Saturday, April 23, 2011
Lots of Great Video of Me in the Pulpit
I just wanted to share with you that the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, where I have been doing my Ministerial Internship since August 2010, has a Vimeo page with lots of video from our worship life. There are some great links of sermons, children's stories and more. Here is a link of the most recent sermon that I delivered there. You might enjoy watching/ listening and giving me some feedback on content and/or delivery!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Commitment & Bliss
"Commit your way to something good that makes upon your life the great demand." These are the words of Howard Thurman in his book Disciplines of the Spirit. "Commit your way to something good that makes upon your life the great demand."
The notion of "the great demand" reminded me of spiritual teachings I had previously gleaned from New Thought minister Mary Manin Morrisey who often asserted that /a life dream in which we could imagine every step along the path to the goal/ was not a large enough dream. Our dreams need spacious gaps of unknowing, where our faith and The Mystery can symbolically have tea…and brainstorm foot falls and wheel tracks that we could not originally have imagined.
In Disciplines, Howard Thurman speaks of life itself as an irrepressible, robust, vital force manifesting / everywhere conditions are even remotely sustainable. He asserts that the mature discipline of commitment is the practice through which each of us can harness life's robust energy as fuel for our own intentional becoming. Thurman asserts: "It may be that only in the experience of commitment is an authentic sense of self born."
In the great conversations between the myth-scholar, Joseph Campbell and journalist and minister Bill Moyers. Campbell proclaims: "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of …the rapture of being alive." Campbell further asserts " that if you …follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you. " According to Campbell, invisible hands come to support you, when you commit to following your bliss.
"Commit your way to something good that makes upon your life the great demand." For Thurman, it is commitment that invites those invisible and supportive hands, commitment that taps into life's robust energy and helps us access the thriving rapture of being alive.
To what, therefore, are we committed?
In moving forward at the end of the semester, I ask myself again: To what am I committed? How committed am I? And how do I frame the dream-language of my own intentional becoming?
To become a Unitarian Universalist minister?
To be of service and to be sustained?
To intimately Know and show the face of the Divine.
How does life force infuse each notion of my path? And how am I with myself and with you, embodying each of these dream-phrasings?
To become a UU minister?
To be of service and to be sustained?
To intimately Know and show the face of the Divine.
How can I access and inspire the rapture of being alive?
In Thurman's voice at the start of the service, we heard that the duck* can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because the duck rests in the Atlantic. The duck has made itself a part of the boundless by easing itself into just where the edges of the boundless touch the edges of the duck. We heard that "A cat can make a hearth-rug a haven in the Infinite."
How can I streamline and fortify my sometimes frenzied human strivings, so that the journey becomes for me, and so also I become, a haven in the infinite? To this great demand, especially, I devote the power of my commitment.
*we heard a recording of Howard Thurman reading Donald Babcock's The Duck
Some discussion of this blog post is happening at the Facebook page "Help Fund Shams Cohen Through Grad School." Viewing is open to all and contributions are optional.
The notion of "the great demand" reminded me of spiritual teachings I had previously gleaned from New Thought minister Mary Manin Morrisey who often asserted that /a life dream in which we could imagine every step along the path to the goal/ was not a large enough dream. Our dreams need spacious gaps of unknowing, where our faith and The Mystery can symbolically have tea…and brainstorm foot falls and wheel tracks that we could not originally have imagined.
In Disciplines, Howard Thurman speaks of life itself as an irrepressible, robust, vital force manifesting / everywhere conditions are even remotely sustainable. He asserts that the mature discipline of commitment is the practice through which each of us can harness life's robust energy as fuel for our own intentional becoming. Thurman asserts: "It may be that only in the experience of commitment is an authentic sense of self born."
In the great conversations between the myth-scholar, Joseph Campbell and journalist and minister Bill Moyers. Campbell proclaims: "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of …the rapture of being alive." Campbell further asserts " that if you …follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you. " According to Campbell, invisible hands come to support you, when you commit to following your bliss.
"Commit your way to something good that makes upon your life the great demand." For Thurman, it is commitment that invites those invisible and supportive hands, commitment that taps into life's robust energy and helps us access the thriving rapture of being alive.
To what, therefore, are we committed?
In moving forward at the end of the semester, I ask myself again: To what am I committed? How committed am I? And how do I frame the dream-language of my own intentional becoming?
To become a Unitarian Universalist minister?
To be of service and to be sustained?
To intimately Know and show the face of the Divine.
How does life force infuse each notion of my path? And how am I with myself and with you, embodying each of these dream-phrasings?
To become a UU minister?
To be of service and to be sustained?
To intimately Know and show the face of the Divine.
How can I access and inspire the rapture of being alive?
In Thurman's voice at the start of the service, we heard that the duck* can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because the duck rests in the Atlantic. The duck has made itself a part of the boundless by easing itself into just where the edges of the boundless touch the edges of the duck. We heard that "A cat can make a hearth-rug a haven in the Infinite."
How can I streamline and fortify my sometimes frenzied human strivings, so that the journey becomes for me, and so also I become, a haven in the infinite? To this great demand, especially, I devote the power of my commitment.
*we heard a recording of Howard Thurman reading Donald Babcock's The Duck
Some discussion of this blog post is happening at the Facebook page "Help Fund Shams Cohen Through Grad School." Viewing is open to all and contributions are optional.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Eschatology
What follows is a paper that I recently wrote on Eschatology for a class taught by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker at Starr King School for the Ministry. In the class, students place themselves in theological conversation with our historical religious movement. Formatting this post is proving to be complex, so apologies if there are spaces in weird places:
Eschatology
What is the purpose of earthly life, where do we come from, what happens after we die? Planting myself firmly in the midst of what seems to be so for historical Unitarians (though perhaps not so for Universalists), it is true that I, personally, am much more emphatically engaged with the questions of purpose on earth than I am with what came before or after. While my mystical side appreciates any revelation I might receive about what, in Sufism, we call "pre-eternity" (meaning the before and after), I find that, as a UU, I remain solidly agnostic on that topic, and I tend to become enraged when anyone asserts that they are sure of what came before or what follows after earthly life, especially if they are trying to motivate me by their surety.
