The Great Belonging
Rev. Linda S.
Siddall
06-24-01
Today’s
topic is “The Great Belonging.” If I had chosen a subtitle to that, I
suppose the entire title would be “The Great Belonging: Our Divine
Interdependence with God and Humankind.” It is a subject that has been on my
mind a great deal lately. It is born from my observations of the spiritual
emptiness I see in others. So many of us feel misunderstood, unheard,
dishonored, disrespected, disconnected—in short, spiritually homeless. We
have not yet learned that inside of us dwells a Power and a Presence that is
greater than we are. We have not yet learned about our innate divinity and
interconnection with Spirit and one another. We have not yet learned that Love
in its highest sense transforms and unites us. We have not yet learned that
all that is visible, all that we experience results from a thought that we
hold and manifest through our use of God’s mind. When we change the thought,
we change the experience. When we realize our inherent divinity and our
interconnectedness with God, we deepen our sense of belonging. But how do we
get there from here?
First,
let’s look at love. In her book, Scientific
Christian Mental Practice, Emma Curtis Hopkins says, “Love is the
highest name of God. Love is the fulfilling of the law.” [p.24] She continues: “Love
is not something that comes to us in any one man, woman, or child, and then
goes away. That is only a sign of love. Love, that is—God—is eternal,
infinite.” [p. 25] In I John 4:16,
we read, “God is Love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God is in
him.” Likewise, in Acts 17:28, we read, “In Him, we live, move, and have
our being.” All of these passages say the same thing: God expresses Itself
as us, in us, and through us. We are God in action, Spirit in form. All of
these statements underscore the spiritual principle of our unity with the One
Life.
For centuries other
religious and spiritual traditions have held the belief that we are divine
expressions of Love. Twelfth-century Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen
said, “Every creature is a glimmering, glistening mirror of Divinity.”
Fifteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich said, “We have been loved since
the beginning.” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “In a real sense, all life is
interrelated. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Ernest
Holmes defined God and humankind’s interdependence when he wrote, “Man is
in God and God is in man, just as a drop of water is in the ocean, while the
ocean is in the drop of water. This is the recognition, which Jesus had when
he said, ‘I and the Father are one.’ [John 10:30]” [SOM
331-2]
We
also know from the our studies of Religious Science and, in fact, from all of
the world’s religions, that God—by any of its names—is all knowing, all
powerful, and everywhere present. If God is Love, then it follows that Love is
all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere present. It also follows that
wherever we are, we find God as Love. All that remains is for us to awaken to
the presence of God as Love in our own consciousness and, consequently, in our
own experiences.
In Religious Science and
all of New Thought, the word “consciousness” means the sum total of our
conscious and subconscious thoughts and beliefs, which ultimately create our
experiences. And so when we deepen our awareness of God as Love being
omniscience, omnipotent, and omnipresent, we have embodied that belief in our
conscious and subconscious mind. It becomes a principle that we inherently
know is true without having to think about—we just know it, much like
knowing that air exists, which we hardly ever think about. We just breathe it.
We are the embodiment of God and of Love, and we have been Love since the
beginning.
Now,
let’s examine the beliefs rooted in our consciousness about our connection
with God and with other people. Do we believe that God is only present when
life is great and absent when it isn’t? Do we believe that only we decide
what people we want to be connected to, based on shared interests or similar
cultures, lifestyles, religion, politics, and economic status? Do we believe
that what happens to others is none of our business? Well, God has another way
to which we must awaken if we want to feel a greater sense of belonging.
In
her book, Ordinary Grace,
psychologist Kathleen Brehony agreed with the unity principle. She said,
“The belief that all beings are part of a connected cosmic web, all sparks
from the same original fireball, is informed not only by modern research in
physics, bioecology, chemistry, and chaos theory, but by every great religion
and tradition of wisdom known to the world.”
Holmes
and Willis Kinnear reiterated the unity of God and humankind in A
New Design for Living when they pointed out that, to anthropologist Ashley
Montagu, the word that most closely defined love was “interdependence.”
