First week of advent - Wednesday

Are we body or spirit? We are both, but which is more important? Which is the means and which is the end? Does the body exist to enable the spirit or does the spirit exist to enable the body?

There are times in life when we have to choose our focus. We have to decide which we will champion. Do we free the body or the spirit? Jesus chose the spirit and we still tell the story over 2,000 years later.

The myth is that God so loves the world that He incarnated the divine in His main child, Jesus. We have made Jesus into someone special almost ultra human, different from the rest of us. But Jesus tells us in A Course In Miracles that this mythic belief is not true. He is no different from the rest of us. We are all brothers. Jesus, though, became enlightened, and as an older more enlightened brother he tries to help us find the way to enlightenment as well. Jesus continually taught us that the spirit is free while the body is subject to physical constraints.

During advent we remember these lessons: that love and freedom are a free gift to our spirits if we could give up the idolatry of the body which is simply a means of communication.

UUs covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This affirmation and promotion comes to a crescendo at this time of the year. Let us be clear, though, that this is about our spirits not about our bodies. It is about fellowship of all of humanity as we join together in peace and joy in our mutual creation.

Question of the day

When we have nothing else to lose, we give up our fears and move forward. Peace enters our heart and we realize that it is what it is and it is, in the last analysis, all okay. Did you ever come to this place in your heart? Why is such a place dangerous to society with its vested interest in maintaining the status quo?

What makes the Buddha laugh?

A person told me one time he didn't like Unitarian Universalists because they were too serious, too earnest, even self righteous seeming to think they were superior to people whose religious beliefs tended to run in a literal and funamentalist track.

I understood his point and I too have run into UUs who impressed me because of a sanctimonious judmentalist attitude like a reformed smoker. And yet, I have also known UUs who have a great sense of humor and don't seem to take themselves seriously at all. They seem easy going and accepting of everyone even people who seem to be more spiritually immature and childish.

An indicator of spiritual maturity is a rising above the ego and seeing beyond the mistakes of our brothers and sisters to their oneness with us in God's creation. This seeing beyond is what some call "forgiveness." In simpler, more vulgar language, it is overlooking the bull shit and side stepping the drama.

People are more than their problems and often they can't see that, but we that can have a role to play in gently laughing at the absurdity. When our brothers and sisters can laugh along with us we have joined with them in what A Course In Miracles calls a "Holy Relationship."

Why is the Buddha sometimes depicted as smiling? What is the Buddha amused by. What makes him laugh?

First week of advent - Tuesday

Mother Teresa said a couple of things which are relevant and appropriate during this advent season of preparation for the remembering of the divine.

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

Mother Teresa

"Each one of them is Jesus in disguise."

Mother Teresa

Osho tells us to love the interdependent web of all existence.

Let your love be unaddressed. Love the whole of existence; it is one reality. The trees and the mountains and the people are not really different. We all participate together, we exist in a deep harmony. We go on breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. Trees go on breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen. Now, without trees we will not be able to exist. We are joined together, we interpenetrate. And that’s how the whole of existence is interlinked. So let your love be unaddressed – the trees, the stars, the mountains, the people, the animals. The point is not to whom you are loving, the point is that you are loving.

Osho. Last in the Evening: 365 Relaxing Moments to Enter the Night Consciously, Osho Media International. p.4-5

Question of the day

A wise person said one time that the definition of a mature person was the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in the mind at the same time. To what extent do you appreciate paradox, the ying and yang of life? As the bumper sticker says, "To dichotomize is either good or bad."

First week of Advent - Making room for the coming divine presence

The Roman Centurion said to Jesus, "Jesus, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed." Matthew 8:8

During this advent season can we develop a similar attitude of setting aside our personal drama and delusions and make room for the divine light being born into the world?