of Polish descent from Brooklyn and a tall handsome Irish Catholic boy from Detroit the bride's family included a rabbi and a cantor and the groom's family boasted a few priests and a nun but he writes but Miss Brooklyn and Mr.
Detroit were 21 years old and overwhelmed with love and love they were quite certain could find a way so they decided not to have a priest or rabbi officiate but to find an open-minded minister like Fulgham which they did and then their wedding list grew and grew until they decided they were just going to have to invite their entire families so each one of them on their own went to their families and shared the news of their impending weddings and they each heard four words quite often you're marrying a what and both families initially refused to attend the wedding so Fulgham writes they spent a lot of time in my office the bride bawled the groom swore but the marriage was meant to be for the couple had an invisible shield love and secret weapons a sense of humor light hearts plus they came from tough resilient folks who had made it the hard way and it always told their kids not to back off when they believed in something the kids were doing exactly what their parents had taught them to do the tiebreaker in this standoff was the grandmother of the groom by God if her only grandson was getting married even to a you-know-what she was going to be there well that created a domino effect and then soon everybody on the family both families was going to attend and he writes the wedding began to shape up like a grudge match between Notre Dame and Jerusalem Tech the grandfather rabbi begged to be allowed to say a traditional blessing in Hebrew at the end of the service when the Irish Catholics got wind of this nothing would do but to have the grandmother who had once performed in light opera sing Ave Maria one side wanted incense burned and the other wanted to have some wine in the ceremony and then break the goblet the bride and groom could do little but nod their heads smile and say whatever so the wedding day arrived and the families dug in on either side of the aisle but the love was so palpable in this couple they shared their vows so beautifully and meaningfully and then it happened then it happened the bride began to weep almost uncontrollably and the groom took her in his arms and started sobbing too well the whole church Folgerum writes was a wash in tears he said I've seen wet weddings before but this was a communal bath the whole thing ground to a halt while everybody had a good cry myself included then 73 year old grandma saying Ave Maria with incredible passion magnificently and she got a standing ovation from the Brooklyn Jews then grandfather rabbi laid a blessing on the couple that was equally incredible and he got a standing ovation from the Irish Catholics then there was the reception and a polka band and the couple danced grandfather rabbi asked grandmother opera to dance and everyone roared and joined so Folgerum concludes in the end the bride and groom had been right love is more powerful than prejudice when love is allowed in it prevails over just about anything an epilogue a year later close to the couple's first anniversary I received a postcard mailed from a cruise ship in the Caribbean from the bride and groom I assumed but no it was from the parents of the bride and groom who've become great friends and now love to travel together I love that story is delightful it's poignant and I suggest it's important very important right now that we remember that there is a common beat that exists between all hearts just waiting to be felt so beloved ones now is the time for us to trust love does not talk a good game about it not let the ego distort it but to trust love when you have to decide trust love when things look the worst trust love when you're guided to help oh and trust love when the divisiveness seems overwhelming trust the greater power it's in you a great affirmation to call you to this is sacred love flow through me now sacred love higher love flow through me now you'll be blessed when you do