The best answer I've heard so far on questioning the meaning of life comes from the Islamic Tradition in which Allah proclaims "I was a hidden treasure that longed to be known, so I created the creation that I might know myself" (Hadith Qudsi). At the same time, it is said that the human being accepted a charge that no other part of creation would submit to, to be the location where the Divine might be fully manifest in form. Therefore it is also said that one must "know thyself to know thy Lord."
Shams Cohen
Unitarian Universalist Theologies
Due 3/18/09
Unitarian Universalist Theologies
Due 3/18/09
Eschatology
What is the purpose of earthly life, where do we come from, what happens after we die? Planting myself firmly in the midst of what seems to be so for historical Unitarians (though perhaps not so for Universalists), it is true that I, personally, am much more emphatically engaged with the questions of purpose on earth than I am with what came before or after. While my mystical side appreciates any revelation I might receive about what, in Sufism, we call "pre-eternity" (meaning the before and after), I find that, as a UU, I remain solidly agnostic on that topic, and I tend to become enraged when anyone asserts that they are sure of what came before or what follows after earthly life, especially if they are trying to motivate me by their surety.
The best answer I've heard so far on questioning the meaning of life comes from the Islamic Tradition in which Allah proclaims "I was a hidden treasure that longed to be known, so I created the creation that I might know myself" (Hadith Qudsi). At the same time, it is said that the human being accepted a charge that no other part of creation would submit to, to be the location where the Divine might be fully manifest in form. Therefore it is also said that one must "know thyself to know thy Lord."
For commentary on all of that, I'd like to share some teaching brought to me by Sufi teacher Fethi ben Halim. Fethi teaches that, not only does the knowing of all things point to a great knowing of Allah, but also that the "longed" in "longed to be known" is significant. In other words, the divine is known through longing. Fethi also explains that one's "Lord" is not a complete or objective knowing of Allah, but rather an expression used to convey one's particular and incomplete understanding of Allah at any given moment (hence your "Lord" is not the same as my "Lord" even though Allah is only one).
Actually this strikes me as very much in keeping with what I have recently come to understand about proto Unitarian Enlightenment and Romantic period ways of being with the Divine, especially when we get to folks like Coleridge and Schleiermacher, and later to Emerson and the Transcendentalists. These are all theological movements that stressed a personal relationship with the text and with reality as a way of intuiting one's personal truth about God. For example, Schleiermacher, whose thoughts were very influential on the 19th century Unitarians, wrote of "'the intuition of the self ' in and through the infinite'" (Livingston 100). Writing in the same era on the much beloved Unitarian topic of "reason," Coleridge professed:
Thirdly reason should be thought of not as a separate faculty but rather as a power, an intuitive apprehension by which the total personality – senses, will, and emotions – act as a whole. Apprehension of such supersensuous truth is the fruit of feeling and will in unity with sense and intellect; the heart acting upon and in unison with the head. Reason, therefore, is that power by which the faculties are united and are enabled to experience an intuitive apprehension of the truth. (Quoted by Livingston 90)
About which Livingston wrote:
For Coleridge the ideas intuited by reason are the objects of knowledge; they have real ontological status… Human Reason serves as the unitive power by which all disparate experiences and truths are bound together and apprehended as a spiritual Whole, because Reason is grounded in the one Being (God) who ' is the ground of all relations.' (90)
In other words: be a "supersensuous" witness to the sacred multiplicity manifest all around us, that, in truth, is part of a greater transcendent sacred oneness. Know yourself and your world in order that you might know your Lord.
Another similarity that this era of Christianity shares with Islam is the idea of offering a human prophet as an "example" of humanity perfected. Livingstone explains Schleiermacher's Christology this way: " Jesus Christ is best understood as the full historical realization of archetypical humanity" (108). Many of our Unitarian forebears, as well as Hosea Ballou on the Universalist side have offered Jesus as an example of what one might become and achieve as a perfected human being. And this notion of becoming a perfected human being in community with others who strive to embody the same perfections carries with it all the disadvantages, risks, and burdens that Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker spoke to us about during our class session on 2/18.
According to Parker these risks include: "relating to the present from the perspective of what should be", a should that we can supposedly bring about if only we are good enough, AND "an idealism that cannot completely fulfill us, since it is formed around absence" (ie the absence of the idealized world we imagine could be here now if we were only all working hard enough to have actualized our individual and communal divine perfection.) I would say that, within Islamic Sufism, I am at least spared from the full force of one of the other potential flaws that this theology can lead to according to Parker, that of "a hubris about our power" that can lead to us beating ourselves up.
Paradoxically, though Sufism commands each of us to be ever striving to perfect our qualities, it also at least acknowledges a power greater than our own upon which we are reliant and without which no advancement will occur. Ironically, Sufism's omnipotent God seems to be one of the things that our Unitarian and Universalist response to Calvinism might not permit me to hold onto without becoming a dissenter within our tradition. Yet this very God upon whom my fate depends is the only thing standing between my idealism and this "hubris about my power" that Dr. Parker mentions as a potential source of burn-out and mistake (dare I say "sin?").
