October 22, 2006
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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
October 22, 2006
CORE CONCEPT ONE:
THE PUMPKIN PATCH
The title of my talk today is The Pumpkin Patch.
Don’t you just love this time of year. Fall has always been my favorite season. I love the smell of the crunchy leaves, the crisp cooler air, all the doorways decorated with mums, and corn stalks, and of course pumpkins.
This is the time for the Great Pumpkin to rise up out of the most sincere pumpkin patch. It’s getting close, just another week or so. I trust you all have your pumpkins picked out and ready to carve. Next week my talk is entitled
Jack-O-Lantern Carvings.
But this week it’s The Pumpkin Patch. We’re always looking for that most sincere pumpkin patch. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Well, Linus thought he’d found that most sincere pumpkin patch. Linus believes in a strange hybrid of a jack-o-lantern-scarecrow-Santa Claus character he calls the Great Pumpkin. And he believes the Great Pumpkin will arise out of the most sincere pumpkin patch on Halloween night and deliver toys to all the true believing children.
Of course, Linus becomes somewhat obsessed with his self-appointed mission to not only receive toys from the Great Pumpkin for his undying belief, but he actually wants to be in the garden when the benevolent giver of Halloween toys rises from among the pumpkins.
Charlie Brown aks him, “When are you going to stop believing in something that isn't true?” How o0ften we cling tenaciously to our false beliefs!
Linus says, “When YOU stop believing in that fat guy in a red suit and the white beard who goes, "Ho, ho, ho!"
We’re always trying to put God in some kind of suit or other description, aren’t we? To describe that which is really indescribable.
So Linus and Lucy carve a pumpkin together, and as Lucy scoops out the innards of the pumpkin, Linus is appalled. “Ohh. You didn't tell me you were gonna kill it!” Poor little Linus gets sick at the thought of the pumpkin’s innards. There’s plenty of people who get upset at the thought of really knowing what Consciousness, God, is. We have our ideas about It, and we don’t want them messed with.
While Linus is writing his annual letter to the Great Pumpkin, the rest of the Peanuts gang are getting into their costumes for the big night—Charlie Brown with his ghost sheet with 18 holes. Poor Charlie. And they stop by the pumpkin patch and try to convince Linus to come trick-or-treating with them.
Lucy is obviously embarrassed by her little brother who is ridiculed by the other kids. But Linus patiently explains the merits of the Great Pumpkin to Charlie Brown, dismissing Charlie's non-belief as a matter of religious differences. Are you relating? Are you Lucy or Linus? Or maybe you’re Charlie Brown. Even Snoopy is hiding his embarrassment behind his dark glasses. "There are certain times when you prefer not to be recognized!" he says.
Well, the gang leaves for trick-or-treating, but Linus talks Sally into staying with him in the pumpkin patch to wait for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. “Hey, aren't you going to stay to greet the Great Pumpkin? It won't be long now. If the Great Pumpkin comes, I'll still put in a good word for you.”
And then he realizes what he just said. “Good grief! I said ‘if’! I meant ‘when’ he comes!” Calmly, “I'm doomed. One little slip like that could cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by.” It’s that belief in duality, that we could be separated from our Source, that’s so deeply embedded in our subconscious, it just slips out, doesn’t it? How often we speak our word and then doubt the power of it.
So Linus and Sally are in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come, while the others go collecting candy, except for Charlie Brown, of course, who gets a rock. And Linus learns some great lessons there in the pumpkin patch. First off, there are three things you don’t discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin. And secondly, never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.
And isn’t that the truth? If our awareness is taking a break, it’s fertile ground, like a wet sucker, for getting all kinds of thoughts stuck in our subconscious.
After their trick-or-treating, the gang ends up at a Halloween party and Snoopy, after a disastrous apple-bobbing episode with Lucy, leaves for the pumpkin patch. And when he arrives, Linus mistakes him for the Great Pumpkin. “There he is! There he is! It’s the Great Pumpkin! He’s rising out of the pumpkin patch!” And then he faints. He goes unconscious to the truth, because he doesn’t want to see it.
And when Sally sees it’s just Snoopy, she’s just a little miffed that she spent the whole night in a pumpkin patch, missing out on all the treats and the party. “I was robbed! I spent the whole night waiting for the Great Pumpkin when I could have been out for tricks or treats! Halloween is over and I missed it! You blockhead! You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin and all that came was a beagle! I didn’t get to go out for tricks or treats! And it was all your fault! I’ll sue! What a fool I was. And I could have had candy apples and gum! And cookies and money and all sorts of things! But no, I had to listen to you! You blockhead. What a fool I was. Trick or treats come only once a year. And I miss it by sitting in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead. You owe me restitution!”
You did it to me. It’s your fault. I may be a fool, but you did it to me. Oh, poor me, poor, poor, pitiful me. It’s not my fault. You talked me into it. I’m not responsible. Isn’t that how we think sometimes, when we’re in that victim role?
