“Awakening to What is Real”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Listen to the long stillness: New life is stirring. New dreams are on the wing. New hopes are being readied. Humankind is fashioning a new heart. Humankind is forging a new mind. God is at work. This is the season of Promise. ~Howard Thurman
Rev. Howard Thurman was a spiritual mentor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the spiritual conscience of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. It is Black History month and the stories of the journey of our black brothers and sisters offer us so much courageous, tenacious energy that can keep us going on a spiritual path in spite of all apparent obstacles. Thank you Howard Thurman for your insight and wisdom. Thurman is inspiring to me and is a writer whose timeless wisdom serves us all very well especially in times of great change and turmoil such as we inhabit today. In our current time, he is especially relevant, because he speaks of the true power of the Black experience, spiritual power, which no one can limit or curtail despite outer circumstances and oppression.
We need that kind of spiritual power right now as a guiding light and beacon of hope. Last weekend I attended an online seminar with Rev. Jim Lee and Lisa Lee, LUT and I got a huge dose of that kind of spiritual power, which I share with you today. Rev. Jim was my ordaining minister, an African American Unity minister who at the time was serving Renaissance Unity in inner city Detroit as well as serving as Chairman of the Board of Unity Worldwide Ministries. He was and is one of the most humble, approachable and to me inspiring Unity ministers alive today.
I remember two things from his talk the day of my ordination. The first is to tell us that as newly ordained Unity ministers, we had earned the right to say “Jeee….sssuuussss” with 9 syllables! Then he exhorted us to be prepared with what he called our “One Move” that would keep us in integrity when circumstances would arise in ministry that challenged us at the deepest level. Be prepared with your “One Move” and you will be ok! He was right.
So today, on this third Sunday of Black History month, what is my one move, what is our one move that keeps us in spiritual integrity? How do we engage with race consciousness in our current moment in history with spiritual integrity? How do we support healing and wholeness for our fractured national energy, which seems so hell-bent on maintaining the divisiveness and contentiousness? Whatever we do, however we each think and feel, it is both personal and universal and it impacts us individually as it impacts our world. That is what is real, that is what is true. What we think, say and do matters at many levels of complexity. This is the metaphysics of diversity.
Jim asked us to share with each other what diversity means to us and most of us had a very positive response to embracing diversity until we come up to a diversity of political opinion. Then we stumble. What is our “One Move” then? How do we change our perspective to support the energy of healing and wholeness? We have to shift our perception; we have to come up higher. If we are on the 50th floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago, all we can see are the buildings that surround us. We have to rise in body, mind and Spirit to the 108th floor before we begin to see the larger picture. We still see the individuation of the separate buildings, but no one building is all encompassing! No one individual is our total obstacle or nemesis or stumbling block!
Our powerful inner shift is to realize that within the idea of Oneness or Wholeness, there is embedded tremendous diversity. Oneness does not mean uniform or that the individuality disappears. From that mountaintop perspective that Jesus constantly sought in Scripture, there are innumerable individuated beings expressing as us, as all the manifestations of the energy of the One, of God. We, as individual expressions of “God-ness,” are seeking unity in the One, the Wholeness of God. From the top of the 108th story, we are all part of the City of God! And each one of us matters in realizing the Wholeness of this picture! And it is impossible for one building, one person to destroy this God-ness perspective. The buildings can all fall down, but that perspective cannot! It’s consciousness and it cannot be destroyed.
What is real is that there is a dynamic tension in this process that can best be described as the energy of polarity. That is what we hear all the time: we are so polarized and it is described as being really bad. This is not the energy of duality or separateness. It is not the energy of either/or. Polarity is the energy of an audacious wholeness, of both/and, whereby we see the Universe or Creation as constantly expanding and evolving so that more of God can be realized. Now what is needed for that energy of expansion, the energy of conscious evolution is for us to bring our individuated consciousness to the Oneness to the Wholeness. The tensions of our individuated energy are essential and crucial to a greater understanding and expression of Oneness. The tensions are valuable and necessary.
What is real is that we are holding the tensions, the necessary tensions for greater understanding and goodness, God-ness to become real. While sameness and uniformity of thought and expression might feel safe, comfortable and desirable, growth only happens when we step out of that illusion into the dynamic tension of audacious wholeness. We have our human sense of identity, of who we believe we are which includes our jobs, our family, our roles, our personality, our race and we strongly identify with all of that. The tension is between the Individual and the Whole. We are not asked to sacrifice our individuality, we are asked to increase our capacity to hold the tension.
Polarity is the quality or condition that exhibits power in opposite directions; holding opposite properties. Polarity exists so that we can see and experience the opposites. It is not duality; it is not ideas, concepts, beliefs that are mutually exclusive. Polarities are rich with possibilities: night and day; up and down; life and death; dark and light; good and bad are some examples. Polarities are challenging, especially when we slip into assigning relative value to them. The power of polarities is in the broad spectrum or range of possibilities that exists within them. There is a dynamic energy that asks us to stay engaged, much like balancing a seesaw to explore what might be possible. When we move from either/or to a place of both/and, there are far more possibilities open to us.
This requires us to engage the polarities with non-resistance. If I flip you off the end of the seesaw, then I am stuck in a lower consciousness! There is a scripture that highlights this for us:
Romans 8:28
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (NRSV)
In this creative tension of holding the opposing energies in tension, what may begin as not understanding can become opposition. To hold these tensions so that they work together for good requires our focus to be on love and on the purposes of God to bring us to Healing and Wholeness. Polarity is a doorway to the full spectrum of possibility. It reminds us that there is always an opposite to everything. It allows us to look at all aspects of what is there while maintaining that creative and dynamic balance, like the seesaw, not preferring one side over the other but exploring all that is there.
Wow! Thank you God for all these opportunities to expand into the wholeness of perceiving it differently, interpreting it differently. We feel the pain, see the hurt and ask God what wholeness is seeking to be expressed here. Ahhh….only wholeness lives here! The “other” exists and is part of the wholeness. When the evolutionary process of the coming together of the diverse elements happens, that releases a new consciousness, a new energy that is described as synergy. When we can embrace that as what is here, and wake up to the call to wholeness that is being expressed, then we move out of auto-pilot into a new way of being that moves the paradigm forward into a new place that we don’t yet know. That is Audacious Wholeness that awakens human consciousness and raises it past the 108th floor, beyond the limits of our human consciousness.
We are called now, in 2021 in a conscious way to be with the polarities and allow the tension of this, however much we dislike it, to call us higher in consciousness. We are called to hold a larger sense of our individuated self that is not separated or isolated. As Jim Lee said, “There is room in me for you!” We can have an expanded sense of self that allows for the presence and being-ness of others, even those we would call enemy. This does not include tolerance of abuse of any kind by anyone. In the moment that I might smite you, I remember who I really am because I will be trying so hard to not be who I truly am. In that moment of seeing what is really there, I say thank you for bringing to light that part of me that has forgotten how to love! I also will help you by bringing to light the darkest parts of you, for in that energy, we are both healed.
All of what is happening in our world right now, all of the polarities, exists to raise our awareness and expand and deepen our capacity to experience and hold what is there in dynamic tension so that greater wholeness can become real. It is not easy, but it is what we are called to do. I want to close with another quotation from Howard Thurman:
The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires. ~Howard Thurman
And as Jim Lee said at the end of our workshop last Saturday, “My God what a fantastic time to be alive!”
Blessings on the Path.
February 24, 2021