I also have to say that I am an incredible relativist, and I believe that even though I have come to some surety about my own purpose in life, I do not claim to know the purpose for anyone else. However, I have some biases and suspicions! For me, when I came out to myself as I minister, I realized that my mission was: "to enliven people by nurturing the rediscovery and celebration of their own powerful Wholeness, and to create space for people to spiritually unfold, discover and celebrate the Power of Love and essential Oneness in beloved community " (from my web site:
http://www.soulemeregence.info/).That is to say that I think each of us has a gift to bring; that when we learn to love ourselves and are supported in community, we have the ingredients to create heaven on earth right now, without first having to become perfected, and without having to display perfection. But those are still huge and idealistic "ifs"- if we learn to love ourselves- that can be a whole life's journey, and if we are supported in community- and here I mean not just emotional support, but sufficient resources for our physical necessities and a community that functions in an emotionally healthy enough way that there is some place for our gifts to be received when we bring them forward.
The notions that Dr. Parker explained to us when discussing Saving Paradise about how to overcome this be-perfect-or-beat-yourself-up response to what is absent actually reminds me a lot of what I've learned about in Sufism. Dr. Parker said that we need to look at "this here and now as a place of blessing and struggle," and that we can be present in paradise now with an "attentive and reverent response to what is already here" as a way of addressing our justice work.
As I studied Sufi restorative approaches with The School of Conscious Healing, I was taught that any dysfunction is actually evidence of the presence of a divine quality: a divine quality currently veiled and trying to be born. So that, in any given moment of "struggle" or "distress," one can choose to identify the divine quality that is trying to be born and get a handle on how to aid in that labor and delivery. Friendship, love, justice, compassion, these are all divine names that might be masked in any moment by enmity, hatred, injustice, bitterness. Yet they are not absent, and so do not create an idealism formed around absence or a burn-out from unanswered longing. In Sufi theology (and also in Jewish Kabbalah), all of the manifest realm is formed out of dualities, or opposites, so in the moment when we discover we are fighting, the peace is also right there waiting for us to open to it.
Perhaps this is what Dr. Parker means when she says that Saving Paradise offers a radically realized paradise rather than one which we need to progressively realize over time. There is no there there, only here now. This place must not and cannot be colonized… because it is already paradise.We can see the tension between these two slightly different ways of approaching healing, or redemption, if we turn our attention to the current UU hymnals. If you compare the lyrics of "We'll Build a Land" to those of "Fire of Commitment," I think you can see this difference. "We'll Build a Land" sounds glorious, but is also really hard to believe in. "Bind up the broken … captives go free … good tidings to all the afflicted … dissolving all mourning … restoring ruins!" We've been trying to
build that land for quite a long time, and it ain't here yet! If that is the only marker of success, then we will beat ourselves up and experience burn out. However in "Fire of
Commitment," we speak of "beacons, courage, commitment, justice and freedom." These divine qualities are available here and now! We can call these forth from
ourselves in any given moment, marking our success and experiencing the fulfillment of our ideals by their presence.This radically realized eschatology, affirming and engaging with the holy present in the here and now, does seem like a more sustainable way to be engaged with the purpose of living. Perhaps that is why I feel repeatedly soothed by this Sharon Welch quote currently being used as an email signature file by our colleague, Sunshine
Jeremiah Wolfe:
"We are not ushering in a new age.We are not part of a grand cultural revolution.
We are not fighting the war to end all wars.
We are, quite simply, like all the generations before us, and all the
generations that will come after, learning to walk. " (26)Perhaps not just learning to walk, but certainly still far from perfect, too easily burnt-out by organizing around an absence, representing an unattainable ideal, learning as a people how to refrain from killing and harming one another and our eco-system. I believe this sustainable movement is possible through a love that remains consciously in relationship to the Holy, the Holy that is, truly, present in each moment, here and now.
Works Citedas-Shaddhuli, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rafia. Sufi teachings conveyed in
person 2001 – 2007.
ben Halim, Fethi. Sufi teachings conveyed in person. 2001 – 2006.
Burack, Charles. Classroom lectures on Kabbalah at SKSM 3/7 & 3/14/09.
Hadith Qudsi
Livingston, James. "Christianity and Romanticism." Modern Christian Thought:From the Enlightenment to Vatican II. New York: MacMillan Co, 1971.
Parker, Rebecca in SKSM UU Theology class lectures on 02/10/09
Qur'an.
UUA, Singing the Journey. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.
UUA. Singing the Living Tradition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Welch, Sharon. Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work. Routledge: New York, 1999.
www.soulemergence.info
Sunday, June 8, 2008
One Wild and Precious Life: The Gift of Mortality
This post was first written to fulfill a final assignment in a pastoral care class called "Dying & Grieving," taught by theologian and pastoral care specialist, Herbert Anderson, who teaches at the Pacific Lutheran Theological School (PLTS), which is part of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU).
The assignment was to imagine that you are the parish minister for a congregation, and you want to publish something in the congregation's newsletter reminding folks that we are mortal.
***
Shams Cohen
Dying & Grieving
Final Reflection on Finitude: for the (future) church newsletter
5/23/08
One Wild and Precious Life: The Gift of Mortality
Many UUs are familiar with our well-loved poet, Mary Oliver, who writes in The Summer Day:
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Philosopher and death sociologist Ernest Becker claims that most of the good works that we do in our lives are inspired by a subconscious and overwhelming terror at the idea of death. I find that idea to be a bit of a stretch, but I do agree that knowledge and certainty of mortality and of finitudes of time and energy can certainly be motivating.
