So, here’s how it plays out in ministry. See if you can relate.
A new minister takes a community in total trust. And total trust is easy for a new minister because having been there, I can quite assure you that sometimes, total trust is all you really have.
I mean, as a new minister, you don’t often have years of leadership decisions – effective and not-so-effective – to draw from as legalities and technologies and tendencies find their way to your doorstep.
You don’t often have years of human relations – healthy and not-so-healthy – to draw from as addiction and codependency and projection find their way to your doorstep.
You don’t often have years of spiritual exploration – individually and collectively – to draw from as disappointment and despair and debate (let’s not forget the seemingly-endless need to debate) find their way to your doorstep.
But over time, those years of leadership decisions are accumulated, those years of human relations are experienced, those years of spiritual explorations are navigated. And over time, the total trust of that new minister – a total trust in nothing more than an illogical knowing, a total trust in nothing more than an undeniable pull, a total trust in nothing more than an irresistible inspiration, a total trust in nothing more than a next idea, is displaced by a total trust in an accumulated experience.
Over time, a total trust in something right here and right now is displaced by a total trust in something out there and out then. And even as the worldly self of us would bloat with this rising into the wisdom and ways of the world, the spiritual self of us would shrink with this falling from the wisdom and ways of the spirit.
Said another way, having nothing to lose isn’t the problem. Spiritually speaking, having nothing to lose is a place of amazing power. Because having nothing to lose tends to rend us open us to the very highest selves of us in a way that daily life just doesn’t tend to do.
It’s like having difficult experiences, you see. Marianne Williamson said it this way, and I paraphrase, “…difficult experiences tend to return us to our knees where we should have been all along.”
So, while having nothing to lose and while having difficult experiences are uncomfortable for us, let us not be quick to label them bad. Let us not be quick to hurtle ourselves through difficulty and discomfort so quickly that we miss the gifts they have us get.
In fact, having something to lose – that’s where you have to be careful. That’s where you have to be careful because having something to lose tends to close us to the highest selves of us as we subtly come into the belief that the creative source that gave rise to the thing in the first place is inadequate to give rise to something greater in the future. And as we subtly come into this belief that the creative source that gave rise to the thing in the first place (oh, maybe the thing is a job, a business, a relationship, a windfall, a formula, a healing – it doesn’t matter) as we subtly come into this belief that the creative source that gave rise to the thing in the first place is inadequate to give rise to something greater in the future, then we start to think we have to protect the thing.
And lost is that total trust in nothing more than an illogical knowing, that total trust in nothing more than an undeniable pull, that total trust in nothing more than an irresistible inspiration, that total trust in nothing more than a next idea.
Having something to lose is the problem because again and again and again, our divine genius is sacrificed on the altar of our human comfort.
I wrote an essay many, many years ago. It offered, and I quote, “Beginners know that they, of themselves, possess inadequate skill. They know that they, of themselves, possess inadequate knowledge and inadequate experience for the task at hand. Beginners by default have to welcome wisdom beyond their personal wisdom for their success. And anytime we welcome wisdom beyond our personal wisdom for our success, that wisdom responds.
“But as the ego tempts us to believe that the wisdom behind our success is our own, we begin to repeat the tactics of yesterday, to lower our risks, to guard our successes, ultimately to abandon the very wisdom from which our success was initially born. And we end up symbolically prostrate before the divine where we should have been the entire time.
“There is no such thing as beginners’ luck. There is only beginner’s mind. There is only an understanding that an infinite and unlimited mind sources you in every moment and a willingness to surrender the ego to this mind in all affairs.”
While the modern lens would pit myth-making against truth-telling, there’s another, more informed lens would grasp myth-making as a high form of truth-telling.
The early Jewish teaching myth about people sitting around the bottom of that mountain worshiping a golden calf, is a myth about people everywhere. It suggests that there are countless things to idolize in the human experience, so much so that wisdom itself might stroll down the mountainside and stand among us wearing its flowing robes and thumping its stone tablets and we would fail to see it.
Now, while we in Unity tend to stand among the growing masses who challenge a theistic model of God as a distant male or a distant humanoid at all (it’s really not that radical simply to associate God with both feminine and masculine – that’s been done for thousands of years including throughout the Judeo Christian collection itself), while we challenge that, we still believe in what I might call a broader reality. We still believe that what those rather rudimentary senses of ours can perceive is but a limited picture of what is really happening.
There’s a whole lot more to you than you know, we might say.
That body you’re wearing for this brief adventure in form isn’t the enduring you and there’s something in you (I might say there’s something in all spirit people) that knows it.
There’s something in you that knows birth is an event. There’s something in you that knows death is an event. But there’s something in you that knows life is an identity and I have to believe that our deep intuitive experience of this, and our seeking to understand it, can be found at the core of all wisdom teachings.
Quantum theorists might suggest that this broader reality is much like a giant thought; that we are emanations of a limitless creative potential, and as emanations of a limitless creative potential, the only thing required of us is to be available to creativity itself. This might speak to the very heart of the charge, “Thy will be done.” Or, as Rickie Byars puts it, “Use me. Oh, God I stand for you.”
Now, to be clear: to be available to creativity itself isn’t just to paint a picture or sing a song. Don’t come up to me at the end of this gathering and say, “I’m not creative.” You are creativity itself. And to be available to your creative nature is to think again. It’s to broaden perspective, to challenge assumption, to accept challenge, to question self, to embrace newness.
And here’s the deal: to be available to that creative nature isn’t a comfortable thing. It’s a daring thing. It takes effort. It requires awareness. Among the many miracles of Jesus, the most common had to do with sight. And I think this makes perfect sense because the more you have to lose (the more comfortable you are), the more difficult it becomes to lift our eyes beyond the lure of comfort blindness to God. The more difficult it becomes to see rightly, shall we say.
So, in a very real sense, Unity would suggest that you cannot be saintlier than when you place a total trust in infinite mind. You cannot be saintlier than when you place a total trust in nothing more than that illogical knowing, a total trust in nothing more than that undeniable pull, a total trust in nothing more than that irresistible inspiration, a total trust in nothing more than that next idea.
And Unity would suggest that you cannot be worldlier than when you displace that total trust to an accumulated experience.
In a more traditional setting, I might be saying that you cannot be saintlier than when you listen to God. And in a more traditional setting, I might be saying that you cannot be worldlier than when you listen to everything else.
Yes, there are many golden calves in this modern world – some more obvious than others.
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