Holmes and Kinnear said, “Love is manifest on the inorganic level as well as
the organic level. The interdependence of the one part of the atom on another,
the interdependence of one cell on another, of one organ on another. And in
such interdependence there is always reciprocity. There is a giving and
receiving. Love is not a one-way road but a harmonious commingling of the
parts.” [p. 142]
These
two wise men then applied this theory to the interdependence of God and
humankind. “God, Creative Intelligence, depends on His creation for
expression, [and] the expression depends on God for its existence. God could
never stop creating or loving, neither can the creation cease loving and
expressing God without limiting its
experience of the Source of its existence, in which case it would gradually
cease to be.” [Ibid., p. 142] In other words, when we limit our expression of God in us, we
die spiritually. We feel alone. We feel that we don’t belong. We are adrift
in a sea of confusion with no anchor to center us and no rudder to direct us.
Conversely, when we awaken to all the magnificence that we are with Creative
Intelligence expressing itself as us, we become vibrantly alive to God, to
life, and to each other.
In the Jewish religion,
the mystical Kabbalah speaks to the oneness of reality: “The entire chain is
one. Down to the last link, everything is linked with everything else; so
divine essence is below as well as above, in heaven and on earth. There is
nothing else.”
Indeed,
there IS nothing else. God is Love. Love is a reciprocal action. It flows from
us and returns to us. It is a giving and receiving. When we cherish one
another from this highest level of Love, the channels open up for us to be
loved in return, and we gain a greater sense of belonging.
Think a minute now with
compassion about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, and Andrea Yates, the
depressed mother who drowned her five children. Imagine the outcome that might
have been if they had felt they belonged to something greater than they are.
How different would life have been for their victims, for their families and
friends, and most certainly for them, if they had been truly, deeply loved and
cared for enough to heal their sense of desperation and separation? What
limitless potential might they have expressed if they had awakened to their
innate divinity, to their oneness with Spirit? Hardly a person exists today
who wasn’t shocked, saddened, or angered by these individuals’ raging acts
of violence. We felt as if their victims were people we knew. In truth, we
did. We knew that at a spiritual level because, in that sense, they were us.
Our interconnectedness, our sense of being, our divine nature, all demonstrate
that we are one.
I did not choose the
examples of McVeigh and Yates to sadden or depress you. On the contrary, I
chose them because they are real. What they did was real, and they illustrate
the opportunities we have every day to apply the Science of Mind principles
and to effect change. The tragedies of Timothy and Andrea invite us to take
these truth principles out of the realm of theory and into the world of
application. Sermons and books and classes and lectures and seminars are all
well and good. At some point, though, we must practice what we learn. It is
then that we demonstrate desired results. It is then that Love begins to heal,
to uplift, and to renew.
And
so our next step is to love those like Timothy and Andrea anyway. I am not
asking you to love what they did. I am asking you to love them and others like
them with true compassion, to create a world through your own consciousness
that makes it hard for such deeply troubled people to “slip through the
cracks.” Realizing the Great Belonging is realizing that, at a higher level,
we are all responsible for each other by the beliefs we hold. Some call it
race consciousness. Others call it the collective consciousness. Regardless of
the term we use, we know that the sum total of all of our thoughts and beliefs
creates the circumstances that can produce or heal troubled people in our
world. The collective consciousness can create the experiences that allow us
to feel we don’t belong, or it can create experiences that make us feel
loved. Individually, we choose.
The
Law of Attraction is always working. Holmes says in the Science of Mind
textbook, “The one who has learned to love all people will find plenty of
people who will return that love.” [SOM
297-4] We must wake up and pay attention. Our interconnectedness and our
interdependence requires us to love one another, to encourage the expression
of Spirit within. When we love another, we love ourselves. When we lift up
another, we lift up ourselves.
This
was a lesson I learned well over the past few days as I nurtured a sudden and
severe bout of tendonitis in my right foot and ankle. The intense pain and
frightful swelling confined me to what the doctor called “R-I-C-E,” which
was Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. In addition, she prescribed 600
milligrams of ibuprofen every four to six hours to reduce the inflammation.
