good is not helpless

Spiritual resource to share: true power in organizations

These statements have persistently intrigued me: that good is not helpless; truth always triumphs and love never fails. The power behind these absolute statements forms the basis for their expression.

So - I have puzzled - how do you engage with organizations that seem to fall flat of ethical and noble goals? Who have told outward lies, blatantly disregarded laws? Quitting those organizations is one option. Staying with and trying to bring about change is another. Both responses to these moral dilemmas are difficult.

Once a group hired a non-professional musician who was earnest and consistent and, as one friend said, "he plays most of the right notes most of the time." This grateful and compassionate approach helped me to see how I could engage with other groups where I didn't always agree with how they operated. I could see the good that they do and work with that.

But this went deeper. This wasn't a Pollyanna approach.

I understand that good works are born of honesty, commitment, dedication and selflessness and are powerful. In fact, these are the only qualities that accomplish anything worth accomplishing!

Deeply understanding the fixed nature of good trumps the mesmeric and discouraging aspects of greed, selfishness and even criminal thought that would bring on apathy and a sense of hopelessness.

Understanding the nature of good also heightens our awareness of good so that we don't mistake well intentioned efforts incorrectly.

I realized that it doesn't matter how many people are involved in an organization or how many differing opinions arise in the operation of an organization. Good will prevail.

Tangled bureaucracy, rumor mills, gossip and lawlessness do not have an absolute or spiritual basis. They can't stand.

Like a blade of grass pushing up in a desert - Truth, Life and Love - all elements of good - are insistent. Truth slices away at the tons of conflicting opinions like sand dunes drifting back and forth. Love plants its roots deeply. Life continues to create and perpetuate Life.

I continue to apply these ideas to my own life, the smaller groups I belong to and those larger groups that are fighting genocide, are encouraging earth stewardship and global efforts toward peace.

A human organization with noble goals is working its purpose out as surely as I am understanding and fine-tuning my life purpose.

Compassion, patience and an absolute hold on the power of Truth continue to guide me and remove any baggage as surely as it is guiding each of those organizations that I am committed to. I found I need to be as patient and persistent with these groups as I hope others are with me.

This can only bear good fruit. Love never fails; Truth always triumphs; and good is never helpless.

To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

you are not the building....

Spiritual resource to share: your spiritual completeness

In an endearing episode of SuperNanny (my new fav watch-when-I-can tv show), the nanny (who is enlisted by troubled families to fix them) works with a newly widowed mother who was forced to foreclose on her house, move to a much smaller home and pick up the pieces with her six kids.

What the nanny asked the mother to do was significant and moving. She drove the reluctant mother to her old house and asked her to share the special memories she had in that house. As the mother talked, it was easy to see that all that she loved would always be hers. She loved the joy, creativity, surprise and spontaneity of her family and all the activities that happened there. She would never lose those qualities and never lose those memories. She understood it. The mother audibly said good-bye to the house, which by now had become a building. Her life and her meaning didn't come from the building, it came from within. Then she was ready to go to her new home and amd move on with her new life.

It is easy to identify ourselves with a place. And it is easy to identify ourselves with other things as well: a person, a community of people, a project, a heritage, a movement. But when relationships change, jobs end, a movement changes course, there is this gaping question - now who am I?

Years ago, when a very loved job ended, I was faced with this question. The workplace had been cutting back on staff slowly over the course of a number of months.

During those months, many staff had to deal with the awkwardness of staying on while close friends and colleagues were asked to leave, and other staff had the task of finding new work while still providing for families. We were all asking the deeper questions - now who are we?

During the time that I was staying on while others were being cut, I had to go beneath the awkward surface and dig down to find my spiritual purpose and find what was unchanging.

The questions of 'why them and not me?" was answered with a growing trust in God. For my friends, I could trust that God is directing each person's path; that God, good, is the substance of their being; that the same attraction to good that brought them to this work will also lead them to their next step. No one is left out.

I reasoned that each individual is complete and whole, reflecting God in glorious and infinite number of ways. The substance of each person's work - like the memories of the widowed mother mentioned above - is spiritual. The divine purpose of each of our lives is spiritual.

So when my job ended, I continued praying along those lines: I reasoned that the substance of who I am and what I love does not change but continues to grow and attract those very activities for which I am uniquely suited! God would not make me in His image and likeness and not give the channels within which to express them. Ability and opportunity are coordinate ideas, both supplied by our Father-Mother God.

I am not a building nor am I made up of the things that happen to me. I am not vulnerable but I am the child of an infinite God, and am complete, whole and mature. And my purpose goes on uninterrupted. I can claim this for myself and for my friends - for those who have left a job and for those who stay.

Then all of us can understand the response to the question who am I and what is my purpose? and respond with "the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing."*








* THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST AND MISCELLANY, p. 165

To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.