In my orthodox period, as an aspiring good person, I tended to believe that when people were good, they deserved good things, and when people were evil, they didn’t, Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount notwithstanding. (Jesus says, Love your enemies, …; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.) Also, though I loved Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” as immortalized in Beethoven’s ninth symphony, I squirmed a little at the concept that “Everything that’s good and everything that’s bad follows Joy’s rose-strewn path.” I didn’t really want the bad stuff to get to be in there.
Lately I have been loving the concept expressed by these passages. To me they are gateways to a paradigm shift. In order to embrace them in my world, I have to change my understanding – have to open new dimensions in order to include them. The new worldview that includes them is much richer, more comprehensive, and more satisfying than the old one, so I am happy to be here.
I read something in a Christian Science Sentinel this morning which I found very interesting. In a discussion about the practice of Christian Science healing, one of the participants says, “You need to be the practitioner that is in you, with your own love. You cannot duplicate someone else’s life-experience or life model.” (Christian Science Sentinel, June 11, 2007, p. 7.) This seems very true and important to me. I think I allowed at least some of my upbringing to be guided by the grave, hushed voices that spoke, with eyes averted, of some unfortunate choice someone had made. Make sure you don’t do what she did. The implication was that you could make a good life out of negatives, by avoiding all of the bad things other people might do.
To me the message from this practitioner says that I can’t build my life based on what someone else found to be the right path. Similarly, I can’t base what I don’t do on what someone else felt would be a bad idea. There is a good reason Christian Science practitioners don’t give human advice. It’s because human advice is not scientific – it’s not based on anything provable, accountable, or replicable. The advice I would give is, decide your course based on what increases your love.
I will now illustrate why that advice must remain based on spiritual terms – your love – rather than human terms – the activities you take on. For me, one of the things that very greatly increased my love was having a baby. The influx of love for my children also strengthened the love in my marriage, increased my appreciation of others in general, and multiplied the level of my compassion. Yet it’s obvious that it would be very bad advice to tell someone looking for more love to have a baby. I knew it was the right step for me at the time; other people find their right steps, too. One person may find an increase in love by serving in a soup kitchen; another, by climbing a mountain; another, by writing a book; another, by an intense romantic relationship. All of these human things can be right steps for people at certain times. Only the individual, looking within and testing each step along the way for the increase in love, can know what the right step is.
This is the very loving way that the Christ works, leading us from within and saying yes to everything that affirms our being. This also leads us to a judgment-free appreciation for the different paths others take. I’m finding it very freeing to realize that no human pursuit is intrinsically more spiritual than another. An athlete is not less (or more) spiritual than an intellectual; a person who does finance not less (or more) spiritual than one who does art. Each person’s gift, nurtured and given with integrity, blesses us all.
Neither do I ever have to feel that grave concern that someone’s life has taken an unfortunate turn. I don’t have to become like my (perhaps faulty) memory of older church members, casting on myself and others the fear of some life courses and the people who take them. It says in Psalms, “Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them.” It is my great joy to challenge myself to not be offended by anyone, but to love the law of Love and how it guides us all in our right paths.
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