The Weak Link

We live under the illusion that persons who are developmentally challenged, handicapped or mentally ill are too incompetent to be useful.  We also see the older generation as too old to be useful.This is harming our society as it sends our culture towards engaging in the dangerous trend of devaluing others. We disregard sections of society which cannot compete or produce. Competing and producing is a tiny part of being human; very tiny! The nature of human beings is made up of many parts. The biggest parts being Spirit and consciousness, heart speak and creativity. This we are currently oppressing. Why I believe that our trend is so dangerous, is because we disregard soul-wisdom.

A community is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore if we think we must get rid of that link to make our society stronger we engage in a foolish idea. Each of these so-called “unproductive and useless” individuals brings wisdom as well as one piece of the Cosmic puzzle to the whole. Without it we cannot gain understanding of the whole picture. All we produce and do will be incomplete and meaningless.

Taking a closer look at the reality of this action brings to the forefront many unfortunate results that are counter-productive for everyone. We have been disregarding the wisdom of the elderly by excluding them from the workforce starting at age fifty. Very few people over fifty are able to secure a descend job if any, if they are out of work. Yet, they are the ones with great experience. Our seventy plus, unless they are highly active, are put into warehouses called nursing homes.

There they have no way to share their experiences and wisdom stories, which would be a great enrichment for our culture and the younger generation. This trend shows that we are a warehousing culture, which of course makes sense if our core value is production. We warehouse our children in daycares. They at least are growing toward being productive, so their plight is not as severe, except that connectedness to family and community is limited.

Developmentally challenged persons may barely be able to add five and five, but they can look into your heart and discern who you really are. They share a pure and simple love, laugh over simple joys and often are ridiculed by their peers as well as us sophisticated folk.

Persons with mental illnesses have gotten their walls and fake masks broken down. They rise out of their ashes, vulnerable but ready to give of their rich experiences. Most often they are rejected because they have let go of these walls and masks. One thing I observed is that it is much easier to talk and be with people who had their walls and masks broken down. One does not need to tiptoe around the pretenses. The conversation goes straight to the heart. For the rest of us that can be a bit scary.

Unless we embrace the wisdom of the vulnerable, we create a heartless one-sided culture that can only engage in competition and production; disregarding all the things the soul needs. If we leave prayer, heart-speak, care, compassion, the arts and that which makes a person whole out of the equation we may be living, but we are soulless – we are the living dead.

Enlightened teachers over centuries (Jesus, Buddha and others) have talked about learning to become awake or alive. We can only be truly awake or alive if we let Spirit and our soul guide us.

Meditation:

Examine your life. What are the three most important things in your life currently? Do these three things make you happy and joyous? Then think of you deepest hopes and dreams, do THEY make you feel truly joyous? (Hopes in dreams in my blog relate to God's calling)

How close are these three important things in your life in relationship to your deepest hopes and dreams ? Are those three things supporting your hopes and dreams or is there a gulf between them? Are you afraid of your dreams?

What can you learn from your insights? Journal!

Biblical Scripture: Mt.8:22

When a disciple chosen to follow Jesus said:“Lord, first let me go and bury my father. Jesus said to him: Let the dead bury their own dead”

© 2012 Angelika Mitchell

Community and change

A few blog entries ago I wrote about tribes, defining tribalism as something which limits individuals in their development for the sake of limited belief systems of a particular culture. Often tribalism implies a strong ideology of living in the us and them; causing separation instead of unity. Separation (specifically hostile separation) in my understanding, is something undesired in the larger scheme of the loving Cosmos.

The need for wholeness of each individual in order to enjoy wholesome community is unconditional for a healthy existence. An individual cannot be whole without community, nor can, a community be whole without individuals who are allowed to strive toward wholeness. Individuals in such a community need the freedom to express themselves without punishment. (shunning, belittleling, bodily harm, etc.) At the very least individuals have to learn and have freedom to stand up in the midst of adversity for the sake of justice. This requires everyone to learn to listen. Without being able to listen we cannot understand one another. The art of listening needs to be taught again. Teaching the art of listening must also go hand in hand with the ability to slow down, become aware of surroundings and choices unconsciously made affecting our lives. We are currently in a gigantic whirlwind missing most of what needs to be understood.

