Midweek Faith Lift
October 29, 2025
Divine Chaos/Divine Order- Evolution
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
October 21, 2025
The family dog passed away and little Johnnie went with his father to bury the remains of their beloved pet. Looking down at the little pouch of ash and bone, Johnnie asked his father, “Dad, what happens if I die?” His father thought a moment and then replied, “Well, some people believe that we go to heaven - a place to enjoy eternity with God. Other people believe that you get born again in the body of a new baby and you get to live a whole new life. Others believe that you transcend human existence into some form of pure energy - free to travel the Universe." Johnnie, still looking down at the bag of ashes, said, "Oh, but a bigger bag, right?
Wisdom Teaching of Buddhism
In Buddhism, life and death are not opposites but movements within the same eternal rhythm. The Buddha taught, “All conditioned things are impermanent; when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering” (Dhammapada 277). This insight into impermanence invites us to release our grasp on what must inevitably change. Death, in this view, is not an end but a transformation—a passage within the ongoing flow of consciousness. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes dying as a series of dissolutions, through which awareness loosens its hold on form and opens into subtler dimensions. Buddhist practice prepares the heart for this moment, teaching that by embracing impermanence, we awaken to the truth that life and death are both expressions of the same luminous continuity.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
3 For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die;
Affirmative Prayer for today: Infinite Spirit of Love, open my mind and heart to the power of Wisdom and Order that allows me to let go so that I may let come whatever higher good is there for me to make real and express. Amen.
We have explored the spiritual power of Order from the perspective of organization, adjustment and now the process of evolution. The evolution from Divine Chaos to Divine Order is a process, a continuous cyclical process which includes moving from thesis, or present condition to antithesis, everything that opposes it, into a new synthesis. As we live into this Divine Order emerging from Divine Chaos, we are empowered to adjust and readjust our responses with dynamic steering that is responsive to what we have learned in each step along the way. We accumulate learning. We are truly living this right now, in our country, and like all human/divine growth processes, it is not easy, confusing at times and not always clear as to where we are in this evolution of Divine Order experience.
In order to move from Divine Chaos into something better, there is the inner experience of “Divine Discontent” that is the catalyst for our growth and expansion. The process of evolution is one of expansion. It is expansion of consciousness that yields an expansion of freedom, an expansion of expression, an expansion of the perception of possibilities that allow us to live into a greater reality. It is a process of transformation whereby I let go of my good for my “gooder,” so to speak! Like the little boy in the opening story….I want a bigger bag!
It is a process whereby we transcend and include that which has come before. This has happened many times in our collective human history as we have experienced an expanded awareness of what is possible for our human story. That is what brought the end of slavery, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and now a movement that supports and expands our understanding of the value of our constitution and our democracy. We are seeing a time of growth in consciousness for our country to embrace and insist that our democracy be preserved. How will that play out, how will the story turn out? We don’t know.
That is part of the challenge of the process of evolution: we don’t always know the how, the what or the when. We do know that in this process of evolution, we are moving from simplicity to greater complexity as we grow in our capacity for Understanding, Wisdom and Order. There is a higher Order, a Divine Order which we do not always perceive or comprehend, but it is always there whether we can see it or not, like gravity. The power of Faith tells us to trust the process, show up and do our part to help the Higher Order unfold. Rev. Linda puts it this way in Divine Audacity:
Evolution is the power of order demonstrated as development, progress, or growth. In spiritual circles, evolution is often referred to as spiritual unfolding or transformation. Evolution moves in the direction of expansion, from simple to complex. Our ability to evolve is inherent, just as evolution is inherent in the universe. P. 170.
That means it is imbedded in our very beings as human/divine emanations of God. We have the choice to embrace it or reject it; that is our free will
As we dance with this process of the evolution of Divine Order, it becomes clear that to embrace expansion, we have to be willing to let go and begin the process of letting come that which is new and unfamiliar. Letting go and letting come-once again we embrace the polarities and find ways to hold them. It is not always comfortable or easy! When the fruits of our labors are ripe, we release them to the universe to make of it what it will. Neil Douglas-Klotz writes about it this way in The Aramaic Jesus: Book of Days:
When the fruit is ready, it falls from the tree. Sometimes it is eaten by a human or other being. Other times it’s absorbed by the earth, where the outer flesh feeds the soil and all its micro-organisms, and the seed may grow a new tree. In either case, the tree lets go so that another cycle of life can continue….Yet imagine a tree that never let go. The wavelet of life that produced it wouldn’t last beyond its first form.
When we resist the reality of evolution, growth and change, we are like the tree that never let go. It is almost unimaginable, but humans can cling ferociously to what they believe is the truth, or right even when the fruit is rotten and decayed and no longer gives nourishment or sustains life.
One of our deepest needs as humans is connection with others and to know that we matter. We have many different strategies to meet that need, but the need is universal and there is a path by which that need is met for all of us. We have an inherent power of wisdom that shows us the way to meet that need so that no one is left out, no one. Our culture is currently operating on the false premise of what is described as a “zero sum game.” This means that if I win, I get everything and you lose and get nothing. This is not a workable premise for the evolution of Divine Order to unfold. It is in reality a premise that supports Divine Chaos.
But the process of evolution also contains involution, whereby the seeds of change are contained or embedded in the present reality. There dwells in your heart the spiritual power of Order, of Wisdom, of Love that calls forth an expanded reality that aligns with a higher truth. We all have within us a “bigger bag” that is the container for our expanded consciousness. None of the powerful leaders of the past, those whose path brought about evolution, began with the intention of doing that. Martin Luther King, Jr had no desire or intention to lead a civil rights movement. When Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, she had no idea she would ignite the women’s movement. When Martin Luther wrote and posted his Ninety-Five Theses, he had no idea he would ignite the Protestant Reformation.
Each of these individuals was responding to that Divine Discontent that contributes to the evolutionary process of bringing about a new Order, a Divine Order. They listened and did what was theirs to do. When we do that, and we are in alignment with moving toward greater complexity, expansion of consciousness and freedom, then we are working with evolution from Divine Chaos to Divine Order in the highest possible way. What is your Divine Discontent and what are you called to do, write, say, express?
In The Aramaic Jesus: Book of Days, Neil Douglas-Klotz describes the last line of what we call the Lord’s prayer, from Matthew 6:13 “For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen as words Yeshua is speaking not just to us, but about us and about God. He translates it from the Aramaic as follows:
In You, from You, lives all of the original vision and power, the life energy now, plus the melody of everything, a song returning to the heart of the cosmos, age to age, world to world, time to time. May I trust this ground of truth and live from here. P. 78
We don’t always need to consciously learn a lesson from every experience. We trust that we are planting seeds of consciousness that will grow and expand for the highest and best good of all, world to world, age to age, time to time. Amen.
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb