Midweek Faith Lift
August 8, 2018
Financial Adversity in Reverse
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
No one lives outside the walls of this sacred place, existence.
The holy water, I need it upon my eyes: it is you, dear, you—each form.
What mother would lose her infant—and we are that to God,
never lost from [Her] gaze are we? Every cry of the heart
is attended by light’s own arms.
You cannot wander anywhere that will not aid you.
Anything you can touch—God brought it into
the classroom of your mind.
Differences exist, but not in the city of love.
Thus my vows and yours, I know they are the same. . . .
The holy water my soul’s brow needs is unity.
Love opened my eye and I was cleansed
by the purity of each
form.
—Daniel Ladinsky, inspired by St. Francis of Assisi
This poem is from the Meditation by Richard Rohr, this past Monday, July 30. When I read it during my prayer time, it landed right in my heart and I knew it would find its way into the talk for this week, and right at the beginning, too! As I was on vacation in San Diego, you were never far from my heart. I kept thinking about you all on Ragbrai Tuesday, wishing I knew how to bi-locate so I could be part of the fun. Thank you to all who made it a fun success! And a big thanks to Heather and Teresa for filling in for me for the past two Sundays! I am refreshed and rested and renewed. Yay God!
Our focus for today is reversing financial adversity, but it truly applies to any adversity. Spiritual Truth is Truth however you apply it, and finances is just one venue to do that. As we said at the very beginning of this series, “Its not about the money, its about consciousness.” And two or more of us can gather and “awfulize” about anything no matter where we are or what we are doing. Even on vacation, when it was an incredible heat wave in California, it was possible for “God to bring what was needed to the classroom of my mind.” Instead of driving off to sightsee in the heat, my sister and I went to the Fitness Center every day, worked out, did yoga and then got in the pool. It was all pretty good! There were 8 pools; we got to 4 of them! So little done, so much left to explore…. Ahhh prosperity!
Whatever we say about our financial circumstances, the most pivotal point is that we “let something good be said!” We need “Truth-side economics” for our true good to unfold. And whether times are “good” or “bad” in race consciousness, it is critical to our well-being and prosperity that we stay centered in Truth. It is both a psychological and spiritual truth that whatever you focus your mind on, you get more of it! So if you “awfulize” about your lack of anything, you are feeding the lack. That does not mean you ignore adversity or setback or discouraged feelings. The question is where are you ultimately going to invest your energy….digging deeper into the pit or finding a way out?
Here is how the invitation sounds in Scripture, in the very first Psalm, which Butterworth quotes on page 117 of Spiritual Economics.
Psalm 1:1-3
BOOK I, Psalm 1
The Two Ways
1 Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper. (NRSV)
As Butterworth goes on to say, you keep yourself in tune with the Divine Laws by “meditating on Gods’s law day and night” and you begin by taking full responsibility for your own life. It is within your 12-Powers to create the Consciousness that is the Climate of your life. The weather will be whatever it is; what is the Climate that you desire to have in your life? It is not without risk that you co-create this Spiritual Climate of your life. As Butterworth so clearly says on page 119 of Spiritual Economics:
In every attempt in life there must be the possibility of success and failure. We must have the stability and the perspective to deal with both success and failure in spiritual poise….Life is fundamentally a matter of growing, a growth experience. Missing the mark is one of the ways we learn to hit the target. Failure is a vital part of achieving success. We have erroneously thought of success as “getting there” while actually success is “earning the right to be there.” And earning means learning.
The bottom line question is what am I learning, what are you learning and what are we learning that creates the kind of emotional, psychological, physical, financial, spiritual climate that we want to live in?
All of life, all of it is ultimately a spiritual process. We are learning every day from our uniquely human experiences, the Truth about our Divinity. Every failure, every setback, every heart break that we lean into and learn from breaks us open for more of that Divinity to shine through. Every moment of embarrassment, shame, rage, pain, grief, outrage, insult, resentment, guilt, human shortcoming and indignity is an opportunity for self-love. That is the how of it, loving ourselves in our humanness so that we can love others in theirs. It is just part of our curriculum to learn how to love ourselves as God loves us no matter what. It is the ONLY path to healing and realizing our true Wholeness.
