I
read a few newsletter articles and sermons that I wrote when I was a
Unitarian Universalist Minister in 1998 at the UU Church of Manchester.
That was the year that I had just deepened my studies at the University
of Creation Spirituality, a school based on the wisdom tradition and a
study of Inter-spirituality. The words seemed clean and hopeful, as
compared to now. Yet again, the world was more clean and hopeful then,
in the U.S.A. to any extent.
Sometimes
I miss that old world and that old me, until I realize that the world,
though changing, is the same as it has always been if, and only if, we
can draw on the resources within ourselves that always remain the same
to empower ourselves to see beyond the vale of discouragement to the
reality of hope.
We
can draw on that which is clean, pristine, and eternal within to
recreate the world as it was before the religious and secular
fundamentalists began to turn our world upside down one step at a time.
As
we fight the good fight to bring about justice and freedom for all, we
can be assured that our only legacy when we pass from this world will be
what beauty, wisdom, and love we have come to embody before we die.
When
one has changed; when one has matured mentally and spiritually, the
actions that come as the fruit of being whole and healthy create a
better world. We realize that we are the world, and that which we do
for ourselves and others serve to produce the world as it should be for
all.
Let
us be thankful this year, for our inherent ability to create love and
beauty in a world that is often lacking those things. Let us not drink
from the chalice of fear created by those who would herd us like sheep,
but from the chalice of love that will give each and every one of us the
power of a phoenix so that we will rise up out of the ashes created by
the fearful and touch the face of God again.