Midweek Faith Lift
May 7, 2025
The Power of Zeal- Enthusiasm
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
April 18, 2025
Community Moves 9,000 Books with Love
Last week in Chelsea, Michigan, more than 300 residents came together to help Serendipity Books move to a new location—by hand. In a joyful display of teamwork and goodwill, volunteers formed a human chain stretching across downtown, passing over 9,000 books from one pair of hands to the next. In just two hours, the bookstore’s entire collection was moved—no moving trucks, no forklifts, just people helping people, one book at a time.
This story mirrors a beautiful spiritual principle: that transformation often happens not through grand, solitary efforts, but through small, shared acts of connection. Like the passing of a book from one person to another, spiritual growth flows hand to hand, heart to heart. We are all part of a larger chain - each link essential, each gesture sacred. As we move the stories of life, love, and learning forward, we become both the bearers and the beneficiaries of a greater wisdom that unfolds when we show up for one another.
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
Affirmative Prayer for today: Infinite Spirit, Energy of Love, move through us with a holy fire that ignites us to stand up for the greater Wisdom, for the truth of love. Together we can move mountains for the greater good. Amen.
This past weekend, Su Nagle and I had the joy filled experience of attending a retreat with Dr. Neil Douglas Klotz at the Shalom Spiritual Center in Dubuque. It is a Franciscan Center so it has the earth care energy and openness and the loving energy of Pope Francis. You could feel it when you entered the building as it seemed welcoming from the get go. I will humbly say that I left for the retreat filled with anger and an inner drumbeat of outrage at all that is going on in our country right now. It didn’t take much to get me started on a diatribe of “all that is wrong and bad in the world right now!” How’s that for fun? As well as a litany of who was to blame! It was truly consuming me and closing my heart.
I wasn’t afraid, I was just mad, constantly mad, to the point I couldn’t stand myself! I wasn’t filled with Zeal; I was clogged with gunk! I had a lot of energy, a lot of energy! And I couldn’t seem to shake it or transform it. I was just constantly angry unless I distracted myself and even that wasn’t helping.
Prayer was helpful but only when I was praying. It didn’t have any true impact because it wasn’t landing in my heart. My heart was closed and my mind was filled with outrage, contempt and lots of negativity. I was constantly in my head, arguing with all that I saw as “wrong” and there really has been a lot to argue about. I needed to hit the reset button for sure as I realized I couldn’t go on like this!
I wasn’t experiencing the Enthusiasm of Zeal, because it wasn’t “en theos” or anchored in God, in love. When we experience true enthusiasm, or “en theos” it is from the heart, from Spirit and it is an energy of wholeness, it is holy zeal, truly a spiritual power. Frenetic energy of anger is not zeal. Frenetic energy of any kind is not truly Zeal. As Rev. Linda writes on p. 93 of Divine Audacity
“Frenetic energy is wasted energy, flowing out in turbulent emotions. Zeal on the other hand is directed energy, focusing on an ideal to be realized.” The energy of the book movers in the opening story is evidence of this holy zeal or directed energy. Ok then, what is it that I need to realize or “make real?” How do I direct my energy?
I really was at a loss. I have been saying the right words lo these many years, and feeling them, but recently, my heart has not been in them, not fully. I have been mad at God, feeling angry. It seemed like the more I have talked about love the more all that is “not love” has shown up, going as far back as the Sandy Hook shootings which happened in my first 6 months as a minister. Hmmm, as if what I said or didn’t say has anything to do with that! HUMILITY, Deb! Remember humility. To be really honest, I spent much of last year in survival mode with pneumonia and now all this! I speak a lot about letting go of “attachment to outcomes” but in these times it has been a challenge to practice what I preach.
One thing that Neil Douglas Klotz said that truly landed in my heart was that there are several ways of letting go when you are in conflict with another. Sometimes it is necessary to untangle the rope that binds you in the conflict. This involves a looking within at what is yours to understand and love into wholeness, better described as “doing your own work.” At other times, you just drop your end of the rope! He took us through the Aramaic words of Jesus that described this which really resonated with me. I realize that when you have untangled your part of the conflict it is much easier to then drop the rope and not yield to the temptation to pick it up again! I needed to drop the rope!
As Rev. Linda says in Divine Audacity
Zeal is enthusiasm, it is our eagerness for life, our interest in and optimism about our intentions and our plans. Zeal is noticeable. People living at hight levels of zeal are often described as energetic, bright (as in filled with light), zestful and exuberant. (p.94)
My light felt very cloudy and my sense of purpose dull and lifeless. The shift for me came in Neil Douglas Klotz’s sharing the energy and meaning of the Aramaic Lord’s prayer. The first line, Abwun d’bashmaya grounded us all in the very breath of the greater Reality, alaha, as the ancients understood it.
The connection with the greater Reality is through breath, in the very word abwun. There are two kinds of breath- naphsha, the individual breath and ruha, the larger breath in which our naphsha, individual breath resides and is contained. We in the west want to cultivate our naphsha our individuality, and we forget that we are a part of something bigger, ruah. These are both a part of our experience of the seen and the greater Unseen of which we are a part. I had lost my connection to the ruah, the Breath of the greater Reality in which all exists and lives. God is a verb, a beingness, not a noun, And the connection comes through the heart. I had lost heart, I had lost enthusiasm, I was not “en theos.”
The invitation was to connect in song and dancing the whole body prayer in the energy of that living Reality, ruha. The next major connection for me came when Neil shared the third line of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic: Teyte malkutakh. In Matthew 6:10 it reads, “Thy kingdom come.” He pointed out that te means “come” as in “please come” and it is repeated, teyte, which conveys an intense desire, really, really come! We really need whatever we’re asking for! I resonated deeply with that for sure.
Interesting that malkutakh is feminine gendered in Aramaic, so it is “queendom” not kingdom. And the roots of these words in Aramaic indicate as Neil writes on p. 34 Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus:
….a fiery vision focused through a personal center, the heart. The vision of where to go or what to do is combined with the energy to accomplish it….On a personal level, malkutakh is what says “I can” within us. This I is part of our human experience and we can’t wish it away even if we wanted to.
This to me, friends, speaks of the Enthusiasm of our spiritual power of Holy Zeal. He writes this line “Thy Kingdom come” in translation as:
May the creative breath,
the fire of consciousness
from the big heart of Reality
really arrive!
And to that I say a heartfelt Amen!
After three days of dancing and sharing these words of prayer in song as we danced provided enough repetition to penetrate the wall around my heart. After listening to the wisdom and knowledge and being in the presence of Neil Douglas Klotz, my heart broke open once again and on the final day, I cried. Tears of joy, of holy water, of love and of peace as once again I truly connected in my heart with the energy of Yeshua and the love that is the Greater Reality that holds us all. It felt like a true resurrection, spiritual and emotional breakthrough that was a turning point for me, for sure. It felt biblical!
“The divine spark within us is most alive when we serve one another.” – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Do small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa
Ecclesiastes 4:9–10
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
It is in the true spirit of Zeal that we go forth in the energy of enthusiasm, “en theos” saying with focused energy, “I can!”
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb