Midweek Faith Lift
December 13, 2023
Second Sunday of Advent-Peace
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Reflections
November 29, 2023
After a 17-day effort by rescuers, 41 workers trapped in an under-construction tunnel in the Himalayas have been freed. Following days of drilling through rubble, a team of "rathole miners" – workers experienced in narrow tunnel excavations using handheld tools – were sent in to dig through the remaining 40 feet. The miners managed a breakthrough in just over a day, creating a tunnel through which the workers crawled out.
“When you're doing a mountain rescue, you don't look for someone who has a PhD in rescue operations; you look for someone who knows the terrain.” - Rory Stewart, British author and diplomat
Affirmative prayer: Infinite Presence, I give thanks for those who have gone before me to make the “crooked places straight, cut the bars of iron,” (Isaiah 45:2), and show me the way. I pray that I can be such a light for others. Thank you, God, forever. Amen.
Wow, what a story, what a rescue, for sure. It seemed like the perfect story to highlight the pitfalls and aha moments in our understanding of peace, the next station on our journey of Advent to shine our inner light. Can you imagine being trapped in an underground construction tunnel with 41 other people for 17 days? No, I can’t either!! How do you maintain a consciousness of peace and cooperation in that kind of circumstance when everyone’s lives are at risk? It is interesting to contemplate how when solely focused on survival, humans are capable of maintaining a mindset of cooperation and peace. We, in truth, can have peace when we choose to do so!
Clearly, the people trapped underground and the rescue crew had to maintain a consciousness of peace, cooperation and stay in that focus for as long as necessary to accomplish the rescue for all. As I was reflecting on the energy of peace this past week I came across a quotation from John Lennon:
Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make,
something you do, something you are and something you give away.
I have to believe that this is a great description of how the trapped workers responded during their 17-day ordeal so that all of them could survive. Surely hope and faith were also a part of this journey!
This brings us to a new understanding of the notion of peace as a verb, not a noun or adjective. We are accustomed to thinking of peace as a state of mind or an outer condition that is achieved when there is an absence of conflict or fighting. We prayed for the cease-fire to hold in Gaza so there would be the possibility of peace. We hope that someone who may be holding a grudge against us will find a way to forgiveness and to a place of peace with us. We also hope that we can do the same, right? Every Sunday, we sing the Peace Song, saying let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me! And in truth it does begin with me! And it also ends with me, too!
We have been reflecting a lot on our human condition that we are hard-wired for survival, which has been a good thing, up to a point. Our amygdala is the primitive part of our brain that perceives a threat and reacts to it without engaging our frontal cortex that might pause us to ask, is this threat real or not?
Clearly, the people trapped underground perceived the very real threat to their lives and we don’t know how each one reacted. We do know that they must have decided to cooperate because all of them got out alive, so a peaceful choice is possible, even in the most challenging conditions when our very lives are at risk.
Let’s take a moment and ponder that truth, a peaceful choice is possible even in the most challenging conditions even when our very lives are at risk. But to make that choice, we have to practice peace on a daily basis, on a regular basis for it to become our first response rather than the last resort! Peace like all other spiritual practices is an inside job and truly does begin and end with us, both in mind and heart, for sure. Only we know what goes through our minds, and often that is a really good thing! We have learned to engage brain before we speak, most of the time, anyway!
The real crux of the matter of peace is exactly that: what goes on in our minds in response to our experiences of life, of other people, or groups of people. The bottom line question for clarity about actually practicing peace is to ask yourself, “Could that vexing person—you fill in the name—walk safely through the highway of my mind?” And if not, there is no shame in that, just the very humanness of our reptilian brain and the perceived threat that this person or circumstance represents. Our anger, resentment, guilt, irritation are all part of our human experience and that is ok. That is our hard-wired amygdala response, and we are after all, still human!
Because we are human, we are also capable of something more, something beyond our initial reaction. Truly, a heartfelt peaceful response to this person, circumstance or event calls on us to cultivate a practice of peace, which is not our first response. That does NOT mean that it cannot be our next response or our ongoing or continual response. We are capable of holding a both/and kind of response when we practice it! We talked last week about humans being meaning making beings. We want to know what something means in order to respond to it. What if we cultivated a daily practice of giving ourselves, and others the benefit of the doubt? When we think or want it to mean the worst possible thing, we pause and just allow it to be. Breathe!
This is very much in alignment with our idea of our own, inner holy trinity of our human/divine/observer self. To practice peace we step into that consciousness of our observer self, noticing our feelings and reactions when we feel challenged, offended or hurt. Our feelings are not peaceful, and that is ok, just notice and without attaching to them. From our human experience, we note that the negative reactions can cling like Velcro and the more grace-filled and peaceful response can seem like Teflon.
We have the power to choose to not attach to the worst possible story, to not replay the negative interaction a million times in our head. Of course, I never do that, for sure, I just replay it 500,000 times, like the stars in the frame shot of the Webb Telescope!! LOLOLOL!!! This is where our discussion of Karma and the third Unity Principle, the Law of Mind Action really kicks into gear. If we continually hold thoughts of injustice, outrage, anger, revenge, retribution, in mind, why are we surprised when these thoughts come around and bite us from behind.
Just recently, something really bit me hard, karma from the past with my ex-husband, and I left the house to run errands in an especially foul mood. So what kind of responses do you think I got from store clerks, other drivers, other shoppers and the bank teller at the Credit Union? Hmmmm...not the best for sure. Why was everyone is such a bad mood, I wondered! I didn’t cause that! And furthermore, I could think of all kinds of reasons to stay in my present state of outrage and non-peace; we can always do that. Righteous indignation does a great Velcro cling!
However, a very wise person in one of my SEE classes at Unity Village once said, “If you find yourself in hell, don’t stay there!” I chose to pull over, park the car and pause to watch this little “righteous indignation show” I was putting on for all to see. Breathe, Deb, is this how you want to show up while Christmas shopping and running errands? There is much power in the pause when we stop to really look at ourselves, isn’t there? What kind of energy did I want to put into my little part of the Universe? Could I begin to give away peace instead of indignation? Would I begin to feel more peaceful and less reactive if I stepped into that energy? Well, yes indeed, I could and I did and amazingly other people started responding differently! What a concept, right?
Richard Rohr writes of Jesus and karma in his November 10, 2023 blog, “Allowing the Flow”
I am convinced Jesus taught from a karmic worldview. “You cannot pick grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. A good tree will bear good fruit,” he said, “and a bad tree will bear bad fruit” (Matthew 7:17–18). Jesus also said, “If you show mercy, mercy will be shown to you” (Matthew 5:7; Luke 6:37) and “The standard you use will be used for you” (Mark 4:24).
Jesus sought to create a deep sense of personal choice, responsibility, and freedom in the here and now, and not just disconnected payoffs in the afterlife. But we have understood much of the gospel in terms of divine threats and artificial rewards—a delayed schedule of merits and demerits. This deeply distorted the gospel’s transformative message.
I believe Jesus teaches that rewards and punishments for behavior are inherent and now, and only by karmic implication are they external and later. Karma, rightly understood, creates responsible, self-actualized people instead of fear-based people. Threats of punishment or promises of candy later create perpetual adolescents and well-disguised narcissism at every level of Christianity.
And we can’t tunnel out of that narcissism until without practicing peace. When we begin to understand how peace actually manifests, we will begin to mature spiritually and we will see the light at the end of that inner tunnel. We will understand the words of Gandhi, “There is no path to peace; peace is the path.”
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb