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!

On Being Out in the Sun

Whenever I see a TV ad featuring half-naked people lazing in the sand on a sunny beach, I remember my own sunbathing experiences. After a couple of humongous sunburns, my exploits out in the sun involved big, floppy hats, dark glasses, cover-all tents and a jug of lead-lined sunscreen. I loved the sun (and why not? Astrologically I’m a Leo.), but the sun did not return the favor. It kissed other peoples’ brown bodies; it torched mine. But decades later the last laugh is mine. I was not gifted with a bronze body, but I also didn’t have to chase skin cancers either, and I did not end up with skin like leather.

Plenty of Exposure...

Over time I grew not to mind being unable to stretch out on a warm beach, sipping cool ones. I have had plenty of exposure, maybe not to the sun, but to all sorts of ideas, and if we’re smart, we find the radiant places that are right for us. There are any numbers of vistas that can shine on us and bring out the best, and there are even better means to find them these days, what with more technologies to help in discovery.


The rascally, curious mind...

It’s good to grapple with a few limitations, some we can actually push through and some we just can't. Who, by wishing, can be six feet tall when your genetics give you a bare five feet? Or who can have café-au-lait skin when your forebears are Nordic? But the rascally, curious mind…this is a sun we can all stretch out in!

On Anxiety

These days it seems that more people than ever are plagued by anxieties, some recognizable, some floating, and apparently there are any number of them available to us. There is existential anxiety (I’m not sure who I am), social anxiety (Will I fit in), status anxiety (Am I good enough), physical anxiety (Am I beautiful or handsome enough), and to top them all off, there are the chemical combinations in the brain that look for something to fear, according to scientists. A friend figured out a good, personal handle on this when he said that anxiety occurs when trust…at any level… erodes. I think this is as good a way to zero in on at least managing anxiety. We could ask: Is there a place to stand that we can trust, that won’t dissolve, disappear or disappoint? This question effectively takes care of the things of the world…They are always changing…and people too…They cannot help changing. They stumble; they die without our permission; they leave us.

Go beyond the beyond...

Eventually I think we have to choose to go behind the behind and beyond the beyond, and to do this we choose to become believers in something greater than ourselves, something we will never see but only experience in its various forms. Easy for me to say. I’ve been a believer before I knew what believing meant, but anyone can do this. Great thinkers can’t know for us what we must know for ourselves, but they can share their light. Ernest Holmes, progenitor of The Science of Mind, said prosaically, “Learning to trust will make us happy”…too simple maybe? But he also said that “there is a Power in the Universe that honors our faith in it…No matter what our emotional storm…there is always a something hidden in the inner being that has never been violated.” Words like these can only come from someone who has made spiritual choices and tried them out.

We live in a Presence that responds to us...

I have said that the world can’t help us, but we can help the world. What we bring into the mix is the capacity to think straight, to let reason take us as far as it can, and to believe that we live in a Presence that responds to us. It’s not magic; it won’t change what we keeping setting in motion, but our lives will become more manageable when we change the way we think about ourselves and others…really! This becomes a natural movement, part of the way we do business, not always comfortable but with us wherever.

Imagine what life might be like if we can pass through good times and hard ones, knowing we’ll come out the other side…because God has our backs!

On Thinking Hard Thoughts

Much as I would like to think differently, I have learned over time that all our beautiful, quieting spiritual practices cannot keep us from the need to think through the hard places in our lives. Like it or not, sometimes we have to think hard thoughts…and act upon them, and, sadly, no one can do this for us. Our practices give us strength and clarity, but no one can say the definitive words we will have to say, and no one can take action for us. If we defer to another’s greater fortitude and well-meaning helpfulness, we won’t be dodging a bullet. We’ll just be emptying the bullets out of our own gun, and next time a hard place comes up, we’ll feel more defenseless and vulnerable than ever.

"Wake up!"

I know a lovely young woman who is thinking over hard thoughts about an off-again, on-again relationship she is up against. She knows that if she lets it slide again, it will only come back sooner or later for eventual resolution. How I wish I could just slap some folks alongside the head and say, “Wake up!”…but I can’t. What I can do is be one of the silent supporters for whatever is needed.

Somehow we make it through them...

This is the good part about doing the hard stuff. Most of us have friends, family or personal communities on hand to walk alongside when the footsteps are needed. All those kindnesses we have done over the years, lying as buds quietly in our hearts, burst into bloom when we turn to our tribe for a little light and understanding. Good to know. Hard places come…and go…and somehow we make it through them.