Aurora Movie Shootings - A Conversation

Yesterday, Sunday, July 22nd, I didn't deliver a prepared service, thus there is no full text version today.

Instead I asked the congregation if they needed to process their feelings around the armed assault at the Century 16 Theater in Aurora, Colorado.

Here are a few points from our conversation, in no order or particular context:

• Pray for the deceased and for the injured
• Pray also for the perpetrator… "wouldn’t his mother like us to pray for him, too?"
• See beyond the actions and look for something spiritual (this doesn’t absolve him from the worldly/judicial consequences of his actions)
• Identify him as spirit, not as his actions (not: he’s an idiot, jerk, evil, etc., but: he is a child of God, unaware of his divinity and acting-out like an idiot, jerk, in an evil way, etc.)
• Our spiritual identity is always there.  We may cover it up, reject it, and deny it, but it’s always there
• Attempt to see those who died (and those who were injured) as being spiritually alive
• Feel your feelings
• Practice forgiveness
• Reach out others (the lonely, struggling, depressed, disenfranchised, etc. )
• Remember John 13:34, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Bless everything,
Rev. Brad

All Paths Lead To God In The End

When I was in seminary, one of my classmates was from New Orleans and she always asserted that Jesus was Cajun because

1. He liked to serve fish to his friends.

2. He could make his own wine.

3. He loved to be on the water water.

(Selected members of the congregation get up as if to give another opinion, and speak their part – Lastly a woman stands, approaches the microphone or front of the sanctuary indignantly, and declares why Jesus was a woman)
(Man)
My Cajun friend had 3 good arguments that Jesus was a Cajun:
1. He liked to serve fish to his friends.
2. He could make his own wine.
3. He loved to be on the water.
(Man)
My Black friend says that Jesus was Black because:
1. He called everyone "brother."
2. He liked Gospel.
3. He couldn't get a fair trial.
(Man)
My Italian friend gave 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Italian:
1. He talked with his hands.
2. He used olive oil.
3. He had wine with every meal.
(Man)
My California friend says clearly Jesus was a Californian:
1. He had long hair and a beard.
2. He walked around barefoot all the time.
3. He started a new religion.
(Woman)
I think that Jesus had to be a woman:
1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was no food.
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it.
3. And, even when he was dead, he had to get up because there was more work to do.

Thank you everybody for helping me to tell that joke, and thank you __________ for throwing a little uncertainty into everybody as you approached the mic.

We have many ideas about Jesus… such as He is our way-shower, and teacher (Unity’s view), or that he is special, unique, and set apart as different from the people.

We also have many religions: Christianity – Judaism – Islam - Taoism – Hinduism – Buddhism –Confucianism – the primal religions (Aborigines).  Though some have one God, some have multiple gods and another has no God... they all have their own perspective in how to attain the experience of what we call God.

We also have multiple ideas about God: vengeful, angry, jealous, punishing, and loving.

Which idea about God is right?

Which idea about Jesus is right? Some will say that he is our personal savior and the one and only way to experience the Presence of God.

I’d like to read to you the first paragraph of a letter I received last week.

“Dear Unity Church of Anderson,

I've done some research & learned that people who go to a Unity Church believe that, no matter what a person believes religiously, nothing bad will happen to them after they die. I've read that, while most members don't believe in reincarnation, some do believe in it. Those who do believe in it believe that each life is a time of preparation for the next life & eventual perfection. I'm a Christian &, in my understanding of the Bible, a person has to believe that Jesus... is Christ to have eternal life after this one ends. They have to believe that asking Him to be your Lord & Savior is the only... way a person can receive it. In the Bible we're also told that a person only has this 1... chance to do that. Every person who doesn't choose to do it will go to the place... with blazing fire & never...

get out of it. If you accept Christ, believing what I've said, & Unity ends up being correct, the result will still be positive. If you continue to practice Unity & Christianity ends up being correct, the result will be more negative than you can even imagine.”

Which way is right? Is there but one right way and if we don’t take that path we’ll burn in Hell for eternity?  Would a Loving God treat His children that way?

I believe that when we go beyond words, go beyond semantics, opinions, ideologies, the need to be right, the need to save… when we go beyond interpretation, we all share the same dream: to know God fully; to "think" as God, to "see" as God, to "feel" as God, the "hear and speak" as God.

To do the best we can at living a life through the lens of pure Love … if we would sit and feel for it… is the experience that our very cells are longing for and crying out for.  

