September 3, 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
September 3, 2006
TAKING FLIGHT:
FREE-FORM THOUGHTS
This morning we begin our new series of talks on Taking Flight. And how appropriate that we begin on this Labor Day weekend with Free-Form Thoughts.
To begin with, what is free-form thought anyway? The dictionary says free-form is “having or being an irregular or asymmetrical shape or design.” So if thought is “irregular,” that sounds to me like outside-the-norm type thinking.
When I think of Labor Day, it always brings to mind the parable the Jewish teacher and prophet Jesus of Nazareth told about the laborers in the vineyard. You’re all familiar with the story, I’m sure. He compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who goes out to his vineyard early in the morning and hires some laborers who agree to work all day in the vineyard for a penny, which in today’s terms, here in the United States anyway, would be, say for around minimum wages working a 12-hour day for straight time, somewhere around $65 to $75.
A few hours later, he hires more laborers who agree to work the rest of the day for whatever he deems fit to pay them. So they don’t know exactly what they’ll be paid, but they’re willing to work anyway. And then twice more, a few hours later, he hires more laborers who agree to work the rest of the day for whatever he deems fit to pay them.
Then just about an hour before quitting time, he sees some laborers standing around with nothing to do and hires them, again for whatever he deems fit to pay them.
Well, everything seems fine, the grapes are getting picked, the work is getting done. . . until an hour later at the end of the work day, when he first calls up the last laborers he hired, just an hour ago, to give them their compensation. And what did he give them? A full penny, $65 to $75. And then he continued to call up the next last people to be hired and paid them all a penny.
And this continued until those who’d been hired first, in the early morning hours, were called up to be paid. And when they received their penny, they were just a little upset. And they complained.
“How come we only get a penny when we’ve been working all day long in the hot sun and they haven’t worked as long and they get a penny, too?! That’s not fair!”
But you see, it’s not about the morality of what’s fair or even about the physical work. What’s it about? What’s it always about? Consciousness. Consciousness. It’s always about consciousness.
In Learn to Live, Ervin Seale says, “The parable is conveying the teaching that there is an higher order of justice than that which is based upon appearances and external arrangement. That higher order of justice is based upon the law of agreement. What you agree with you will get. What you accept in consciousness you will receive in experience.”
He goes on to say, “This is a simple statement of the law that whatever the conscious and subconscious minds agree upon the spirit will validate and create. If you agree on a penny you will receive a penny, no matter how much effort you put into it.”
And then he says, “All around us are the effortful ones striving and struggling to attain, but always attaining only what they have accepted in consciousness. Around us, too, are the effortless ones whose work contains a minimum of struggling and striving and they, too, attain, not according to the measure of their struggle and effort, but according to their consciousness of acceptance. This is justice in the kingdom of heaven, and it scatters our old ideas of justice as we learn them on the earth. We cannot change our thinking until we change our ideas, or until we get new ideas.” (p. 114)
Free-form thought. Thinking outside the norm.
And so it is with our labor. We create our job experiences, as with all the other experiences in our lives, through the beliefs in our conscious and subconscious minds.
Before we can fly, we must first have the thought of flying, a consciousness of flight. How can we fly in our jobs, our careers, our livelihoods? What would that look like? What would free-form thought be?
Well, as I was thinking about Labor Day, three ideas seemed relevant to me. First, that the purpose of Labor Day, ironically, is a day off from work, a sabbath, a time for rest, for doing NO labor. How many of us here are actually planning to take a day off tomorrow and do no work whatsoever? Time just to gather wool, to think, to meditate, to contemplate, to pray, or play, with no objective except pure enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment—en-JOY-ment and rest?
When we take time off, it’s an opportunity for our bodies to renew, our minds to relax, our emotions to level out, time to experience a greater sense of peace and of healing.
