Tuesday, March 25, 2014

On Success





     During my early years as a new minister, I remember going to a ministerial conference with my colleagues for inspiration and companionship. The first speaker to engage us was an M.D. who loved doing uplifting talks and so he began with this wonderful, whimsical story: Imagine that the male part of you, the sperm, is all set to connect with your soul mate, the female ovum, but to do so, you must travel a distance which is the equivalent of going from San Francisco to Cleveland…swimming all the way! As the speaker warmed to his story, he said: Here you are, passing through imaginary deserts, navigating the Rockies, but finally you arrive. Imagine your surprise to discover that your sweetling is several thousand times bigger than you are! (Imagine her surprise too.) Nevertheless the connection is made. With this the storyteller smiled and waggled his finger at us: And remember, in making the connection, you beat out 499,999,999 other sperm, and if that’s not success, I don’t know what is!

We are primed for success...

     Clever tale, and also true. We are primed for success. I have no idea why the Infinite made that first journey so challenging but maybe it was to insure that we began with the best of ourselves. It doesn’t take long either for that new person self to get up and running. Do any of us know of a baby who refused to learn to walk just because he fell down a lot to start with?? What is it that begins to take away some of that little kid verve? Why is it that who we are and what we do ceases to have the luster it once did? Did we get mixed messages along the way? Were we hurt…did we suffer losses…miss the mark sometimes?

  Success lies within us...

     Still I believe the storyteller was right. We had and still have all the success genes in us by nature. Things won and lost along the way are indicators of how we are doing, but success itself lies within us. Maybe we could rethink a few things we may have been mistaken about and find it once more …swimming all the way!

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