The question that I believe all seekers carry with them is, “How do I find God? What is the one right way to the experience of God?”

I can’t tell you that because I am not the last word for you on your life, you are. 

The one right way for you to travel to the deeply personal and intimate experience of God is the path you take, because, I believe that all paths lead to God in the end.  I can’t tell you what your path is, although I can suggest and encourage you, but in the end you will decide your path, your way… by the decisions you make each and every day.  I can walk with you and support you in your choices (even though I may not agree with them)… but in the end you choose to consciously join with God.

Not only am I not the last word for you on your life, you’re not the last word for someone else on their life, they are.

Caveat: this doesn’t mean if we live at home under the protective umbrella of our parents’ love, care, guidance, and support that we can say to them, “The minister at Unity says you’re not the boss of me…I can do what I want.” :o)

I’m talking about in the spiritual realm of things.  I suggest that you make a decision and have that experience, then you can determine if that brings you closer to, or farther away from, the conscious experience of the presence of God

We don’t need to tell anyone what to believe. That’s why, in Unity... why I always say, “I invite you to…..”  I am not the last word for you on your life, you are. 

But… do you silently believe that you know the right way and think that everybody should 'be Unity… or follow A Course In Miracles’?  When we think that way we are the same as the hard line “one-way’ers.”  We’re just softer about it. 

We’re not the last word for anyone on their life, they are.

All paths lead to God in the end.  Some just take longer because we allow ourselves to be distracted with shame, anger, guilt, fear, judgment, perceptions of superiority, perceptions of inferiority, ideas of insufficiency or inability, addiction to reliving the pain and suffering of the past, and on and on and on.
All paths lead to God in the end and I believe there will come one beautiful day when we awaken to find that we all have shared the same dream…the dream to know God deeply, fully, passionately; to switch our primary identification from our personality to the indwelling Christ…to our divinity.

          We are wrapped up in our personality and our “doing” as our identification rather our in spiritual identification as fully loved, holy, whole, child of God… swap the order of human being to Being, human.

We all want that new identity but the fact of the matter is we come up against our limitations all the time and we stop

A line from A Course In Miracles is  “Our job is not to be without limitations but to overcome them.”

Our job is to escape from our every idea of limitation.

It’s so very do-able. Let’s close our time this morning leaving the doing behind for the moment and just be with this song.
(Play Front Range’s “One Beautiful Day”)
We began today's talk with silliness and fun and ended on a more serious note. God is a God of Love and Joy.  Let's take doing what we need to do to join with God seriously and  have fun with it!

Bless everything,

Rev. Brad 

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Overcoming a Lack of Love - Full Text

"Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Romans 12:2

Renewing your mind switches you from worldly vision and identification to spiritual vision and identification, as we will see.

Confucius once said:  "Happiness does not consist in having what you want, but in wanting what you have.”

With respect to Confucius, I would tweak that a little to say, “Happiness does not consist in having what you want, but in accepting (regarding as occurring, not denying) what is present in your life.

When we do that we are in the present moment and that’s where change occurs.

We learn in life from watching others. We learn from the positive examples of what to do, and from the negative examples of what kind of change that will bring in our own lives. A great deal can be learned from both sources, for all of life is a classroom.

The story I will share with you is a true story. It is the story of a real person who overcame the greatest lack and loneliness in her life…the lack of love.

(From When God Spoke To Me, by DavidPaul Doyle. Pages 184-188 “Awakening”)

STORY:

