Making the Connection, with Intention
March 10, 2010
I have been a member here for about 15 years. When I was visiting this Fellowship and wondering whether to join, the Seven Principles we have as UUs were very influential to me. All are important, but # 7 is at the core of my beliefs.
After Rev. Charlie’s first intro to “This I Believe,” I went home and wrote a longer version of this talk just to see if I could get it into words. I even had a dream about it. It was like a collage of my life’s different churches, study groups, ministers, teachers, and readings, which had all been influential to me.
As a child, I was always drawn toward the spiritual, even considering making a career in that direction. In college, however, amid many dorm discussions, and some really “tell it like it is” religion courses, I lost many of the literal interpretations I had held. From there, I wandered about into adulthood being lukewarm about religion, although it was always in the back of my awareness.
My first marriage of 18 years ended in 1984. Sometimes it takes a life crisis to wake a person up. I started exploring other practices: Eastern Religions, A Course in Miracles, other mystical writings, even a dumbed-down version of the quantum physics my husband talked about a couple of weeks ago. It scared me at first, but somehow I couldn’t go back to traditional teachings. What I was learning seemed to be TRUTH—for me, anyway.
So I guess I could say “God” changed for me. Now I believe God is the benevolent, creative Source, the All, an Intelligence that forms and holds together the Universe, knowing and connecting each thread of existence.
Because of this I believe we all have a mission, but not a grand one necessarily. Maybe it’s to learn forgiveness, to find common ground, or to support justice. It takes INTENTION and presence to do this, and conscious awareness about how to react to life’s dramas. We need to come from a nonreactive place, and to DECIDE to respond with love and peace. We are each other’s teachers; sometimes our adversaries are the best ones for us.
To do this we need to get out of our heads to a higher place of watching or witnessing. Only then can we see a situation as it is, without our own egos and dramas.
All of this supports connection or “Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part,” our Seventh Principle. For me this web transcends the physical and encompasses the All, the benevolent Force, God.
A story I love which I think illustrates this web concept so well is about a baleen whale that was caught in some netting in a bay. When nothing else worked, it was concluded that the only way to free it was for a team of divers to go down to help it. After much struggling, the whale was able to swim free and did so with joyous circles around the divers. Finally the whale went to each one of the divers and nudged him or her as if to say “thank you.” The man who had cut the whale’s mouth free had noticed that the whale eyed him the whole time. He felt a connectedness that would change his life forever.
So I believe in this connection, and finding common ground. Outside in the patio here on the Fellowship grounds, on the brick we had engraved the words “We are all one.” I believe this is one of the spiritual principles that will enable us to be who we are meant to be.
