September 17, 2006

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Meditation

Reading

Message

 

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 17, 2006

TAKING FLIGHT:
FLYING SOLO

Wow! And welcome to Friendship Sunday, all of you, and I do mean to each and every one of you. And especially to those of you who have been dragged here by your friends who’ve become very weird since they started coming to The Maine Beacon. I know it must have taken a lot of courage for you to come this morning, even if it was just to finally get them to stop pestering you! I do apologize if that was your experience. We tend to get a little excited about this Science of Mind stuff and our spiritual community here.

For those of you who don’t know this, a few months ago, back in March at our Annual Gathering in Vancouver, B.C., our organization which was called United Church of Religious Science, officially changed its name to United Centers for Spiritual Living. Actually, this name change had been in the making for several years, causing not a little consternation among many of our branch churches. People, in case you hadn’t noticed, really don’t like change—or at least they don’t think they do. Is there anyone here really loves change?

And yet, a very large premise of this teaching, this philosophy, is the one-liner that our founder, our own Maine-born Dr. Ernest Holmes is so famous for, “Change your thinking, change your life.” And still we don’t like change. Go figure. Well, as he also used to say, this teaching is very simple, but it’s not always so easy to apply.

Now the really interesting thing to me is that Ernest Holmes, no relation to me, by the way, Ernest Holmes never thought of this teaching as religion and certainly never had any thoughts of it becoming a church. But so many people who studied what he taught thought it was the best religion they’d ever found, and because they were afraid the teaching would be lost after he died, they finally got him to agree to forming it into a church organization.

And I think it was a good idea at the time. It served as a bridge between religion and philosophy. Ernest never claimed to have had any special revelation or anything of that sort. He simply studied all the world religions, all the great philosophers, and all the sciences, hard and soft, and pulled together the universal truths from them all, and then synthesized them into a system that anyone could use to make their life work better, in any area of their daily affairs.

So there’s nothing mysterious here. In fact, Ernest felt this teaching really utilizes a lot of common sense. And then he’d say, of course common sense isn’t so common.

But one of the most important ideas that he emphasized was that these teachings must always be open at the top. And I think that is one of the most brilliant, courageous gifts that he left us with. How many founders or leaders of churches do you know, past or present, who encourage you to not accept anything they say unless it rings true for you personally, and to stay open for bigger and better ideas in the future? Doesn’t sound like most of the churches I’ve been in, and I’ve been in a lot of them.

But Ernest thought we should be “open at the top for new understandings and insights.” Neal Vahle in his book Open At The Top: The Life of Ernest Holmes says that Ernest “often stressed that Religious Science ‘should revere all religious concepts,’ and that the Science of Mind was ‘never a closed book’ but continued to gather spiritual truths ‘from every source and every person’s experiences.’” He says that Ernest “did not want to leave the impression that he considered his teaching a final revelation which must at all costs be maintained in its purity as the authoritative basis of Religious Science.” (p. 89)

And there have been changes since his death in 1960. One very huge shift has been in the way most of us, I say most of us because I know there are some hold-outs, but most of us no longer consider ourselves “Christian,” but rather transdenominational, beyond any one specific denomination. We take the truth wherever we find it. And we use it. We use it.
So what does that mean really, open at the top? I think it means directed by Spirit, by some Higher Power, Love, God, call It whatever you may. And I think it means each individual being directly guided by Spirit. And then following that guidance, even if it looks very different today than it did yesterday.
Rumi said “You are the source of your milk. Don’t milk others! There is a milk fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.”
I was talking on the phone the other day with my mentor Rev. Lloyd Barrett at Mile Hi Church in Denver, and he told me that he’d prepared a message for the Spirituality in Business group he leads once a month on Thursday mornings, for some of the business leaders there in Denver who are interested in using these Science of Mind principles in their businesses. But 2 days before he was to give the talk he’d prepared, he said Spirit woke him up at about 4:30 in the morning and said, “Get up. You need to write this down. This is the talk you’re going to give.” So he got up and he received a whole new message for the group.

But when he took the material to the graphic arts department to have the visuals made up for the new talk, they said, “Now Rev. Lloyd, you know the guidelines are you have to have the materials to us 10 days before you need them.”

And he replied in his big booming, laughing voice, “Well, you’d better inform Spirit of your guidelines, ‘cause I just got this this morning!”

See Spirit doesn’t care about our “guidelines.” It doesn’t care about all our rules and our interpretations of things, or our expectations of how things need to continue to be the same as they always have been. It doesn’t care what room the cheese has always been in. It wants you to find the cheese where it is now. But It does want you to find the cheese. That’s the important thing, not the room it’s in.

What I’ve come to really know this past week is that our words are very powerful. “Change your thinking, change your life.” Change the way you say things, change the words you use to describe things, and the things in your life will change. Words are things. And I want to tell you that when we changed our name from church to Center for Spiritual Living, it was not just words on some paper somewhere.
And especially not here at The Maine Beacon. We have taken this name change very seriously. When we find ourselves saying church, we immediately correct ourselves and say Center. And we’ve been changing other words as well, like from congregation to group or family; and from minister to community spiritual leader (CSL). We’ve been doing that progressively now for several months. And what difference has it made? What effect has it had? Has it really made any difference?
Oh, yes! It has so much changed our perception, so aligned our thinking in a whole new way of being that people here are receiving guidance for our community that is truly phenomenal. Last week 2 members, Debra and Ed, were led to start holding half-hour discussions after the services every other Sunday to look at ways we can use the principles that were talked about in the message in our every day lives, with whatever is going on for us at the moment. Those discussions will begin next week.

