Midweek Faith Lift
July 17, 2019
The Be-Attitudes-Calling Us to Be!
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Poor in Spirit, Mourning, Meek and Hungering for Righteousness are the first four of the eight “Be-Attitudes” of our humanness that Jesus highlights in what is called the “Sermon on the Mount.” That was on our menu for last week! This week’s menu brings Mercy, Pure in Heart, Peacemakers, and Suffering Persecution for Righteousness Sake. Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? We’d rather much rather have successful, happy, clever, prosperous, well-liked, beloved of many, and hale and healthy on the menu! Right!!
This week we continue exploring the Blessings of our humanness; the ongoing Paradox of being human and divine all in the same 5 minutes, in the same instance, in the same challenge, in the same breath. We are at once Divinely human even when we don’t yet know it. Congratulations on living in this Divine/human body; this Divine/human mind; this Divine/human consciousness! May you be richly blessed as you discover the blessing that you are and learn to live from that place of blessing. Our journey of Discovery is this human experience of our Divinity. We are both/and; able to be with, embrace and hold space for all that is present in our lives, welcome or not!
THANK GOD FOR MERCY! Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy! This is a simple, yet powerful way to state that what goes around comes around. If you want love, you must love. If you want friends, you must extend friendship. If you want just treatment, you must be just. If you want kindness; you must be kind. And on it goes. You can’t make the world be just, loving, friendly or kind. All you can do is shift your own world by reframing how you see it. This is simple, but it is NOT easy. When we can come to grips with the Truth that the only thing we have any power over is what lies within us, then we have taken a big step toward true mercy.
So I have an inner fearfulness, an inner anger, this inner sense of unfairness; what in the heaven do I do with that? When you are triggered, as we all are, let it be, breathe into it, name it and let it pass. It is like a storm; let it pass. The challenge is to love yourself through the storm and to soften the edges so that it does not damage you or those you love. This is mercy; this is loving-kindness. This is the shift to seeing the person or situation that triggered you as just that—triggers that arouse in you a strong emotional response that often comes from something unhealed within you. If it was healed, it would be neutral and you wouldn’t react to what was said or done. Instead, you would just hear it and be with it and move on.
When we practice this quality of mercy we lean into the awareness that what someone said or did was not meant as a trigger for us. When we practice this quality of mercy, we lean into the awareness that what they said was due to them also being triggered! No doubt by something that we said or did! Mercy is our ticket to freedom from being trapped in the endless hell of acting and reacting. Butterworth has this to say on p. 66 of Discover the Power:
….when you build a consciousness of love and justice and friendliness and peace, you no longer look for or identify with any apparent enmity or injustice in others. You actually walk in a magic circle of protection. You draw the best kind of people to you, and you draw the very best from all the people with whom you associate.
And it is in this generosity of spirit that we are truly well-liked! The affirmation for Mercy is: I KEEP MY THOUGHTS CENTERED UPON ONLY THOSE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SEE MANIFEST IN MY LIFE.
Next we are blessed by being pure in heart. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Wow, this is a big one! This one promises a whole new way of “seeing” things if we are pure in heart. What did Jesus tell us about how to look at our life, our world, our experiences? There is a hint in a passage from the gospel of John.
John 7:22-24
22 Moses gave you circumcision (it is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs), and you circumcise a man on the sabbath. 23 If a man receives circumcision on the sabbath in order that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because I healed a man’s whole body on the sabbath? 24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (NRSV)
This is a powerful instruction about the “right use” of judgment. The issue is compassion and healing, not following the letter of the law. Jesus was challenging the limited view of those who were calling him out about healing on the Sabbath and breaking rules. There is always a bigger picture and when we fail to see that, our hearts are NOT pure; they are tainted with a biased or limited use of judgment. The theme for our Unity Convention in June this year was “One Humanity; Many Stories; If I heard your story, I could not help but love you.” And then we heard stories, powerful stories of people who were at the margins of life; the untouchables, the unlovables.
The power of these stories is that they were OUR stories. We have all felt on the margins at some time. We don’t “see” God in the sense of our vision. We see God in the experience of compassion; in realizing that your story of oppression, of fear, of redeeming love, of awakening is my story. We are all a part of this Divine/human story, just trying to walk each other home. When we “lift up our eyes” to that Divine perspective beyond our human drama, then we find that purity of heart that allows us to love in all circumstances. It is a place of true freedom, of true God-consciousness that allows us to see beyond the apparent lack, short-comings, fears, pettiness, hatreds of our human expression to the Truth of God-ness in all. It is not easy, but it is what purity of heart calls us to be.
Our challenge is to “see things right” not to set things right. When we can embark on that path of seeing with the eyes of love, the eyes of forgiveness and compassion, then we will be beloved of many. We will make real a pure heart within ourselves and within all whom we see. Our affirmation is: I SEE THE WORLD, NOT AS IT IS, BUT AS I AM, AND I AM IN SPIRITUAL UNITY WITH GOD.
Now with mercy and a pure heart we are called to be peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot in the rope and hang on! That is when you move into the energy of truly being “peace.” This energy of peace comes from deep within our consciousness that is empowered to be present in the world as peace. It is no wonder that this is later in the list of what we are called to be in the Be-Attitudes! We need to cultivate all previous ones to empower and sustain us in living in a consciousness of peace.
Gandhi said, “Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and the bravest.” To live as an expression of peace requires meekness, mercy, right use of our spiritual powers. It requires that we be fully anchored in our Christ energy living with purity of heart and motive. Being peace asks us to be strong, brave and spiritually mature. Masters of this beatitude such as Gandhi, King, Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Dali Lama, Desmund Tutu and Jesus serve as our teachers and models of living peace. Knowing that we are truly emanations of God-ness, Goodness deep in our bones is the place from which this kind of peacemaking emanates. This kind of knowing empowers us to act in peace with a kind of robustness that truly makes us hale and hearty, strong and brave.
The affirmation for the be-attitude of peacemaker is:
I AM A CHILD OF GOD AND I ACT LIKE ONE. I AM A RADIATING CENTER OF PEACE AND LOVE.
And our last beatitude is Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This Be-Attitude is tricky because historically it has been used to justify martyrdom, mistreatment and worse with a promise of heaven in the afterlife. That is not what it is about; there is no requirement that we accept mistreatment in order to realize the “kingdom of heaven.” This is about what we do to ourselves within our own consciousness; within our own mind, body and spirit. This beatitude goes right to the heart of all our human contrariness.
The most immediate example that I can see is that if I affirm and pray for patience in any circumstance, what immediately shows up are a whole bunch of opportunities to practice patience! Or just as soon as I embark on determining I will exercise more, I develop an ache or pain or something that supports my inertia! We can have spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual inertia whereby we stay in the rut that we are in rather than expand and grow beyond it! Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, she said, feeling very sorrow for herself!
When we feel temptation to keep everything within our consciousness just exactly the way it is, that is a good sign that we are getting ready to grow. I have had the experience of attending retreats full of love and acceptance with the immediate feeling of, “Yes, this is great!” After a day or so of all that good stuff, the really ugly, awful feelings come up! Then I just want to run, get away as soon as possible. But when I “suffer the persecution” of my inner yuck, it is always much better on the other side of it. It really is the pathway to realizing the “Kingdom of Heaven” and true healing and health. When I refuse to deal with it is when I get sick or suffer with pain. The only way out is through!
Our affirmation for this beatitude is: IN MY QUEST FOR TRUTH I PRESS ON THROUGH MY HUMANITY TO A DEEPENING AWARENESS AND REALIZATION OF MY POTENTIAL DIVINITY.
And with the practice of these beatitudes, we are well-liked, beloved of many, hale and healthy!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb
Meditation:
Mercy
I KEEP MY THOUGHTS CENTERED UPON ONLY THOSE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SEE MANIFEST IN MY LIFE. (Well-liked)
Pure in Heart
I SEE THE WORLD, NOT AS IT IS, BUT AS I AM, AND I AM IN SPIRITUAL UNITY WITH GOD. (Beloved of many)
Peacemaker
I AM A CHILD OF GOD AND I ACT LIKE ONE. I AM A RADIATING CENTER OF PEACE AND LOVE. (Hale and hearty)
Persecuted for Righteousness Sake
IN MY QUEST FOR TRUTH I PRESS ON THROUGH MY HUMANITY TO A DEEPENING AWARENESS AND REALIZATION OF MY POTENTIAL DIVINITY. (Healthy)