Daily Reflections, Day Fifty Six, The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

Day Fifty six

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

“Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience.” ACIM.T-1.II.2:1-3

The Tao Te Ching says the same thing when it opens in its first chapter with these words: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things.”

What is revealed to each of us about the transcendent Higher Power cannot be put into words. It is an experience not a dogma or orthodox creed. Francis David, one of the pioneers in Unitarianism back in the sixteenth century said, “We need thought think alike to love alike.”

If you think you know what God is or who God is you have been dabbling in the lies of the ego. When we have actualized our potential for spiritual development we simply can say, “God is………………” and fall silent.

Today, I will avoid bombastic creeds and vain attempts to explain the Ultimate Oneness of the Spirit. I realize that any attempt to explain leads to separation and deductive thinking which will lead me astray. I will take several moments to just relax, clear my mind, and be at One with Everything.

Daily Reflections, Day Fifty five, The Power Of Choice

Day Fifty five

The Power Of Choice

“Revelation unites you directly with God. Miracles united you directly with your brother. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced there. Consciousness is the state that induces action, though it does not inspire it. You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.” ACIM.T-1.II.1:5-9

Actions speak louder than words. If you notice that a person is saying one thing, but doing something else, and you don’t know what they truly believe, you decide for the truth based on what they do.

Most people are not spiritually mature enough to know their own authentic beliefs. If you ask most people, “What makes you tick, they can’t tell you.” How about yourself, do you know what makes you tick? 

The bumper sticker says, “Don’t believe everything you think.” We can read the bumper sticker and the slogan makes us laugh with a glimmer of recognition that we don’t know ourselves very well, we have not been living examined lives, and we have given our lives over to the ego rather than joined with the Spirit.

As the quote above reads, “You are free to believe what you choose…” And if you choose the path of the ego, you will get judgment, guilt, fear, resentment, anger and grievance. If you choose the Spirit you will get Love, peace, forgiveness, Atonement, and bliss. The choice is ours. The choice has always been ours although, on the path of the ego, we may have forgotten our power of choice until a Teacher Of God reminds us that we have a choice.

Today, I will remind myself, especially when I am upset, that I have a choice to ask “what would Love have me do” or to make other people and events responsible for my unhappiness.

The most important justice issue for the survival of humanity - climate stewardship

The impact of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells on my life has been significant. 

It's not that I didn't know and wasn't aware of many of the ideas and facts he describes in his book, but to see them put together in one place with such stark explicitness helped me appreciate the enormity of the Anthropocene which our species has created on the planet Earth.

Without awareness we are doomed to the negative consequences of our own behaviors as a species of mammals on the planet. Knowledge gives us power even though the truth hurts and can be horrifying.

I have been inspired to learn more, and do more, about the climate change issue. I am inspired to change my own personal habits of consumption and disposal, and also to engage in collective and political action to change the macro systems that affect the environment on this planet.

At age 74, I am lucky if I have another 10 or 15 years on this planet, and learning what I have learned now from this book, my life has new meaning and purpose, to work with the succeeding generations to assure, as best we are able, their health and well being, and the highest quality of life for them and their co-inhabitors on the planet and in the solar system.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote a respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Advocating for policies which protect this interdependent web, respect it, love it, live in harmony with it, is the most important justice work any congregation can be working on with great reverence and a sense of piety.

Daily Reflections, Day Fifty four, How Do I Want To Live My Life?

Day Fifty four

How do I want to live my life?

“Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. It reflects the original form of communication between God and His creations, involving the extremely personal sense of creation sometimes sought in physical relationships.” ACIM.T-1.II.I:1-2

Cosmic consciousness, enlightenment, one with the all, revelation, the experience goes by many labels none of which seem to do the experience justice.

It is a transcendent experience when we seem to be much larger than our bodies and all doubt and fear is risen above and is no longer present in our awareness. Sometimes this experience is achieved in flow and in orgasm. We seek this experience sometimes in physical relationships but the experience has nothing to do with our bodies, but rather with the joining of our minds as we move into the transcendent Oneness of Creation.

Revelation for most human beings is a rare experience but can become more prominent in a person’s life as they become more spiritually awakened. Some people consciously seek revelatory experiences and for others they may appear unbidden and may be experienced as moments of grace.

A person seeking revelation has left the path of the ego and is living a life with a totally different intention having turned their will over to God, their Higher Power, and spiritually has decided to live free and easy instead of full of judgment, guilt, fear, and resentment.

Today, I will take several moments especially when upset and ask myself whether I want to live on the path of the Spirit and experience Oneness with all of creation, or be focused on the particularity of the separateness of the ego with all its doubt and fear?

How do parents choose a church?

Click to enlarge.

From the Barna Goup

Over the years, Barna has conducted research surrounding children’s faith formation, focusing on some of the biggest questions faith leaders and parents are asking: Who is responsible for a child’s faith formation? What role does faith heritage play in spiritual development? What is the link between fun and faith in our homes? Now, in a new report produced in partnership with OneHope, Barna offers pastors and parents a deeper look into the faith formation of children, taking into account our ever-changing cultural and technological landscape.