As the opening poem says, “Every cry of the heart is attended by light’s own arms.” No matter what our moment or time of suffering, Love is there. Whatever the weather, it will pass. It is the Climate we are creating. What is the climate we are seeking? How do we hold space and learn to co-create that Climate of Love that we truly want? We are never out of the flow of the endless creativity of the Universe. Whatever the weather, it will pass. It came to pass. The storms of our anger will come and go. The fires of our outrage and indignation will burn out eventually, leaving transformation in their wake. The floods of grief will ebb and the winds of worry will subside. What remains as constant is our faithfulness to that Higher Vision. Are we faithful? That is our question.
During my drive time home from St. Louis this past weekend, I was listening to On Being and Krista Tippett, as she interviewed Sen. Corey Booker from New Jersey. She doesn’t normally interview politicians, but she made an exception for Corey Booker and as I listened, I began to understand why. He is an African American Senator from New Jersey who essentially grew up with privilege in a white neighborhood. He has an Ivy League education and all the “right” pedigrees and connections. He chose to live in the projects in Newark as an adult, as Mayor of Newark, to learn from his constituents. Remember what Butterworth said about learning? Corey Booker had to actually earn the right to be there, in the projects, by learning.
What he learned is that how he sees the world around him has everything to do with how that world is. If he sees only the poverty, despair, the drugs and the decay; that is all he will experience. If he sees the Divinity in each person (his words) then he treats each one with dignity and respect no matter what and he begins to experience his constituents as fully human/ fully divine beings. Holding that consciousness has allowed Newark to begin a resurrection process and to find new life and prosperity. Honestly, Sen. Booker sounded like the ideal Unity Minister in this interview!
He spoke of supporting Gov. Chris Christie, with whom he disagrees on all issues, during the time of the debates when Christie was belittled. Booker got a lot of flak from other Progressives for that. His response: when politics becomes a place where I can no longer love my neighbor then it no longer a place for growth and I refuse to give in to that. When Krista Tippett asked him what was it that kept him going, he described his awakening in the 10-2 letter words he learned in Kindergarten: If it is to be, it is up to me! And when Tippett asked him what he tells people when they ask, “where do I start?” he gave a list of spiritual practices each day that maintained his faithfulness to seeing his community through the eyes of God.
It was as simple a practice as making his bed each day to affirm order and meditating and spending time in prayer before starting each day. It sounds like the Psalmist, doesn’t it? I have to admit that before I left on vacation, I was getting a bit bogged down in the negativity of race consciousness, even in Unity. The patio replacement had cost $1100.00 more than we had budgeted. How would we ever replenish the building fund? How are we going to be financially solvent and do the Community Room Floor? So many Unity churches are closing, including the one in western Massachusetts where I had done my internship and Overland Park in Kansas City was having to sell their building, move and downsize. All I was seeing was the “awfulizing” stuff and starting to feel fear about Unity of Ames. What if no more people came to UCOA, what if the pews on Sunday are all empty, what if, what if, what if? Enough, Deb! Stop it!! What are you seeing, woman??? What eyes are you looking through? Have you learned nothing??
That is not faithfulness, now is it? Not so much. What I needed was a break, a reset, and refresh button on my consciousness. We have a divine purpose here at Unity of Ames. Our purpose is to make God real, to make Love real for all who walk through our doors, no matter who they are. That is what I want to see here. How do we move in the direction of our dreams so that all who come through our doors begin to discover their true Divine Love nature? I want more people to find us because our spiritual practices at Unity offer a path to turn adversity into good; lemons into lemonade and life into a loving adventure.
Every day we are waking up more and more to Love. If it is to be, it is up to us!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb