Midweek Faith Lift
July 15, 2026
“Creatures of Habit”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
July 7, 2026
In 1978, Patrick Moriarty of Rochester, New York, was teaching his junior high science class about solar eclipses. As he explained their trajectories, the path of totality, and other details, the class looked ahead to see which upcoming eclipses would pass over their hometown. “Hey, circle that one on April 8, 2024,” Moriarty told his students. “We’re going to get together for that one.” And every new group of students who came through his classroom heard the same promise.
The years went by and, when 2024 arrived, Moriarty made good on his promise, creating a Facebook group to track down his former students and invite them to an eclipse reunion. He didn’t expect much of a response after 46 years, but hundreds of his former students answered the invitation. Moriarty gave shape to the reunion by purchasing plenty of eclipse glasses and hiring a local pizzeria to cater the event.
People came from all over the country, with at least one former student saying, “This has got to be the longest homework assignment ever!” Eventually, the Moon passed over the Sun, and people looked up in wonder. They had felt the call of the eclipse – but also the call of relationship. They came to witness something rare in the sky, and they found something just as meaningful on the ground: reconnection, memory, and the fulfillment of a promise made decades before. Seeing the sky was beautiful. Seeing each other again was every bit as good.
" At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
- Albert Schweitzer
Powerful stories and powerful examples of how, as Myrtle says in Chapter 20 of How to Let God Help You, “we are creatures of habit.” In our human journey, we are imprinted with so much of how we interact with each other, what we say to each other and how we treat each other.
It is astonishing that so many students in Mr. Moriarty’s junior high science classes remembered and responded to his invitation to watch the eclipse together. It was no doubt a spiritual moment. It was for me, and Todd and I were with a bunch of strangers! But we were all connected in that powerful eclipse moment that we had gathered to witness. It was something of beauty, greater than ourselves.
"Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God." - Meister Eckhart
That includes us, dear ones, we are a book about God! This statement by Meister Eckhart really sums up what Myrtle is trying to tell us in these chapters about wholeness, healing and the power of the mind in its connection to the body. We are each a “book about God,” but our habits of thought, our human experiences and our human “reality” eclipse that truth. The power of the words of the teacher in the cartoon above is to shine the light on the greater truth, “You’re smarter than you think!” That could be said of all of us! There is more to us than we can see.
Why don’t we see it? Myrtle calls it sense consciousness, and it is formed from habits of thought established early in life. From those thoughts we believe that what we know about our human experience is the whole truth of us. Her powerful message in these chapters is to wake up the greater reality of the Christ of us that is as powerful as the eclipse and more so! The eclipse was a one-time deal, a rarely occurring event; the power of the Christ is ongoing and forever. We don’t want to miss the eclipse, but we routinely ignore the bright light of Spirit within us!
It is as though we are illiterate and can’t read the book of God that we are. Myrtle acknowledges our human inertia this way, on p. 113:
The body is a creature of habit. Without the positive, purposeful daily effort of the mind, it becomes after a time difficult to break the habits into which it has plunged…But once the mind takes up a definite program and stirs up interest in things worthwhile here and now, the body will begin to wake up and to draw the abundant life of Spirit down into the various nerve centers, bones, muscles and organs.
So, dear ones, we are to get that message of Spirit into our bones, muscles and organs so that we can move our feet and act in concert with the message of Spirit that is alive in us! See the light you are and take up your mat and walk, for God’s sake!
We all get well and truly stuck in old sense consciousness patterns that our body/mind/spirit have accepted as the truth of us, the final story. We hold the belief that there is something outside of us that can “fix” or “heal” us and that is what we pursue. Myrtle is right, it does take discipline, action and intention to shift into a new direction, learn a new language of a consciousness that lifts us higher. This is not a human lift, mind you, this is a spiritual lift! If we are going to really see ourselves as a “book about God” then we need a new set of lenses through which to look.
As we practice spiritual principles of seeing ourselves and others from a higher perspective, we begin to cultivate the perspective and new habit of “both/and” thinking; we see our humanness and our divinity. This sounds and looks a bit different as we no longer are willing to let our “human self “ eclipse our higher self, our spiritual, Christ-self. We don’t have to wait 46 years to see this in ourselves or others. We are empowered to see it every time we breathe. When we breathe into releasing the anger, retribution, grudge we have been holding about things that have happened in the past, we are practicing spiritual principles of empowerment. Remember, baby steps!
Holding all that is a habit, but we can let go of that habit….it no longer serves us. When we see that, it is easy to let go, like dropping a hot coal. We have been burned, but we learned to recognize hot coals and that is the blessing. Myrtle is clear that what we have learned through sense consciousness has served a purpose for us in the unfolding of our higher, Christ consciousness. She says it this way on p.118:
Whatever is Good is permanent and enduring; it cannot be lost or destroyed. We refer to spiritual values when we make this statement. Even the sense consciousness is good in its way, however; it serves a purpose. Whatever is good in it endures and remains part of the spiritual soul in us. Your Christ Self has an infinite capacity for expression along spiritual lines….
We are never defined or ultimately limited by the worst that we think and do in our humanness. What is truly blessed is the moment someone sees and re-ignites that spark in us that allows us to see far beyond our human fears and limitations. That is a holy moment of profound joy and gratitude.
This work of spiritual awakening and growth is not easy and this week, it is the work of Neil Douglas Klotz, in his book, Aramaic Jesus: Book of Days, that gives me a sense of ease and peace. In Chapter 20 “A Rest Stop Between Here and There” he references the Scripture from Matthew 11:28,30 in which Jesus says:
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest……For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I have always wondered how it is that this is true, how is the yoke and burden of Jesus easy and light? My human self did not get it! Well, Dr. Klotz says that Yeshua proposes that we literally stop time itself to take regular moments to rest the small self, the naphsha. Then we can discover a deeper resting place in the middle of the wave of our breathing, between the in-breath and the out-breath. Rest your human self in the space between your breaths. Don’t catch your breath, rest your breath! Find the sweetness of life, of your Divinity between your human breaths. We can for sure practice that, noticing the pause, the space between breaths.
This is not holding your breath, which I so often do in anticipation of the next crisis. This is pausing between the out-breath and the next in-breath. This is the space between breaths that Yeshua is offering us for rest. Here is how Klotz translates this passage from the Aramaic:
Come toward my way, everyone who is weary from carrying burdens that either weigh you down or prevent you from moving onward in your life. I offer you a way to lay them all down, to pause in the middle of the up and down, back and forth….My work is: planting the light in your self. A very small burden, aromatic, delightful to all your senses.(p.66-67)
When Jesus talks about “coming to me” he means come to my way of living and experiencing reality. And so we rest and ride out the storm as we then allow the yoke, as a planting of the “light” within as we embody the light as a lamp to shine from within. “Easy” translates as “spicy, or delightful, which also restores our senses. We receive the light of our soul through our senses, through our heart as we learn to love our human/divine selves and let the seeds of love grow in our consciousness.
May it be so,
Rev. Deb