Though much about death’s spiritual end is unknowable, much of the physicality of the death journey can seem frightening, and therefore perhaps not a favored subject of our meditations. Yet what wellsprings of yearning can we find in ourselves when we remember that our time here on Earth will come to an end? And when we allow ourselves to feel those yearnings, what do they inspire us to do, to be, and to become?
Many spiritual paths encourage us to contemplate in advance the moments of our dying. Some of these paths encourage us to use those thoughts as motivation for living a good and ethical life. Others of those paths encourage us to sustain a spiritual practice that might support us through the death journey, perhaps only for ease and comfort in the steps that we take on this side of death, but perhaps also for movements of the spirit that may or may not occur also after life has left the body.
The Sufi mystics encourage us to “die before we die,” to embrace rigorous spiritual practice designed to free us from the constraints of the yearnings and demands of our egos, so that we might be true vessels for universal love, compassion, and mercy , and perhaps have a chance to be of true service in this world.
In their early 90’s hit Get a Life, the hip hop band Soul II Soul informed us that, to get a life, meant to “be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective.” Another favorite songwriter of mine, Patty Griffin, uses knowledge of her finitude to find the courage to reject the cultural norms of scarcity, greed, competition, and war, choosing instead to embrace every option for love, both intimate and congregational. In her song No Bad News, Patty affirms her vision of this brave love, singing:
"I’m gonna find me a man, love so well, love so strong, love so slow, we’re gonna go way beyond the walls of this fortress. And we won’t be afraid, no we won’t be afraid, and though the darkness may come our way, we won’t be afraid to be alive anymore. And we’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us, ‘til there are no strangers anymore. "
Paradoxically, it is Patty’s willingness to look directly at death that makes her not only unafraid to be alive anymore, but also to be prophetic in issuing her call. As she sings to any potential perpetrators of the destructive dominant paradigm:
"You can’t have my fear. I’ve got nothing to lose. You can’t have my fear; I’m not gettin’ out of here alive anyway. And I don’t need none of these things, no none of these things, that I’ve been handed. Cause the bird of peace she’s flyin’ over, she’s flyin’ over and coming in for a landing. "
So Patty Griffin stares directly at her mortality and finds a way, with that stare, to clear away the detritus of our US American death culture, clearing instead a landing place for the bird of Peace. Now I’d call that a holy mystery revealing itself.
All pleasures come to an end, including the sensate and conscious pleasures of our lives in these bodies. Our lives struggling for survival, empowering freedom together, yearning and learning how to build a just and sustainable beloved world community. Our lives perhaps on these missions of meaning and mercy. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on the night before his assassination, we may not actualize our visions in this life time. But who do we become when we stop investing our prophetic visions with the power and strength of our own wild and precious energies? And who do we become when we remember and commit to our dreams?
We find the following wisdom teaching in the Jewish sacred text, the Pirkei Avot: "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it (2:21)."
Who are you today?
What work might you have to neither desist from nor complete?
Who are we today?
And who might we become, together?
What if we were finite and mortal?
What if time were running out?
How might we then embrace the gift, singly and together, of our one wild and precious life?
Please take a few moments to breathe. Be gentle and curious with yourself. And be with these questions.
Peace be with you, Blessed Be, and Amen.
The assignment was to imagine that you are the parish minister for a congregation, and you want to publish something in the congregation's newsletter reminding folks that we are mortal.
***
Shams Cohen
Dying & Grieving
Final Reflection on Finitude: for the (future) church newsletter
5/23/08
One Wild and Precious Life: The Gift of Mortality
Many UUs are familiar with our well-loved poet, Mary Oliver, who writes in The Summer Day:
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Philosopher and death sociologist Ernest Becker claims that most of the good works that we do in our lives are inspired by a subconscious and overwhelming terror at the idea of death. I find that idea to be a bit of a stretch, but I do agree that knowledge and certainty of mortality and of finitudes of time and energy can certainly be motivating.
Though much about death’s spiritual end is unknowable, much of the physicality of the death journey can seem frightening, and therefore perhaps not a favored subject of our meditations. Yet what wellsprings of yearning can we find in ourselves when we remember that our time here on Earth will come to an end? And when we allow ourselves to feel those yearnings, what do they inspire us to do, to be, and to become?
Many spiritual paths encourage us to contemplate in advance the moments of our dying. Some of these paths encourage us to use those thoughts as motivation for living a good and ethical life. Others of those paths encourage us to sustain a spiritual practice that might support us through the death journey, perhaps only for ease and comfort in the steps that we take on this side of death, but perhaps also for movements of the spirit that may or may not occur also after life has left the body.
The Sufi mystics encourage us to “die before we die,” to embrace rigorous spiritual practice designed to free us from the constraints of the yearnings and demands of our egos, so that we might be true vessels for universal love, compassion, and mercy , and perhaps have a chance to be of true service in this world.
In their early 90’s hit Get a Life, the hip hop band Soul II Soul informed us that, to get a life, meant to “be selective, be objective, be an asset to the collective.” Another favorite songwriter of mine, Patty Griffin, uses knowledge of her finitude to find the courage to reject the cultural norms of scarcity, greed, competition, and war, choosing instead to embrace every option for love, both intimate and congregational. In her song No Bad News, Patty affirms her vision of this brave love, singing:
"I’m gonna find me a man, love so well, love so strong, love so slow, we’re gonna go way beyond the walls of this fortress. And we won’t be afraid, no we won’t be afraid, and though the darkness may come our way, we won’t be afraid to be alive anymore. And we’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us, ‘til there are no strangers anymore. "
Paradoxically, it is Patty’s willingness to look directly at death that makes her not only unafraid to be alive anymore, but also to be prophetic in issuing her call. As she sings to any potential perpetrators of the destructive dominant paradigm:
"You can’t have my fear. I’ve got nothing to lose. You can’t have my fear; I’m not gettin’ out of here alive anyway. And I don’t need none of these things, no none of these things, that I’ve been handed. Cause the bird of peace she’s flyin’ over, she’s flyin’ over and coming in for a landing. "
So Patty Griffin stares directly at her mortality and finds a way, with that stare, to clear away the detritus of our US American death culture, clearing instead a landing place for the bird of Peace. Now I’d call that a holy mystery revealing itself.
