THEME                I am   –    I AM     –     We are

THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

1. Beyond the encounter with the historic Jesus is the meeting with the Inner Christ.
2. The spiritual journey takes us from self-affirmation to divine affirmation, from affirmation of the divine within to the affirmation of the divine in all people in some form or other.
3. It is only in finding the ‘other’ within that one finds oneself.
4. Do not say that you have found God but rather that you have allowed yourself to experience the universal presence of God.
5. Spirituality is seeing and knowing the within and the beyond in everything.
6. Sometimes it is necessary for us to sit in the ruins of our religion before we can discover our true spirituality.
7. True humility is not the putting down of the self, but the putting down of roots into the earth, the cultures of the earth and the mystery which we call God.
8. Spirit is not a separate part of our being but the act of inter-action.
   It is not so much that we have a spirit but that we are part of Spirit.
9. Nurture the fire within you but do not fan it into an over­powering flame for when the fire has destroyed all, it also dies.
10. The tension between religious institutions and spirituality is the tension between mono-culturalism and pluralism.
11. How many temples must we build before the earth becomes our temple? How many golden images must we create before we find the golden image within?
12. Spirituality is forever being corrupted by religion and religion is forever being energized by spirituality.
13. No desert is as barren as the unaware spirit.
14. The selfish person lives in the dualism of me and the other. The aware person sees the other in me and me in the other.
15. Listening to God involves listening to the non-verbal communications of our body as well as the verbal communications of our mind – for Spirit is the connection of body and mind with the life of the universe and the mystery itself.
16. Our inner golden lake is not a space of separation but is inhabited by all other people.
17. Like the trees, the human spirit that aspires to heaven must first be rooted in the earth.
18. As within, so between and beyond.
19. Spiritual growth comes from the internalizing and expansion of images.
20. The first step on the spiritual journey is to believe in your own spirituality
21. To be able to see the saint in others is a mark of becoming one oneself.
22. What use is gold on the ceiling or in the bank if you have lost touch with the gold in your own heart.
23. The pie in “piety” is the minced self that springs from delusions of spiritual or ethical superiority.
24. Until I can view the ugly, the grotesque, the destructive and the tragic without fear I have not achieved enlightenment.
25. One of the most malignant actions is to attempt to turn off another person’s inner light.
26. True discipleship enhances the life-force,
    False discipleship denies it.
27. To be disconnected is to be disempowered for it is in the connectedness that the power lies.
28. False righteousness is piety masquerading as connection.
29. Hope is the light that love brings to the future.
30. Does the bell toll to invite or command, is it the song of life or of death?
31. When the building has collapsed we discover that our home is in our heart.
32. Fractal spirituality, the spirituality of the metaphor, sees everything in everything else.
33. It is when we are most vulnerable that we encounter the most sacred.

 

PRAYER

O God of the wondrous journey, help us so to trust your love that we may fearlessly follow our wandering Inner Christ through shadow and light, knowing and unknowing, until our outer and inner steps become as one.

 

HYMNS

Not in grasping or in holding. (BL)

The cup of our living. (BL)

Within, between and far beyond. (BL)

In the letting go. (BL)

We sing of the darkness. (BL)

Kill your own child. (BL)

God is the rock. (BL)

Through the star-filled realms of evening. (BL)

Behind the world of images. (BL)

This Earth is full of beauty. (BL)

Awaken O my inner self. (BL)

Beyond the boxes we create. (BL)

When masks of God both age and die. (BL)

If passion urges us. (BL)

When we have moved. (BL)

No-one can share my inner space. (BL)

 

O spirit of knowing.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

The call of the Christ.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

O Inner Christ our true delight.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

As the waters of love.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

The way of God.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

The right time has come.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

“The first are losers.”

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

You came O Christ.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

I saw the gardener dancing.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife

 

Deep within me.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

In the first stage of seeking.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

Buried in my being.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

Between our thoughts.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

When the wall is broken.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

What does our God require of us?