Here we are, divine beings, yet look how we behave sometimes. And then of course, Linus wants to do it all over again next year. Why? He doesn’t learn. He doesn’t want to learn, change his mind. His Halloween might have been a failure, but it’s a classic show. It was nominated for 3 Emmys. Why? Maybe it’s because we see ourselves in it.
But the question that it always left me with was what is a sincere pumpkin patch? The Great Pumpkin rises out of the most sincere pumpkin patch. The report Sue read this morning was perhaps attempting to answer this question.
So I checked Webster’s, which defines sincere as being “without deceit, pretense or hypocrisy.” That’s where the Real Self, the Great Pumpkin Self comes from. The ego is full of deceit and pretense. And yes, very often hypocrisy. It says one thing and does another. It says whatever it thinks we want to hear at the moment, and then behaves from the subconscious beliefs we hold so tightly. More about that next month!
Webster’s also says sincere is “being the same in actual character as in outward appearance; genuine; real.” In other words, when we’re cut into and are having our innards pulled out for carving, we’re not found rotten inside. What you see is what you get.
And Webster’s says sincere is not adulterated; uninjured; whole. And this is the truth of each and every one of us, of the pure Essence of us, of the Real Self of us, the Real person we are. We are spiritual beings and we are pure and innocent and untouched. Yes, we have experiences in this human life, and yes, we feel the pain of them or the joy of those experiences as if they are the reality of our lives. But they are only fleeting. They are the way we interpret them to be.
For example, try this little experiment. Think of a situation that occurred with you and some other person, someone in your family or a friend. It doesn’t have to be anything significant, just something that happened. Mention the incident with just enough information so that the other person can recall it, and ask them to describe what happened. You’ll be amazed at the way they tell the story. It won’t even sound like the same story you would have told. We perceive our own reality.
We have choice, volition. I love that word volition. It’s an old word; we don’t hear it used that much today. But I like it because it not only means choice, but it’s the act of using that choice. What’s the good of having choice if we don’t’ use it? We have choice about what we think, or if we consciously think.
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield said, “Why am I sweating? I own the club!” We own the “club.” We own the situation, the problem, the condition, so why are we all anxious about it? What we know is. . . It’s just a thought and I can change it.
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.” I don’t’ know about “fate,” but another way to say it is that we sail in the wind, which blows as it will, but we set the sails. It may even be that we can direct the wind, but we have to start where we are. So if we can’t control the wind, we can certainly direct the sail. But we do have to direct the sail.
Our own founder Dr. Ernest Holmes wrote in Living the Science of Mind that there’s no new harvest without a new seedtime. (p. 139:2) What seeds are we planting and what harvest will they produce? We live in a world of much darkness. Some have likened this time to the Dark Ages and believe we are now entering a renaissance. It’s as if we’re all headed for the edge of a cliff. And we can be like the lemmings who run over the edge and scream in terror as they perceive they are falling to their death, or we can be like the eagle who knows it will fall into a glide as it spreads its wings in flight. In reality, we all are safe, but our experience, or perception, of the cliff can be very different. Surrender, trust, that’s what is needed now in these troubling times.
The world needs our Lights more than ever. That’s why we need to know our Essence—our Light, so we can let it shine, so we can uncover it and let it shine and dispel the darkness in the world. But we have to start within. Start right were we are. Ernest Holmes said, “A little light in a dark room is still light.” The brilliant color of the leaves remind us that as we die to the old, we must keep our lights shining so the new can enter.
We are incarnations of the Great Pumpkin. It rises within us, not in some location. The pumpkin patch is heaven within us, not some place. This week a friend decided to do something that really upset me. I was way into my upset when I started to respond with my thoughts about it. Fortunately, I was able to stop, recognize where my reactions were coming from, and then come from my GP (Great Pumpkin) Essence, and respond to this friend from a place of honoring the decision that truly had come from a heart-place.
Being sincere doesn’t mean reacting from exactly what we’re feeling at the moment. It means coming from the Real Self, the God Self, not the ego self that’s just a ghost of who we truly are.
In the reading this morning, the “behavioral observation experts” identified three aspects of sincerity. First, in a sincere pumpkin patch, the other pumpkins don't move away from a pumpkin that has fallen on hard times and succumbed to rot.
Second, in a sincere pumpkin patch, pumpkins are mellow and don't race around in a crazed way. An old Chinese proverb says, “One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.” And 18th Century artist Nathaniel Emmons said, “One principle reason why men are so often useless is that they. . . divide and shift their attention among a multitude of objects and pursuits.” We’ll be talking more about this next month.
And third, in a sincere pumpkin patch, vines are organized to allow access, so no vine rises up to trip the unwary as they walk. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.” And it was Andrew Jackson who said, “One man with courage makes a majority.”
We are living in the most sincere pumpkin patch, the field of all possibilities, the ground of all being, the very Consciousness that is our Source. It is all there is. The Great Pumpkin is within us. Let’s remember that this week.