One of the key findings of Guiding Children to Discover the Bible, Navigate Technology & Follow Jesus shows that nearly six in 10 highly engaged Christian parents say children’s programming is the primary reason they chose their current church (58%), proving that even though children may be small, they carry big weight when it comes to family decisions about where to worship.

For more click here.

Most UU churches are small, under 100 people. It is hard to have youth programming in such small congregations, and yet perhaps one of the reasons that UU churches in general tend to be small is that they are not focused on family ministry. Often parents seek a church that will help them with the faith formation of their children.

UU churches, in general, do a lousy job of faith formation for young people and so they lose an opportunity to be of service to people seeking a faith community for the whole family.

One of the reasons that Unitarian Universalism fails in its youth formation is because it fails to have broadly accepted rituals of developmental milestones. There is no first communion, no first confession, no confirmation, no Bar at Bat Mitzvah, no coming of age ceremonies build into liturgy and worship cycles, etc. With noting specific to prepare children for and nothing for parents to be proud and reassured by, parents are adrift with very little evidence of tangible support in faith formation by their religious congregations and affiliations.

Telling saccharine stories in the first part of the service and then marching the children out of the service to their own special play time seems to be a very anemic approach with very little substance with purposeful character development engaged in in any purposeful, intentional, sustainable way over the childhood life span.

If Unitarian Universalism is to maintain itself as a viable vehicle for nurturing spiritual development, it must give more attention to and increase its game when it comes to family ministry focused on faith formation for all members of the congregation with special emphasis on young people.

Daily Reflections, Day Fifty three, Being aware that we are One with Creation.

Day Fifty three

Being aware that we are One with Creation

“The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false.” ACIM.T-1.1.50:1

Life can seem very complicated, confusing, scary, and not understandable. We can feel very lonely, angry, guilty, and scared. We come to learn, hopefully, as we become more mature, that these thoughts and feelings about our lives and the world are false and nothing but a projection creating an illusion like a bad dream that seems to us in our dreaming as very real.

And then come fleeting moments when we get a glimmer of hope and encouragement that there has to be more to life than this and there must be a better way. It dawns on us that maybe our thoughts and feelings aren’t right but actually we have become wrong minded and there might be a better way if we could only find it and follow it. The dawning then leads to the search for a more constructive and positive path to truth and meaning.

This reorientation from the path of the ego with its judgment, fear, and guilt to the path of the Spirit with its forgiveness, Love, and harmony is what can be called a miracle. What has seemed very complicated, confusing, scary, depressing turns out to be lovely, peaceful, and forgiving in simply choosing to ask the Holy Spirit for help and submitting our will to the transcendent power of creation from which we have separated ourselves in our tiny mad idea that we can be the authors of our own essence and being.

The idea with we have made ourselves and willfully can control our own fate is sheer madness. We have become drunk with our own desire for grandiosity and power. We learn that this fantasy of our own separate greatness and power is a fixed false belief that has been ruining our lives. We learn that the belief in the promises of the ego are false, and that in the end, what is true is that all there is is Love.

Today, I will remind myself that I don’t want the things of the ego and its empty promises. I will clear away these empty idols and reprioritize my attention onto what is loving and helps me join with others to enhance the level of awareness that we all are One with Creation.

How is partisan political party affiliation like religion?

In the book The Social Psychology of Morality: Exploring The Causes of Good and Evil" there is a chapter written by Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt entitled, "Sacred Values and Evil Adversaries: A Moral Foundations Approach" in which they describe the social -functiontionalist approach to describing moral systems and how they function in societies. As part ot this approach, they make a distinction, as much of sociology does, on the distinction between the sacred and the profane.

In describing this distinction between the sacried and the profane they write, "Shared emotions and practices related to sacred things bind people together in cults, churches, and communities. Sacredness does not require a God. Flags, national holidays, and other markers of collective solidarity are sacred in the same way - and serve the same group-binding function- as crosses and holy days." p.13

The MAGA people. the so called Trump base, have been called by media pundits a cult. In talking with people, and observing the jokes about family holiday get togethers being ruined by political discussions,  I get the idea that partisan party affiliation seems to be the same type of group identification as religious affilitation. Challenging a person's partisan political party affiliation seems the same as challenging their beliefs in their religion. The same can be said about die hard fans of a sports team or membership in fraternies, sororities, or civic groups like Rotary, Kiwanis, LIons, Elks, the Masons. I have seen the same identification to volunteer fire departments in rural communities.

At any rate this binding together with group values, beliefs, practices, traditions, rituals, symbols, is the foundational genesis for a moral orientation where the group insiders are good and the outsides are bad or at least suspect as not being "one of us."

Curious about what thoughts people might have about poltical party affiliation functioning for individuals and groups like religion. To what extent are these separation practices of "us and them" the basis of immorality?