The second thought I had about Labor Day was about work and what real work is. And what did I say earlier? It’s always about consciousness. So many people today are experiencing tremendous stress around their jobs. But guess what! “There is no stress in the universe. There is no stressful situation.” That’s what James Melton says in his book Your Right to Fly. “You can’t take the stress out of the air and put it in your stomach. . . You see, we choose to look at something as stressful. We become wrapped up in it emotionally, then choose to let it affect us. In other words, we think stressful thoughts. That’s the only kind of stress available to us.” (p. 72)
It’s always about consciousness. Try this little experiment. Bring to your mind now this scene. A little puppy as just been hit by a car, and it’s lying in the middle of the road. It’s hurt. “There’s some blood and it’s whimpering a little. That’s not a very comfortable visual imagery, is it? You may feel sympathetic and compassionate for the puppy; you might even feel sick at your stomach.”
“Now switch your attention to a rose garden. It is outside and the roses have a fragrance that fills the air. Reach down and smell an individual rose. Feel the softness of its petals—almost a silky smooth feeling. What color is your rose? Be careful of the thorns on the stem for they are quite sharp; handle them gently.” (p. 76)
Now notice how you were able to switch from one idea, one thought, one circumstance to another and how different you felt. That is always available to us. In times of stressful thoughts, we can always go to peaceful thoughts immediately by simply doing it, by turning our thought to something peaceful and beautiful. And by doing that, changing our thinking, we allow our bodies to stay healthy as we walk through whatever circumstances and experiences we’re encountering in the outer world. Remember, it’s always about consciousness.
And lastly, Labor Day made me look at my sense of worth in the work I do.
Who would like this $20?
(Crumple up the $20 dollar bill.) Who still wants it?
Well, what if I do this? (Drop it on the floor and start to grind it into the floor with your shoe. Then pick it up.)
Now, who still wants it?
My dear beloveds, no matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it. Why? Because it didn’t decrease in value.
It was still worth the same amount no matter what I do to it.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. And we can begin to feel as though we are worthless.
But you see no matter what has happened or what will happen, we never lose our value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, we are still priceless. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do, or what we’ve done or haven’t done. Or who we know, or what we look like, or what we say, or what we have. Our worth comes from who we are. And who we are is our Essence.
People love you for your Light, your Essence. People are drawn to you because of your Light, your Essence, your divineness. It’s not because of anything else. It’s not because of how you look, or what you wear, or what you have, or what you can give, or where you live, or how old or young you are, or how well you can do anything, or your personality. It’s ONLY your Essence that draws people to you in any genuine way.
And when we know this, really know it, what a relief it is. Because there’s nothing we have to do. No one to impress, not even ourselves. The only thing we have to do is uncover our Light. To let our little Lights shine. To be a beacon. How freeing is that?
According to the dictionary, free-minded means to be happy-go-lucky, carefree, lighthearted, cheerful, sunbeamy, sunny. All we have to do is be a sunbeam. And we already are that. We’re already Light. All we are is pure Essence, pure Light. So all we have to do is to be. (Sing . . .)
A sunbeam, a sunbeam, Spirit made me as a sunbeam.
A sunbeam, a sunbeam, I am a sunbeam of Love.
We are all sunbeams, beacon Lights. I close this morning with this poem,
Your Right to Fly by Martha Belknap (See Your Right to Fly, p5)
Isaac Newton sat one day
And pondered by a tree
And as he watched an apple fall
He thought of gravity—
What keeps us all upon this earth?
What pulls us toward the ground?
Why don’t we float or fly away?
An answer must be found!
The energy which holds us here
Defines this time and place
It focuses our bodies
On a present point in space—
But thoughts transcend the world we know
And curiosity
Can soar beyond the farthest star,
Unlimited and free—
Our spirit brings our minds in tune
With energies on high
No gravity can hold us back
We have the right to fly!
And as sunbeams, as Light, as pure Spirit, we CAN fly. Do you have a free-form thought for flying? Because it’s always about consciousness.