All pleasures come to an end, including the sensate and conscious pleasures of our lives in these bodies. Our lives struggling for survival, empowering freedom together, yearning and learning how to build a just and sustainable beloved world community. Our lives perhaps on these missions of meaning and mercy. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on the night before his assassination, we may not actualize our visions in this life time. But who do we become when we stop investing our prophetic visions with the power and strength of our own wild and precious energies? And who do we become when we remember and commit to our dreams?
We find the following wisdom teaching in the Jewish sacred text, the Pirkei Avot: "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it (2:21)."
Who are you today?
What work might you have to neither desist from nor complete?
Who are we today?
And who might we become, together?
What if we were finite and mortal?
What if time were running out?
How might we then embrace the gift, singly and together, of our one wild and precious life?
Please take a few moments to breathe. Be gentle and curious with yourself. And be with these questions.
Peace be with you, Blessed Be, and Amen.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Creating a Thriving Peace
Something of a sermon that I wrote a few years back.
*****
Creating a Thriving Peace:
Connecting with Our Sacred Essence and Deepening in Community
by Shams Cohen (04/03)
Each of our lives is a prayer of manifesting. Our lives are our prayer. Take a moment right now to remember that you are sacred. You are a drop from the ocean of Oneness, a holy facet of the Divine jewel; the spark in your eyes is Divine light. Now really open to this idea: your entire life is a prayer. A dance. An opportunity to celebrate, influence, praise and/or damn the existence you have been given.
When you open to these concepts, how does your life look? Does your focus change? How do you spend your time? How do you treat others, and how do they treat you? How do you want to pray?
Mainstream media would have us believe that all is hopeless and all are at war. This is the voice of despair, and despair is based in illusion. Don’t let that statement go by too quickly; it’s taken me my lifetime so far to understand it myself: despair is a real feeling with its roots in illusion. Despair’s roots come from a story of hopelessness we’ve been sold, that the source of power is outside of ourselves and often against us. Many of us have learned to tell ourselves this story, and it locks us in a cage separated from our true purpose, power, and potential. The good news is: there’s a better story to tell.
The source of all power is One, and since we are part of that One, it cannot be against us. When we align with our sacred selves and live our lives as prayer, we come to our choices with more energy, focus, and inspiration. Sometimes we also beat ourselves up with regret. If you go there, don’t stay there. Give yourself mercy and the permission to move forward; you are already forgiven.
Knowledge of the truth of our being as facets of The Oneness gives us access to our real power: clear wisdom, inspired creativity, enlivened health, and Divine flow (often mixed with equal parts of hope and fear). Breathe through the fear; A friend once told me that fear is just excitement without breath.
When I listen to the folks around me, I hear the hopeful version of the story being told. People are learning to hear the voices of their own inspiration and to allow for the possibility that their distinct and individual visions of how to grow peace, love, creativity and community may actually be possible. Not only possible, but necessary. Not only necessary, but evolutionarily inevitable, as these have been the true dreams of our people for some time now.
Contrary to what our “leaders” are trying to force-feed us, people have no appetite for war and the propagation of the idea of “enemy”. People are hungrily available for creative, beloved community. In every workshop, ritual, and community gathering I’ve recently led or attended, people seem more and more available to open their hearts in support of one another. Have you noticed this, too? If not, we need to get you into some more supportive environments ASAP!
The mantra of “We are all One,” is spreading like the most nurturing of wild fires, sparking the creative imagination and burning away fearful competition based on scarcity and violence based on notions of enemy and other. All we need in order to spark loving interactions is to create spaces where loving behavior is the norm. And each of us can effect whether or not loving behavior is the norm everywhere we go.
In my own life, I’ve come to realize that my purpose is to support people in remembering and honoring their Divine Essence as well as to create space for people to support each other’s spiritual unfolding in beloved community. Though it sometimes terrifies me (until I remember to breathe and pray), I am stepping up to join the ranks of the Faithkeepers, those who believe in the possibility of a beautiful future here on earth.
It can be scary to hope. Sometimes it puts us back in touch with despair, or regret. But remember: fear is just excitement without breath, despair has it’s roots in illusion, and the past is already forgiven. There’s a better story to tell, a story of hope.
Within the seed of each of our souls’ dreams is the blueprint for Heaven on Earth, which can only show up if each of us steps up to manifest our piece of the vision. It is not selfish or stupid or impossible to manifest our dreams. It is what Spirit is asking each of us to do. I echo the sentiments of Marianne Williamson when she encourages us to be magnificently whole: “We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you Not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”
One of my teachers, Reverend Mary Mannin Morrisey formerly of Wilsonville’s Living Enrichment Center, invites us each to consider “If my dream WEREN’T impossible, what would be my next step?” This a good way to trick the voice of despair into letting us grab a taste of our hope. Once you’ve tasted your hope and vision, let these lyrics by Jewel remind you of the way: “Lend your voices only to songs of freedom. No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from. Fill your lives with love and bravery, and you shall lead a life uncommon.”
The steps to creating a peaceful future are deceptively simple. I see them in action all around us, and I invite you to embrace them more fully in your life:
1) Recognize your own spiritual beauty and power.
2) Commit to manifesting the dreams of your soul.