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

All will be well.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

Deep within me.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

Have you not thought. (SE/MU)

No-one can share my inner space. (SE/MU)

 

Enter the stillness. (STS1)

The inner Christ still questions us. (STS1)

The way of the Christ. (STS1)

The last shall be first. (STS2)

That of God within us all. (STS2)

Come dream the pattern (STS2)

Singing the Sacred Vol 1 2011, Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications

 

POEMS / REFLECTIONS

 

O DIVINE

O Divine, I delight in you

O Divine, I would practice your presence

O Divine, you encompass me

O Divine, I give myself to you

for you are my true self

my mystery is your mystery

and that mystery is love.

 

I WILL WALK THE LABYRINTH OF LIFE

I will walk the labyrinth of life

moving to my centre,

moving with reflection,

holding up the mirror to all my living,

all my dreaming,

all my struggling,

letting go of hatred and guilt.

For at the centre of the Way

lies the place of connection,

the place of wholeness,

the place of otherness,

the place where you and I are one,

where we and the mystery are one,

where divinity prevails

in tender strength,

in embracing compassion

and with dancing delight.

 

WITH GOD

When I weave with God – my fingers dance.

When I sing with God –   my spirit soars.

When I love with God –   my heart dissolves.

 

THE DOOR

The door to every heart lies within.

The door to the earth lies within.

The door to the mystery lies within.

The door to everywhere lies within.

For the Way of God lies within.

 

I AM

I am salt when immersed in God’s ocean of love

I am seed when my furrow of life lies open

I am living stone when I know stillness and dance

I am bread when my heart’s yeast is allowed to rise

I am wine when my bottled grief is poured out

I am tree of life when rooted in the earth

I am what I am in the great wisdom of God.

 

WHEN I STOP

When I stop

struggling to be

I discover

I AM.

 

RELIGION

Religion is that which links the known

and the unknown.

But if it is to be life giving

and not death bringing

it must do so in ways

which do not insult the known

nor denigrate the unknown.

 

A PATTERN OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH

1. THE MOTIVATION: Dissatisfaction / Confidence.
2. THE INFORMATION: Bible, Church, People, Nature.
3. THE REFLECTION: The Letting Go.
4. THE ILLUMINATION: Conversion, Awakening.
5. THE VERIFICATION: Action, Suffering, Awareness.
6. THE CELEBRATION: Ecstasy, Unity.

Note: this pattern reflects the pattern of the act of creating.

 

 

SPIRITUALITY

Because each person is unique and has a spiritual depth to his or her personality, there are as many forms of spirituality as there are people.
It follows that we all need –

• to find a space where our spirituality is affirmed – a place where we can explore it and share it with others
• to discover and share what is of greatest value in our lives and to celebrate all that awakens our sense of wonder and mystery
• to join the circle of all life and contribute to its evolution
• to share our pain with others and become involved in the pain of the world and its ecosystems
• to bind together justice and beauty in the mystery of love
• to affirm the technicolor reality of life with all its grief and laughter.

 

FOCUS FOR ACTION

1. The experience of those who have had the existence of the divine in them affirmed by another person, is that it helps put them more in touch with their inner resources. Perhaps, in the group or congregation we belong to, we could say to each other ‘I see God in you’ and then proceed to indicate at least one good quality that gives credence to that statement.
2. If our spirituality is to help us feel at home in the world it needs to be able to relate to the evolving world view and not    be locked into the time warp of an out-dated belief system. The major contemporary shift in thinking has been a move from the “either/or” mentality to a “both/and” attitude of mind.
   On page 10 of his book ‘The Web of Life’,(Harper Collins), Fritjof Capra    summarizes the shift as follows:

From rational to intuitive,

from analysis to synthesis,

from reductionist to holistic,

from linear to non-linear

and the shift in values as being from

expansion to conservation,

competition to co-operation,

quantity to quality,

domination to partnership.

Hand in hand with this has been the development of chaos theory and the emergence of Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty.

All this provides a much more congenial thought world for the mystic and a much less sympathetic world for those religionists who still insist on absolute rational truth in the tradition of the so-called Enlightenment.

So the question my spirituality must address is, in which ways does my religion support my spirituality and in which ways does it undermine it? Should my truest guide be my Inner Christ or the authority of institutional religion?

 

LOGO NOTE: At the heart of the mystery all the separate boxes disappear and all is one, all is love.

 Text and graphic © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.