Also last week, 2 other members, Pat and Carole, were led to organize prayer vigils for The Maine Beacon: One will be every Wednesday evening from 7 to 7:30 wherever you are, which we started this past Wednesday; and the other is a 24-hour vigil held one Saturday each month, which we started yesterday. Each person who participated took one hour to pray, meditate, or just hold the light for this spiritual center for that hour.

These were great changes for our community. But that was just a start. On this past Monday at our CORE Council meeting during our visioning session and then during our leadership development segment, we were clearly guided to change the format of our Sunday Celebration services. So we’re now looking at how that will evolve, and starting next Sunday we’ll sit in circle and discuss what it is we need to feel served in this spiritual community.

I invite all of you to come and sit in circle with us and let your voice be heard or just listen to what comes out. I also invite you to bring with you, if you’d like, it’s not a requirement, but if you’d like, to be placed in the center of the circle any symbol that might represent your intention with Spirit in your life, whether it be a greater expression of love, or beauty, or freedom, or abundance, or peace, or whatever. Just bring a symbol of that. I’m thinking about bringing a little vase as a symbol of my intention to be an open vessel for Spirit to flow through. And if you want to bring some munchies, you’re welcome to do that as well.

The YES! program for any children will continue to be available as usual. And most importantly, please bring your ideas, your concerns, and be thinking about what spiritual community means for you. We’re very clear that it’s time to get out of the box. In fact, you might say the sides of the box have been blown off. And what freedom there is in that. I know that together we’re going to create something new and wonderful that truly works for us.

When I chose this topic, Taking Flight, for this month, I never dreamed of what that was really going to mean for this spiritual center, The Maine Beacon. But words are powerful. And one of the things I’m really learning is that friends don’t let friends fly alone. We really do need each other to fly. The days of the one-seater planes are gone. The irony is that we all have to do our own personal spiritual work, but we need each other for support to do it. We are the hands and feet and voice and mind of God.
I want to share with you some of my own experience through all of this change. Just before the CORE Council meeting on Monday night, Bill had an interview for a job in Denver, which he was very excited about because of the fabulous money they were offering him. And that night he decided to take the job, which meant he’d be moving to Denver and coming home every 3 weeks for a weekend. Let’s just say I was not happy. As one of my dear friends said, “Money is money, but Bill is Bill.”

And then came the CORE Council’s decision to make all these changes, which felt really good at the time. But lest you think that I’m standing up here with no reservations or fears about any of this, let me just share with you how I felt on Tuesday morning when I woke up in an anxiety attack, feeling like the twin towers had fallen on me and I was in the ashes and not so sure the phoenix was going rise.

And I lay there in my bed praying, “Spirit, you’d better help me here. I really don’t know what to do.” I absolutely had to trust. So I calmed myself and then got up and did some journaling, and before the day was done, I had been reassured by Tom and Debra and others through their wonderful support of comfort and enthusiasm that we were on the right track. I knew Spirit had heard me and had sent these angels to me.

But then, the next day, Bill came home and told me the most amazing news. When he told his boss he was leaving, he was offered a 33% increase in salary to stay, and he accepted it. Anyone here ever been offered, ever heard of anyone being offered a 33% raise in salary? Is the phoenix rising? You bet it is!

See, we can flap like chickens or fly like eagles. We can flap around the chicken yard. We won’t get far. It’s not too graceful. Or we can fly and glide with grace like the eagles. The sky’s the limit. And all we have to do is to be willing to get out of the chicken yard, out of the box, to ask and then trust Spirit. “They that wait upon the lord will be lifted up on wings of eagles.” (Psalm 91)

At the Gathering in Vancouver someone said, “We are a transformative force.” And that statement was so in alignment with truth that everyone started using it. We are a transformative force. I believe it. I feel it. Taking flight means taking a quantum leap of consciousness. It means being Spirit-based, prayer-based. It means tuning in to the incredible control panel that our bodies are and the messages they’re giving us.

If I hadn’t honored my feelings when I woke up Tuesday morning, if I’d just pooh-poohed them, or denied them, or repressed them, I could not have had the results I had. But because I listened—for once!—to what my body was telling me, paid attention to my feelings, honored them through journaling, which is just one way to do it, and set my intention to trust Spirit to guide me and help me, I opened the way for something wonderful to happen.

Alexander Graham Bell said, “When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

And I close with these words from aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh who was the first American woman to receive a glider pilot’s license. She said, “If you let yourself be absorbed completely, if you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

Surrender to Spirit. Trust Spirit. Let it take flight in you. It’s within you. It is you. It’s your Higher Self. It’s the wind beneath your wings. Let It raise you up like an eagle and let you soar. And know that you are absolutely supported in this spiritual center to do that.