3) Lovingly support others in their own soul emergence.
I see the uncommon life Jewel sings about becoming more common, yet no less wondrous. War is based on a notion of “otherness” that not only no longer serves us, but is also both scientifically and spiritually untenable. People are recognizing that there is no good in personal or national solutions that harm others. For a choice to truly be in one’s highest good, it must support the highest good of all. Since we are all connected, how could the truth be otherwise? People know this! They just need reminding sometimes.
In answer to these challenging times, we must accept our Divine Power and fully manifest our unique talents and gifts in service to the Greater Love. We must know the dreams of our souls and support one another in their fruition. Imagine the world created when each of us is supported in bringing forth our deepest gifts. Imagine our faces, our interactions, our lives in community.
As we bring forth our Divine and creative dreams, we birth an amazing world where people’s hearts join together in holy support of one another’s finest selves, generating the highest common good. In the words of Sufi guide Sidi Muhammad, we manifest the promised land of “peace and love and mercy and justice” by being peace and love and mercy and justice for ourselves and for each other. We dare to love and hope and heal together, creating the world of our yearning today. For the good of all and the harm of none. So be it.
*****
Creating a Thriving Peace:
Connecting with Our Sacred Essence and Deepening in Community
by Shams Cohen (04/03)
Each of our lives is a prayer of manifesting. Our lives are our prayer. Take a moment right now to remember that you are sacred. You are a drop from the ocean of Oneness, a holy facet of the Divine jewel; the spark in your eyes is Divine light. Now really open to this idea: your entire life is a prayer. A dance. An opportunity to celebrate, influence, praise and/or damn the existence you have been given.
When you open to these concepts, how does your life look? Does your focus change? How do you spend your time? How do you treat others, and how do they treat you? How do you want to pray?
Mainstream media would have us believe that all is hopeless and all are at war. This is the voice of despair, and despair is based in illusion. Don’t let that statement go by too quickly; it’s taken me my lifetime so far to understand it myself: despair is a real feeling with its roots in illusion. Despair’s roots come from a story of hopelessness we’ve been sold, that the source of power is outside of ourselves and often against us. Many of us have learned to tell ourselves this story, and it locks us in a cage separated from our true purpose, power, and potential. The good news is: there’s a better story to tell.
The source of all power is One, and since we are part of that One, it cannot be against us. When we align with our sacred selves and live our lives as prayer, we come to our choices with more energy, focus, and inspiration. Sometimes we also beat ourselves up with regret. If you go there, don’t stay there. Give yourself mercy and the permission to move forward; you are already forgiven.
Knowledge of the truth of our being as facets of The Oneness gives us access to our real power: clear wisdom, inspired creativity, enlivened health, and Divine flow (often mixed with equal parts of hope and fear). Breathe through the fear; A friend once told me that fear is just excitement without breath.
When I listen to the folks around me, I hear the hopeful version of the story being told. People are learning to hear the voices of their own inspiration and to allow for the possibility that their distinct and individual visions of how to grow peace, love, creativity and community may actually be possible. Not only possible, but necessary. Not only necessary, but evolutionarily inevitable, as these have been the true dreams of our people for some time now.
Contrary to what our “leaders” are trying to force-feed us, people have no appetite for war and the propagation of the idea of “enemy”. People are hungrily available for creative, beloved community. In every workshop, ritual, and community gathering I’ve recently led or attended, people seem more and more available to open their hearts in support of one another. Have you noticed this, too? If not, we need to get you into some more supportive environments ASAP!
The mantra of “We are all One,” is spreading like the most nurturing of wild fires, sparking the creative imagination and burning away fearful competition based on scarcity and violence based on notions of enemy and other. All we need in order to spark loving interactions is to create spaces where loving behavior is the norm. And each of us can effect whether or not loving behavior is the norm everywhere we go.
In my own life, I’ve come to realize that my purpose is to support people in remembering and honoring their Divine Essence as well as to create space for people to support each other’s spiritual unfolding in beloved community. Though it sometimes terrifies me (until I remember to breathe and pray), I am stepping up to join the ranks of the Faithkeepers, those who believe in the possibility of a beautiful future here on earth.
It can be scary to hope. Sometimes it puts us back in touch with despair, or regret. But remember: fear is just excitement without breath, despair has it’s roots in illusion, and the past is already forgiven. There’s a better story to tell, a story of hope.
Within the seed of each of our souls’ dreams is the blueprint for Heaven on Earth, which can only show up if each of us steps up to manifest our piece of the vision. It is not selfish or stupid or impossible to manifest our dreams. It is what Spirit is asking each of us to do. I echo the sentiments of Marianne Williamson when she encourages us to be magnificently whole: “We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you Not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”
One of my teachers, Reverend Mary Mannin Morrisey formerly of Wilsonville’s Living Enrichment Center, invites us each to consider “If my dream WEREN’T impossible, what would be my next step?” This a good way to trick the voice of despair into letting us grab a taste of our hope. Once you’ve tasted your hope and vision, let these lyrics by Jewel remind you of the way: “Lend your voices only to songs of freedom. No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from. Fill your lives with love and bravery, and you shall lead a life uncommon.”
The steps to creating a peaceful future are deceptively simple. I see them in action all around us, and I invite you to embrace them more fully in your life:
1) Recognize your own spiritual beauty and power.
2) Commit to manifesting the dreams of your soul.
3) Lovingly support others in their own soul emergence.
I see the uncommon life Jewel sings about becoming more common, yet no less wondrous. War is based on a notion of “otherness” that not only no longer serves us, but is also both scientifically and spiritually untenable. People are recognizing that there is no good in personal or national solutions that harm others. For a choice to truly be in one’s highest good, it must support the highest good of all. Since we are all connected, how could the truth be otherwise? People know this! They just need reminding sometimes.