Well,
now! Those of you who know me—Ms.
Independent-I-Can-Do-It-Myself-But-Thank-You-For-Asking—learned to have this
experience another way this time. A coworker canceled her appointment to drive
me to the doctor, where she waited patiently for me, then drove me to the
pharmacy to get the medication and crutches I needed. My doctor, who squeezed
me into her full schedule that morning, apologized
for making me wait so long! All that week, instead of getting into the car and
driving myself to work and to patients’ homes, I relied on the kindness of
coworkers to take me to work and back home. Not only did they drive, but also
they parked their cars, came into my home to help carry my handbag and hospice
bag, and walked slowly and patiently with me while I hobbled on crutches down
the long hallway to the elevator.
Once
at work, they ensured that I was comfortably seated with a pillow under my
elevated leg. They brought me ice packs and water and popcorn, a daily staple
in our office. They brought me my lunch from the refrigerator in the
lunchroom. Three of the nurses regularly rewrapped the Ace bandage on my foot,
being kind enough to refrain from laughing at the way I had wrapped it at home
earlier that morning. “Now you know why I’m not a nurse,” I said, the
first time a nurse offered to rewrap it for me. Still other coworkers
photocopied papers, took my outgoing mail to the receptionist’s desk, and
asked routinely throughout the day, “What can I do for you, Linda?”
My
boss sent me e-mail messages of encouragement, prayers, and fun get-well
cards. After taking me home one evening and then leaving, one coworker called
from her car to give me her cell phone number because she was going to dinner
with her cousin and wanted me to reach her in case I needed help with
anything. Another shopped and delivered groceries to me. She even stayed and
kept me company, sensing that I really needed to talk about how embarrassed I
was to have so much attention, but also needing to say how thankful I was for
all the help and prayers and, most importantly, for feeling loved and that I
belonged. What a gift this tendonitis was turning out to be!
In
the quiet moments, I recognized the spiritual principles at work here. Through
God, I had a chance to learn how to receive, because I give all the time.
“What comes out from me flows back to me.” Was it easy? No. Was I cranky?
Sometimes. Was I grateful? Immensely. And can I now accept help graciously,
knowing that, in doing so, I am allowing the giver to give, to be of service,
to be God in action? Absolutely!
Again,
as Holmes and Kinnear said, “…And in such interdependence there is always
reciprocity. There is a giving and receiving. Love is not a one-way road but a
harmonious commingling of the parts.” In the commingling of all the parts of
my coworkers and—in some cases—new friends, we shared the experience of
reciprocity. This opportunity arose within a week after we had an in-service
training about expressing spirituality in the workplace and the variety of
ways that can occur. God is good! I am humbled and appreciative to have played
a big part in bringing this expression of love and spirituality into form.
Writer
Maya Angelou discovered that she, too, could manifest great things when she
realized her oneness with Spirit. In the book, Wouldn’t
Take Nothing for My Journey Now, she tells of a teacher who made her read
repeatedly the same passage from Lessons
in Truth. Each time she read the final words, “God loves me,” she read
them without seeming to believe what she was saying. And her teacher saw this.
So he made her read it seven times. By the seventh reading, the significance
of that short but powerful declarative sentence touched her deeply, and she
began to cry. She wrote, “I knew that if God loved me, then I could do
wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything.
For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with
God, constitutes the majority?” [Spiritual
Literacy, p 466]
Spirit
needs to love and Spirit can love only through us. Holmes and Kinnear stress
that, “We are dependent upon God for our existence, and God is dependent
upon us for an expression of Himself.” [A
New Design for Living, p. 147]
The
whole of God is much greater than we are, and all of us are a part of that
whole. Therein lies our interconnection, our unity, and our oneness with
Spirit and with each other. And THAT is the greatest belonging that we could
ever imagine! Go in peace and joy, knowing that you are divinely loved and
that you truly belong to the One.
Emerson
Center for
