Martin Luther King, Jr., in being asked to publish some of his sermons, wrote in the preface to his book, “. . . a sermon is directed toward the listening ear rather than the reading eye. . . I offer these discourses in the hope that a message may come to life for readers of the printed words.”  This is my hope for you, dear reader. - Rev Linda

April 2, 2006

THE BLOOMIN’ YOU:
APRIL SHOWERS

Good morning. It’s so good to be back. Before I begin my talk this morning I want to share with you some of the news and a few highlights of The Gathering 2006 in Vancouver. I wish you all could have been there. There really is no way to describe the experience of high consciousness we all experienced. It was truly vibrations of excellence. Every session began with a deep spiritual practice which opened hearts and lifted us up through prayer, music and ritual.

There were about 450 people in attendance, including lay people, practitioners and ministers from many foreign countries around the world.

Of particular interest, I’m sure, is the vote to change our name. Although United Church of Religious Science is still our legal name and will continue to appear on all legal documents, our new d.b.a. is United Centers for Spiritual Living. So instead of UCRS, our organization is now called UCSL—United Centers for Spiritual Living.

You may also be interested to know that Home Office will be moving in 2008 to either, in alphabetical order, Dallas, Denver or Phoenix. The cost of the move will be $500,000 which has already been set aside. We expect to save $250,000 per year by moving out of California, so the cost of the move is anticipated to be made up in the first two years. If you’re interested in a dialogue on the move, check out the website for UCRS or UCSL.

There was a pledge drive for UCSL at the Gathering and over $800,000 was raised! This money will help support, among other things, new ministries. So you can see the great interest in that area!

And for those of you who are thinking about attending The Gathering next year, it will be held in Miami. And the following year in Kansas City. So I want to plant the seed now for you to consider setting an intention to be there. It’s truly an inspiring, uplifting experience to be in the presence of so many like-minded people and feel the energy that creates.
And of course, as Barry mentioned earlier, there’s more information on the A&E table.

Well, this morning we begin our series The Bloomin’ You with April Showers. So who here has the feeling of being overwhelmed with life, of being out of balance and fatigued? Are there times when you feel like you could just burst out crying at any moment? Over any little thing? Are the showers ready to fall?

Congratulations, and welcome to the 21st Century. In the 20th Century we created all kinds of machines and technology to do most of our physical and mental chores. And then onto the scene came all those hundreds of TV channels to watch, the internet to scan, computer games to play, and all the activities to do and places to go, to say nothing of all the “shoulds” we get every day from the advertisements we’re bombarded with. That was the Information Age which focused on logical, linear, mechanical thinking.

And along with all that, our jobs became more intense and included longer hours, and our stress levels went up from all the overstimulation and overwork, and from all the thousands of choices we have every single day in our lives.

Whew! So, from all the wonderful inventions, have we ended up with more leisure time to think, to contemplate, to simply enjoy our lives and all that we have? Or have we become stressed out, burned out “stimulus junkies?”

At our Renewal Circles the last couple months, Debra Emmanuelle introduced us to Weather Wisdom in which we looked at the various stages of our humanness– the infant, the child, the adolescent, the adult, the mentor, the sage, the creator and the transcendent. And we saw that we have all the wonderful qualities of each of these aspects of our being. And the qualities of each area are positive because they help us grow and continue to nurture us at various times in our lives.

But in thinking about the last century and all that developed, I can’t help feel that in many ways we, as a nation, as a culture, have been very much displaying the behavior of adolescents. Think back for a moment to when you were a teenager. . . . . . For most of us it was a time when we were experiencing more freedom, which gave us more choices, but we didn’t always use our highest wisdom in making the choices we did. We wanted it all. Remember staying up till the wee hours of the night and then having to get up in a couple hours to go to school or work? It was a great feast that had been set before us, and we wanted to eat it all. Like those all-you-can-eat buffets.

And this is how I think we’ve been in these past decades which have given us so much. We are spiritual adolescents. The feast has been laid out before us and we want it all. We’ve been told we can have it all, in fact, that we “should” have it all, that we’re just not complete if we DON’T have it all.

But what’s happened is that instead of it making us happy, we’ve gotten overstuffed and overweight, overtired and stressed out and frazzled. Just like adolescents going hog-wild with newfound freedoms in their mental immaturity, we’ve not grown up enough spiritually to handle all that’s been set before us.