In answer to these challenging times, we must accept our Divine Power and fully manifest our unique talents and gifts in service to the Greater Love. We must know the dreams of our souls and support one another in their fruition. Imagine the world created when each of us is supported in bringing forth our deepest gifts. Imagine our faces, our interactions, our lives in community.
As we bring forth our Divine and creative dreams, we birth an amazing world where people’s hearts join together in holy support of one another’s finest selves, generating the highest common good. In the words of Sufi guide Sidi Muhammad, we manifest the promised land of “peace and love and mercy and justice” by being peace and love and mercy and justice for ourselves and for each other. We dare to love and hope and heal together, creating the world of our yearning today. For the good of all and the harm of none. So be it.
Becoming Fully Human, Together
My school has this great ethos, in that they strive to "Educate to Counter Oppressions and Create Just and Sustainable Community." Feels like the heart of ministry to me!
*****
I think of the following quote from one of my professors as my rallying epiphany... a message that was already forming more solidly in my mind that he then gave words and clarity to when I first read this quote by the side of the Deschutes River in Oregon this Summer before heading to the Bay Area for seminary. It is quite a chewy paragraph, but if you are anything like me, then wrestling with it with pay off in resonances and revelations. I use it as a jumping-off point, because countering the phenomena that he describes is the passion which currently fuels my ministry.
"… Many of us are living as though our lives were someone else's occupied territories. We might not believe or accept certain things that are going on in the world around us, but we rarely challenge them for fear of the consequences for us and for those for whom we care. Much of the tensions, personal and communal, with which we live are, I believe, rooted in this colonization. Colonization, the forced imposing of a certain way of thinking, of being, of moving in the world, and the subtle and systematic removal of all that it perceives as a threat to its project, makes us doubt the value of our own work when it goes against the grain of the dominating paradigm. … colonization can even kill our spiritualities and poison our relationships. Its roots go so deeply that it is sometimes difficult for us to imagine that we can re-shape the discourse. Why? Fundamentally, because hegemony is the power of the dominating discourse to convince everyone that the interests of the few in power REALLY are the interests of all. Brute force need not be used to attain this goal, nor even blatant efforts to sway public opinion. It goes on through the economy, through billboards and TV programmes, through curricula in schools; it unfolds itself in ways that lead us to believe that the desires of the discursive regime are INDEED OURS. Thus, they come to be taken for granted. Hegemony is important because the capacity to influence the thought of the colonized is by far the most sustained and potent operation of the dominating discourse. This leads to the fragmentation and compartmentalization of our lives. And it goes on every day in countless ways."
-Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Farajaje', acknowledging also the works of Frantz Fanon and Teresa Cordova
The cures of this disease are at the heart of my ministerial call. As I have professed for years on my freelance ministry web site www.soulemergence.info:
My purpose through Soul Emergence is:
Sometimes we have an awful lot of layers of emotion and behavior related to our social locations to slog through before we can uncover any sort of "pure" relationship to the essential experience of some powerful event like the loss of a loved one. Most of us are not wading in the waters of pure experience, but rather in the mud up to our ankles, if not deeper. How do we both get cleaner and also benefit from the mess? How do we get clear enough to know who we are, and empowered enough to bring those selves forward?
*****
I think of the following quote from one of my professors as my rallying epiphany... a message that was already forming more solidly in my mind that he then gave words and clarity to when I first read this quote by the side of the Deschutes River in Oregon this Summer before heading to the Bay Area for seminary. It is quite a chewy paragraph, but if you are anything like me, then wrestling with it with pay off in resonances and revelations. I use it as a jumping-off point, because countering the phenomena that he describes is the passion which currently fuels my ministry.
"… Many of us are living as though our lives were someone else's occupied territories. We might not believe or accept certain things that are going on in the world around us, but we rarely challenge them for fear of the consequences for us and for those for whom we care. Much of the tensions, personal and communal, with which we live are, I believe, rooted in this colonization. Colonization, the forced imposing of a certain way of thinking, of being, of moving in the world, and the subtle and systematic removal of all that it perceives as a threat to its project, makes us doubt the value of our own work when it goes against the grain of the dominating paradigm. … colonization can even kill our spiritualities and poison our relationships. Its roots go so deeply that it is sometimes difficult for us to imagine that we can re-shape the discourse. Why? Fundamentally, because hegemony is the power of the dominating discourse to convince everyone that the interests of the few in power REALLY are the interests of all. Brute force need not be used to attain this goal, nor even blatant efforts to sway public opinion. It goes on through the economy, through billboards and TV programmes, through curricula in schools; it unfolds itself in ways that lead us to believe that the desires of the discursive regime are INDEED OURS. Thus, they come to be taken for granted. Hegemony is important because the capacity to influence the thought of the colonized is by far the most sustained and potent operation of the dominating discourse. This leads to the fragmentation and compartmentalization of our lives. And it goes on every day in countless ways."
-Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Farajaje', acknowledging also the works of Frantz Fanon and Teresa Cordova
The cures of this disease are at the heart of my ministerial call. As I have professed for years on my freelance ministry web site www.soulemergence.info:
My purpose through Soul Emergence is:
1. To enliven people by nurturing the rediscovery and celebration of their own powerful Wholeness.
2. To create space for people to spiritually unfold, discover and celebrate the Power of Love and essential Oneness in beloved community.