We could learn much from the Quakers who offer to persons discerning questions and paths, something called a “clearness committee.” Such a committee is a process in which the group refrains from giving advice but spends 3 hours asking a canditate honest open questions to help the person discover their inner truth. ( from: Let your Life Speak by Parker Palmer, pg. 44)

This is a process contrary to everything we learn in our western culture. Our society has become constantly pre-occupied with what to do that will make us become better (an outward better in stead of an inward better). If its not TV adds, than its friends, teachers, doctors, social workers and most everyone thinks they can better YOUR life because the very thing would better theirs.

It is important for all of us to understand that life does not work that way. We all need very specific things and understandings in order to fulfill our God-given destiny. As individualistic as someone having a destiny sounds, we all do have a destiny. Unless everyone is encouraged and allowed to fulfill their destiny our communities cannot become whole. (holy)

To become whole we need to be process driven not result driven. Having and fulfilling a destiny sounds like we ought to be result driven, in the larger picture. Unless destinies are fulfilled over time and space, over decades and millennia, we become stagnant.

We live in the liminal spaces of the temporary results of destinies and the ongoing processes of an ever evolving humanity and creation.

We live with the illusion that everything is stagnant when in reality, in order to be whole and healthy, changes must happen. Have you ever looked at a pond? It has stagnant water, algae and other organisms grow which can often be harmful to the swimmer. At the same time, flowing water is always fresh and regenerates its body frequently. The changes in the flowing water are the reason for a healthier water which can be used to sustain higher lifeforms.

A stagnant people envisions a stagnant God, an old man with a beard who carries out judgment.

A holistic changing people embraces a God of change, a God of becoming, as we are becoming. We live with the illusion that our paved roads, our landmasses will be there forever and their solidity will never change. Yet the earth is not that solid. It undergoes many changes. It is not a catastrophe, no evil, only natural that it all changes. The energies sustaining nature as I see them are constantly pulsating and fluctuating until one day that which we know breaks open or apart and reassembles itself as a different formation.

It looks like we are living at a time in which such changes are happening at an accelerated rate. Change is going to happen on every level. Some of them we have already started seeing, while others are still hidden.

Change is needed for every human being to be able to become what they are called to become.

These changes will create new forms of communities.

Change terrifies us, but we must not be afraid. Fear only comes when we are holding on to old concepts and have become stagnant. This refers to the fact that we hold on to old formulas, laws and ideas which were relevant for a particular time but are not relevant for the current time. The old ideas must re-align, in different ways to make the new. Often people say the new is really an old idea. In many ways, this is true. There are building blocks, all that is created in cosmos, our history and cultures, which as societies and the world changes reassemble to fit the new picture. Sometimes even earth will change and  participate in what we might see as upheaval. We do not need to be afraid but must entertain an open heart and mind and a deep God connectedness.

Meditation:

Imagine yourself swimming in a body of water. This water depicts your life. Is this water clear and clean, or like a pond filled with slimy alge? What does your water look like? Is it slimy or not what would you like it to look like? Then envision an illuminated waterfall of clear healing waters coming down at the edge of your pool but not entering your pool. You have been given the power to extend your pool so that the waterfall can be included. Do just that, extend the pool so that now you see the waterfall pouring into your pool. Then watch and see. What is that clean waterfall doing in your pool? What changes are taking place? What are you learning. Journal!

Biblical Scripture: Heb.1:10-12

...in the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands;

they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing;

like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed........”

© 2012 Angelika Mitchell

Spirituality

In these changing times many individuals will confess “I am not religious but I am spiritual”. What does that mean? One has only to study Christian history to realize every religion has imperfect members including the leaders. People get sometimes hurt. Clergy and fellow followers of faith are human just like you. All are struggling within culture-soup made of events of life happenings within their emotional and physical boundaries.  All humans are fallible.

Churches are a means to help a community to learn and keep accountability in their relationship to God while learning love and forgiveness. Especially important is forgiveness!  In some instances the bedrock of accountability has started to deteriorate. Yet, church still has that function. Each church has its group of people who needs that churche's particular doctrines to live accountable lives and learn to draw closer to God.

There are other spirits than God and the Holy Spirit, anywhere  from angels to not so benevolent ones. Someone walking it alone, a person calling themselves spiritual, will encounter dangers lurking, hence church community is important. At the same time church community must awaken and transform itself in order to become a valuable resource for persons in their spiritual encounters.