• Story by Kare Castle
• Her hands trembled as she clutched the steering wheel and repeatedly prayed, “Please, God, help me to see him through your eyes.”
• 3 days since she found her husband at home in a pool of his own excrement, unconscious from a drug overdose
• Now on her way to meet with him and doctor at psychiatric hospital
• Doctor had warned, “Be prepared to hear some very difficult stuff.”
• What, she wondered, could be more difficult than what she already knew?
• For instance… six years earlier she awakened on night with a deep sense that something was wrong.
• Couldn’t shake feeling.  This was different than when the teenagers didn’t come home late.  Then other reassuring thoughts would enter her mind – this was different.
• Kare started to pray, “Please God, show me where he is”
• At that moment she heard her husband crying and a clear distinct thought came to her – he’s by the pool
• Walked across entire apartment complex in her nightgown and found him by the pool, drunk and crying
• “I’m a terrible person” said her husband, “you shouldn’t be married to me”
• He went on to confess he got drunk regularly after work (2^nd shift, Nurse) and that he’d been with a prostitute that night.
• Rather than be angry, Kare was in fear and self denial that night six years earlier
• “This can’t be!” she remembers thinking.
• Her husband had always been her higher power, her source of security and self-esteem
• Five years later in the waiting room of a rehab hospital she cried as her husband reassured her that all he needed was some help and he’d be ok
• She said she desperately needed to believe him, a need she had clung to desperately as he had started and stopped more rehab programs than she could count in those five years
• All through this 5 year period she had a nagging feeling that all was not well, still, she ignored the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as he made excuse after excuse about why he didn’t come home after work.
• She ignored her own wisdom that his excuses for quitting jobs and leaving support groups were neither reasonable nor credible.
• She ignored the voice for God as it came through other people who lovingly told her the truth: her husband had a serious addiction problem
• She chose to believe his lies because they supported her fantasy of how she wanted life to be – she wanted a marriage and a normal family
• Kare had been a young single mother and thought being married would erase her shame
• Being married, having a husband… he became her perceived redeemer and she wasn’t about to let that go of that
• After moving twice in search of the magic environment that would solve everything, Kare decided church would provide the spiritual nurturing she needed so badly
• But sitting alone in the congregation she was embarrassed by her husband’s absence
•  Feeling depressed and lost, she says, “God offered her another way.” Start a spiritual support group for women
• This group kept her spiritually focused between meetings as she joyfully prepared for them
• This focus was crucial when her husband came home one day and confessed to using narcotics that he had been stealing from the hospital (remember, he was a nurse).
• Kare says she felt a moment of panic, but because she had been strengthening her spiritual support system and intentionally connecting with God, it had been easier for her to hear it
• At church right after that she enrolled in a class based on Maria Nemeth’s book, The Energy of Money.
• The underlying philosophy of that book is the way we handle money is the way we handle life.
• While working on a “money biography” she responded to most of the questions with, “I don’t know,” or, “I don’t remember” when she had an epiphany, “Oh my God,” she said out loud. “I have handled money completely unconsciously and that is exactly how I have been living my life – unconsciously.”
• In a moment of complete surrender she said a prayer that changed her life, “Dear God, please wake me up.”
• That was the night before she found her husband in the pool of his own excrement – an apt but devastating metaphor, she says
• And so we are back to the beginning of this story as she drives to the hospital chanting, “God, help me to see him through your eyes… let me see the perfection in this moment”
• As she sat in the stark hospital room and listened to him confess horrifying behavior related to sex addition, she remained calm
• As the behaviors he recounted became progressively more shocking, Kare says, the voice for God became progressively louder, over powering all the other sounds in the room, “All is well. Your peace and safety lie in your relationship with me.”
• Finally, she writes, her husband stared bewilderedly at her and said, “I don’t understand how you can be so calm.  I am a monster.”
• Kare said she believed the Holy Spirit spoke through her in that moment as these words came from her mouth, “You have done some terrible things, but I know the truth of who you are.  You are a child of God and for that reason, I forgive you.”In a simple prayer she said, "Dear God, wake me up!"

In that moment, her soul sought God—not a new place to live, or as she called it, “a new “magic environment” that would solve everything.

I may not know what your particular difficulty was, is, or may be, but I believe most of us have been through one or more difficulty, and it has brought us to that point where we have realized that Life is more important than material possessions and that we have realized that in the final analysis life is love… and the quality of our lives is dependent on how much love we express (extend) to both our inner world and the seeming outside world.

In that moment of intense clarity for Kare, she made the choice for love, and forgiveness” What a statement for this woman to make in that moment!  I believe she had to realize that through forgiveness no one can take love away from her."

In that moment of the expression of forgiveness she overcame, as I said in the beginning, the greatest lack and loneliness in her life… she experienced the Presence of Love. 

When you surrender – when you give up “efforting” on behalf of your unique individual point of view, life surges through you, changes happen and you begin “efforting” on behalf of the point of view of the Loving Presence we call God.

Now this very idea of living our lives for God, or from God, or through the eyes of God can be a very frightening prospect because we don’t want to give up our individuality.  You won’t have to; God will use your unique individual expression to demonstrate the power and presence of Love.  You will become a happier, more peaceful, incredible you! 

Each of us has a story, and there is more to be written of your life.  Your life is the story of your love… the opportunities that come to you to love. 

What better life to have than a life that is filled, both incoming and outgoing, with the greatest, of all… God's love?

Let love radiate into all the opportunities that come to you.

Bless everything,

Rev. Brad

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