So we find ourselves pulled every which way, stretched to the limits, and drained of energy, enthusiasm and passion. Anyone here with me?

But I want you to know there is hope. We’ve ended the 20th Century, and now we’re entering not only a new era, the 21st Century, but a new age. We’re now moving into the Intuition Age–out of the Information Age and into the Intuition Age. And in this centenary we’ll be focusing more on creative, lateral and emotional thinking.

So don’t be surprised if your emotions are coming to the surface like those April showers, or if you find yourself becoming less enthralled at the idea of getting more stuff, or stuffing yourself with just any old food, or climbing the corporate ladder, or conforming to what the marketing pros tell us we have to conform to, and instead begin to feel deep stirrings within to be in nature more, to turn off the TV and turn on to the sounds of the birds singing, or the rain falling on the window, or the sound of your own heart beating.

We are turning from an outward-focused life to an inward-focus with a much greater interest in and proclivity to contemplation and simplicity. This is a wonderful time to be an observer of humanity. I believe we’re in a time of religious renaissance, where the old, out-dated, antiquated ideas of God and theology are falling away, and we are the ones who will have to create the religions of the future, to shape them into something that can be of benefit to humankind. And I believe they’ll be much more about spirituality than religiosity. Those of us living in this 21st Century are doing it now, whether we’re aware of it or not. It is not a mistake that we’re here at this time.

I’ve spoken in the past about 3 levels of being—the physical, the mental and the spiritual. But as I’ve been thinking about and contemplating all these things I’ve been talking about here this morning, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s another level. There’s an emotional level that’s just as important as the others. In fact, I believe it’s this emotional level that’s the bridge from the mental to the spiritual.

In her book Spiritual Fitness, Caroline Reynolds, whose workshop I attended at The Gathering, talks about the inevitability of change and how it can cause us to experience what has been called a dark night of the soul. She says, “The best way to deal with your life changes is neither to fight them nor to force them. Instead, you will need to develop a strong belief that the universal intelligence is supporting you and knows better than you what is best for you. [Now she’s not talking about something outside you.] Sooner or later you’ll have to relinquish control, and allow these changes to take place in your life at the right time, trusting that the universal life force will not let you go backwards along your spiritual path. . . At this point, trust in your newly developed powers of intuition and your deepened connection with your soul to carry you over these changes.” ( p. 124)

In making these shifts in our lives, which we will all come to see that we must make, we’re very apt to experience a dark night of the soul. In other words, we may need to face our shadow, that part of us that harbors all those fears that like to scare us so. And this is a time when those April showers, those tears may want to, need to flow. But usually what we do is to try to suppress the tears, to keep them inside, swallow them. Because when we cry we feel vulnerable.

Caroline says, “Expressing our vulnerability is traditionally seen as a weakness (although this is gradually changing), so we have learned to suppress and conceal our pain and fears. Consequently, when you go inside and start to reconnect with your true self, you may well at first encounter feelings of shame at the pain you carry inside you.”

But you see, facing the shadow is exactly what we have to do. And in truth, she says, “The greatest pain you can experience comes from trying to block this release. . . The human experience is one of duality and your weaknesses are all a part of who you are in this lifetime. By using your soul-level awareness to remind you that your infinite self is filled with light and love, you will focus more and more on those aspects of yourself and gradually your shadow will retire into the background.” (p. 125)
Think of the years of sorrow and pain we’ve imprisoned in the cells of our bodies and not allowed to come out. As we make this switch from living so much on the physical and mental levels of being up to the emotional and spiritual levels, we will most likely experience tears of pain. I like to think of them as healing waters. We need to let the healing waters flow—release all that we’ve suppressed—and let it be okay.

We need the waters, the showers, in order to bloom. Caroline Reynolds says “The best way to deal with this period of your life is to step back a little from the world and take time to be gentle and caring with yourself. . . . You are like a newborn baby and you need to nurture yourself lovingly while you pass through this stage of vulnerability.” (p. 126)

We need to love ourselves; honor the divinity we are; and nurture ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually in order to live balanced and happy lives. It’s only in this way that we stand ready for whatever comes our way and to serve.
We need to begin using “affirmative action” by using our ATMs - affirmations, treatments—spiritual mind treatments, and meditation so that we can bloom. The time has come for us to turn inward. To let the showers come.

I close with this beautiful quote from Anais Nin. “And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” So let the tears fall. April showers bring May flowers. And bloom where you are.