For the most part we have not been taught how to discern that which is harmful in the spiritual world, nor how to deal with it. Most of the time people are thrilled that they have an insight or hear a voice from the beyond. Often they will feel 'chosen'. They do not think that beyond is a multifaceted world like our own. There is not only God and protective angels, but things Christianity and various religions call Satan, evil or selfish desire and various facets in between. There is a multitude of beings invisible to most humans. Most everything that exists, animals, trees, as well as the earth has beings sustaining them. Those beings sustaining creation exist by God's design. Some will work to our benefit, some won't. Then there are also those who are often called "earthbound spirits", humans who have died and failed to move on.

I have studied these things for many years. This does not make me under any circumstances special, all this means is that with extra insights I also have extra responsibilities. Theoretically everyone has such abilities, but  in many people they are mostly dormant often to a taught fear.

While the Church has kept us, or at least tried to keep us from getting in harms way, it also instilled a great fear of anything supernatural, unearthly and invisible. That is an interesting thing, since God is also invisible to us. I think this taught fear also causes the problem that people withdraw themselves from God. This is a sign that this very fear the church teaches is backfiring. If church would teach us to embrace the other world (which would require us to acknowledge spiritual experiences of various kinds) people may have a harder time denying God. We are not only ignorant to such things, we also don't know how to discern that which will make us whole or which will harm us in the spiritual world. We don't know how to deal with otherworldly experiences.  I have met only few pastors who have the gift of healing, vision, or know how to get rid of ghosts, or beings that may cause havoc in a persons life. Instead of passing on these gifts we decided to tell people there is no such thing. We also tell people that a person with such gifts is strange or even crazy. It's a whole lot easier, but not helpful to people who have such supernatural experiences and seek help. 

Explaining things away does not make them go away!

Mysticism is the only thing I know in Christianity that touches on what people are looking for spiritually. Mystics as we understand them in the Christian Church are individuals who draw deeply into God. They love God, experience a deep love from God in return, out of which develops love for human beings; their neighbors. They often have visions and gifts given by God others who do not choose to draw near will not have. These believers pray many times a day if not unceasingly. All spirituality needs prayer as its very foundation, whether it is Christian prayer, Jewish prayer, Islamic prayer, or whatever your tradition may call for. Our churches need to invite spiritual direction into their walls. They need to become interested in the unique experiences of many, learning from them as well as guiding them.

People have questions about the afterlife. Rarely do we approach this subject and are uncomfortable with people who have had afterlife or near death experiences. This is because these experiences are mystical in nature, therefore disregarded as unique oddities. This is the case of most things we do not fully understand. Our biggest problem is that we are terrified of death. We elect to shroud ourselves with ignorance because it is a lot easier to deal with, then this subject. We let medical doctors make decisions whether or not a patient could or should have had such an experience. Are we as theologians allowed to practice medicine without a license?

How is it that medical personnel has come to think they can claim to be experts in our field unless we abdicate and elect ignorance?  Optimally theologians ought to work together with science to find answers.

If we, as pastors are not spiritual, then we should invite someone to guide us who is spiritual, who has a deeper relationship with God. Being a Pastor is a calling. If we are truly guided by the Holy Spirit this calling may put us on a road which may be contrary to some church policies or certain doctrines.  There are many people who are truly hungry for the spiritual. We must feed them and educate them or they will go roaming and looking for answers. (This is happening right now with "church shoppers"). To learn answers to spiritual experiences requires pastors themselves to draw near to God and learn to understand and deal with that which we cannot see.

Regardless what the facets of the spiritual world are, the most important thing we need to learn, live, and understand is love. Our very function is to love. There is nothing else more important. In all we do, we must do it with love. This love is not only spiritual, it is physical because it must come through caring action.

Hence, spirituality is not only a drawing close to God, it is recognizing God in all of humanity and creation, as well as an act of love toward them. Our actions need to be actions of compassion. If we chose not to help someone for whatever reason, we neglect our function: LOVE.
(Note: Helping does not always mean to give a person what they want. Likewise a person offering criticism may do so out of compassion for someone, not to be a pain.)

Exercise:

1.

Envision someone who hurt you in the past coming to you for help. What will your response be?

Be honest with yourself. What would it take for you to be able to help that person. Reflect on that.

In the end try to surround yourself with light and draw them into that light (meditations we have done before). As that person stands in that light what truth are you able to learn about them?
Can you see yourself helping them? What are you learning about giving help?

2.

Biblical Scripture reading:

1 Cor.13:1-7

© 2012 Angelika Mitchell