Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Soul on Fire


This is a time of introspection and transformation for me. Can you relate? In addition to changing my work and residence and exploring new creative ways to earn an income, I’m looking at a deep transition in the way I regard myself and how I think about my body and my world.

Since my childhood a part of my soul has been connected to a reality that seems far away from the everyday world we seem to live our lives in. I distanced myself from it because I knew no one whose soul seemed similarly connected. Catholicism was the religion of my family, and its rites and theology were the boundaries of what could be believed.

But that calling of the soul never went away. There is something in me that continues to be pulled toward the vortex of the Mystery, even when I am enjoying chocolate, good food and wine, great clothes, a lovely home and car, fun with people that I love and pets I cherish, and meaningful work.

Media affects me. I get pulled into the idea that their view and emphasis are real and forget my groundedness in the greater Reality. I dislike admitting that. It isn’t that I don’t know better. It’s that the emphasis with which television, music, magazines, movies and art express a consistent message of fear affects me. And, unless I recognize that and choose to look away and consciously move toward programs, writers, artists and speakers who express a higher vision, messages of fear express themselves in my own experience.

If thought is creative–and we have ample evidence that it is–the more we dwell in fear, the more we create to fear. The more we develop opportunities for others to be immersed in group fear, the more we create worldwide fear. That could be a scary idea, but the opposite is just as true. The more we dwell in joy and delight, the more we create to enjoy and delight in. The more we create opportunities for others to experience inspiration, joy and vision, the more we create a worldwide vision of happiness. Why is it that fear seems more real and powerful than joy?

When we wrestle with inner challenges in order to grow into the people we could be, there is often a sense that we don’t know if the best in us will prevail. Rickie Byars Beckwith and the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith wrote a song called Make Me Stronger. The lyrics say,

I want to be better–an opening for God–to make me stronger…
Make me patient when I worry. 
Make me calm when there is strife. 
Make me loving when my heart is hard. 
Make me forgiving when I would be right…
[I must be] stronger to reveal more peace. 
I must be patient to reveal more love. 
I must be humble to reveal more power…
Make me stronger to reveal more peace, more love, more joy…
This is my prayer today, O God.

So today I say, Make me stronger, more resilient. Increase my laughter. Help me to let go sooner. Deepen my conviction that life is good and all is well. Dissolve all interest in fear. Show me how to swim in the ocean of gratitude and ride on waves of pure joy. Make me stronger.

The past year brought me many, many opportunities to come face to face with parts of myself that I have diminished, disowned or undervalued. I’m not talking here about things I’d prefer to improve. We all have aspects of ourselves that we find less than perfect. I’m speaking about honoring uniqueness and gifts, tossing them off as nothing special.

The roots of willingness to disown our greatness go beyond the conditioning we received as children–after all, we became our own enforcers of those rules, right? We may believe that we could not possibly deserve to have or expect to have more. And believing this, we may find ourselves sabotaging good that comes our way because we feel unworthy to have more than somebody else has.

But here is an important thing to consider: Spirit manifested Itself in the world through us with particular gifts. We are the stewards–not the owners or creators–of the gifts we have. There is no room for egotism about them, and undervaluing them is just another face of egotism. We are not their source, we are their conduit into the world.





We are asked to be good stewards of the gifts we have and to use them to bring blessing into the world, not to take credit for the gifts themselves, but to be responsible for how they are used. We are asked not to turn away the goodness that comes to us as a result of using these gifts, but to welcome it. The great goodness that comes provides us with more energy and nourishment to do the work entrusted to us, allowing Spirit to express and give even more in the world.

Our receptivity to our good demonstrates to others how to graciously surrender–to their gifts and the necessary expression of those gifts in the world, and to the sustenance Spirit draws to them to empower those gifts to be more widely given. Spirit is the director of the flow of the gifts, but we must be alive enough to let the flow through us at the fullest and highest levels we can imagine.

Our role, then, is twofold: first, willingness to show up and give the gifts fully, and to treat these gifts with the proper respect and awe and gratitude they deserve. And second, to let ourselves be properly nourished so that the gifts can do the work they were brought into the world to do.

Each of us has a unique way of expressing the gifts that are ours. Others may have similar gifts, but the way they give them will be different. Their audiences for their gifts will be different. Spirit has reasons why you and I have the gifts we have, and why they are needed now right where we are. We may never know these reasons. It may not be ours to know. It is ours to give the gifts we were born to give.

“What’s in it for me?” you might find yourself asking. “Everything,” is the answer. It is by giving the gifts that are ours to give that we open to receive all that our souls need for their deepest experience of fulfillment and at-home-ness. Joy never left us; it just got covered over as we fulfilled expectations and developed cultural ways of seeing, thinking and behaving.

To give our gifts and to honor them with awe and gratitude is to begin to live from joy, and to be attuned to and surprised by how much and how often signs of being loved and supported show up in our lives. A soul on fire can never be extinguished. Catch fire with the joy of who you were created to be and what you are here to express and give. The whole world is waiting.


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