I believe in some sense that these notions, though not always the presenting issue, may be part of all that is at the heart of pastoral care.Sometimes we have an awful lot of layers of emotion and behavior related to our social locations to slog through before we can uncover any sort of "pure" relationship to the essential experience of some powerful event like the loss of a loved one. Most of us are not wading in the waters of pure experience, but rather in the mud up to our ankles, if not deeper. How do we both get cleaner and also benefit from the mess? How do we get clear enough to know who we are, and empowered enough to bring those selves forward?
Some thoughts on my role as a spiritual leader
This is something inspired by my grad school application essay questions, as well as my years of studying Sufism. It was one of those wake-up-in-the-morning-and-grab-a-pen kind of moments. Some might say "a download".
*****
The role of the spiritual leader is to be in remembrance and affirmation as constantly as possible of The Oneness, and of their own holiness, their own sacredness, their own majestic and unknowable value and to extend this remembrance to all beings and all creation. When this knowing is available as certainty, to carry it with optimism and grace in a way that is contagious but not arrogant. When this knowing contains doubt, to carry that with gentleness and humility in an atmosphere of inquisitive and supportive self-reflection.
Religious leadership involves prioritizing whatever thoughts, practices and behaviors root us deeply in our own sense of the sacred. To daily intend to draw water from these wells, and to give in service from that place of fullness. To be sensitive to the momentary perceptions of abundance or paucity in terms of inner resources, and to understand when to outwardly minister and when to inwardly replenish. To model these ideals, and to help those who are drawn near and who ask how they too might connect more deeply with their source.
Religious leadership involves facing life with a sincere heart, making choices according to a sense of ethics, and taking action from a place of guidance with a sensitivity towards intentions, energetics and effect. A spiritual leader approaches hurdles with reverence for the full authentic emotional palate, and with a sense of humor and a fine appreciation of paradox. A spiritual leader is powerfully merciful towards self and others when witnessing not only the possibilities but also the pitfalls and limitations of being embodied as perfectly imperfect human beings on a very non-linear path of becoming.
The role of a spiritual leader is to hold hearts with compassion, to have empathy for suffering, and to believe in deep and infinite creative possibilities. To shine light on the sacred "I am" and the sacred "I can" available to each of us. To remind us to connect with our passions and to live whole-heartedly from our inspirations. To affirm our birthright belongingness in a beloved community of spiritual journeyers ever more deeply becoming ourselves as we pass through the trials that reveal our essences and wrestle with the guardian obstacles on our ways to deepening in creative, life-giving community.
These are many of the concepts of religious leadership that I understand in relation to my own call, the demeanor that I aspire to and often do embody, the values I revere, embrace, and by which I am nourished. In my own walking, I aspire to be and do all these things in a mostly transparent way. I've seen that those who say they've learned deeply from me have done so through knowing me, through witnessing my own process of wrestling and becoming. I aspire to stand with and next to those who seek my ministry, to empower their own leadership, to draw out their own creativity, and to affirm their own direct connection with the Divine as they understand It. I am blessed to have assisted in the enlivening of people by nurturing the rediscovery and celebration of their own powerful wholeness, and by creating space for people to spiritually unfold, discover and celebrate the power of Love and essential Oneness together in beloved community. I have ministered with these values, and hope to continue to do so, in myriad ways.
*****
The role of the spiritual leader is to be in remembrance and affirmation as constantly as possible of The Oneness, and of their own holiness, their own sacredness, their own majestic and unknowable value and to extend this remembrance to all beings and all creation. When this knowing is available as certainty, to carry it with optimism and grace in a way that is contagious but not arrogant. When this knowing contains doubt, to carry that with gentleness and humility in an atmosphere of inquisitive and supportive self-reflection.
Religious leadership involves prioritizing whatever thoughts, practices and behaviors root us deeply in our own sense of the sacred. To daily intend to draw water from these wells, and to give in service from that place of fullness. To be sensitive to the momentary perceptions of abundance or paucity in terms of inner resources, and to understand when to outwardly minister and when to inwardly replenish. To model these ideals, and to help those who are drawn near and who ask how they too might connect more deeply with their source.
Religious leadership involves facing life with a sincere heart, making choices according to a sense of ethics, and taking action from a place of guidance with a sensitivity towards intentions, energetics and effect. A spiritual leader approaches hurdles with reverence for the full authentic emotional palate, and with a sense of humor and a fine appreciation of paradox. A spiritual leader is powerfully merciful towards self and others when witnessing not only the possibilities but also the pitfalls and limitations of being embodied as perfectly imperfect human beings on a very non-linear path of becoming.
The role of a spiritual leader is to hold hearts with compassion, to have empathy for suffering, and to believe in deep and infinite creative possibilities. To shine light on the sacred "I am" and the sacred "I can" available to each of us. To remind us to connect with our passions and to live whole-heartedly from our inspirations. To affirm our birthright belongingness in a beloved community of spiritual journeyers ever more deeply becoming ourselves as we pass through the trials that reveal our essences and wrestle with the guardian obstacles on our ways to deepening in creative, life-giving community.
These are many of the concepts of religious leadership that I understand in relation to my own call, the demeanor that I aspire to and often do embody, the values I revere, embrace, and by which I am nourished. In my own walking, I aspire to be and do all these things in a mostly transparent way. I've seen that those who say they've learned deeply from me have done so through knowing me, through witnessing my own process of wrestling and becoming. I aspire to stand with and next to those who seek my ministry, to empower their own leadership, to draw out their own creativity, and to affirm their own direct connection with the Divine as they understand It. I am blessed to have assisted in the enlivening of people by nurturing the rediscovery and celebration of their own powerful wholeness, and by creating space for people to spiritually unfold, discover and celebrate the power of Love and essential Oneness together in beloved community. I have ministered with these values, and hope to continue to do so, in myriad ways.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
.JPG)