"You are Alpha and Omega...infinity"

"...You are Alpha and Omega,
Beginning and end...
You are my Prince of Peace
And I will live my life for you..."
-     Michael W. Smith

I love this Michael W. Smith praise song, "You are Holy."  It is one of those sing-with-your-eyes-closed, your-hands-raised, and your-heart-completely-bare-to-Him kind of songs.

If you read the post last week titled "Everything in its Time" about spiritual vectors, you know that I have a "starting point" and a direction.  My starting point for the last few years has been based on Mary Baker Eddy's statement...one that, I believe, was her most radical contribution to the history of humanity's search for Truth...in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, -- that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."

This is the "place" I return to for recalibration, for refreshment, for refuge and respite...it is what I rest upon, and radiate from.  It is my starting point.  If  I returned to it 200 times a day, I return to it a thousand.  I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that it sets the rhythm of my day, as much as my own heartbeat...or the in-and-out of my breathing. It is, in fact, the keynote of my own personal purpose statement.  I find it pulsing through my heart when I wake up each morning.

I spend hours a day listening for fresh inspiration from its timeless promise.  There are countless moments where I find myself staring into "space" pondering the depth of its demands upon my spiritual discipleship.  I revel in the breadth of its meaning, and am fascinated by the infinite range of its application. 

But, for the most part, the message has been more of a blue-collar feeling than a great big spiritual "aha" moment of inspiration.  That's not to say that  I didn't love discovering early on that the word "might" meant not only power, but possibility.  Because of it, I have been able to claim on countless occasions when the possibilities for answers seemed impossible, that because God, Spirit is All-in-all, that there were an infinite number of possible solutions, answers...miracles. 

I have delighted in replacing the word "Spirit" with each of the other names for God...Principle, Mind, Soul, Life, Truth, and Love. The implications are infinitely wonderful.

But today, as I was talking with a friend, trying to describe where I am finding the core strength of my spiritual confidence these days...days when I can't depend on information, validation, or outside approval to secure my inner peace...I had two things come to mind.

One was the image of two full-length mirrors...offset a bit and facing eachother...in which the reflection of the image standing in the middle goes on and on, infinitely.  And the other was the statement from Revelation:

"I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last..."

And just as I was describing this process of constantly returning to my starting point throughout the day for recalibration and orientation, I heard myself saying (in light of an earlier conversation we'd had about those spiritual vectors with no destinations...only directions) that the only place I'd really ever want to "end up" was back at my starting point anyway.  And in that moment I got it!

Any desired destination or outcome...a perfect human body, all the financial resources I could every hope for, family relationships that completely transcended the mire of day-to-day navigation and negotiation, a dream realized, a professional goal accomplished, an inspiration seen and felt...would pale in comparison to the depth, breadth, height, might, and majesty of that "place" where God is All-in-all, and where I am completely at peace because of my trust in this fact...for me, and mine, and all.  That place of spiritual intimacy, an infinte nearness I feel in the silence of His sanctuary...conscious Being. 

Annie Dillard wrote, in Teaching a Stone to Talk:

"The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega,
it is God's brooding over the face of the waters..."

I love this silence.  I love it so much I ache for it.  I ache for it for me, and for you, and for a world that is so hungry to know that there is something more, something deeper, something higher than its own mistakes, choices, decisions, votes, wants, and petulant demands. 

It is alpha and omega...the starting point that is also the only real destination or outcome that will ever satisfy, bring us peace, make us feel secure, give us something infinitely more promising than anything which the egomaniacal "self" can even try to imagine, dream into existence, want badly, make come true, demand from its loved ones,  or try to control.

It exists within, and cannot be taken from us.  It is a magna core of molten Love, the radiant reality of Being.  It is like the spiral that exists as a visual question for me:  which end is really the starting point?  I always have to ask myself in tracing its trajectory, do I start from the outermost point and move inward, or start from the innermost point and circle outward...and, you may ask, does it even matter?

I think it does. If I start from the outside...getting my information about my life, my value, my potential and what is possible...and move inwards, I feel tighter, tenser, constricted, smaller, and because everything seems so limited and restricted, I feel the need to control it, hanging on to every shred of shrinking substance...of love, opportunity, goodness, attention...worrying that what little there is, in my continuously shrinking world, will eventually disappear. 

However, starting from my deepest inner truth:

"The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, -- that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."

From this penetratingly deep spiritual core, I can only reach outward and upward.  My life expands, radiates and includes more and more, as it circles outward, until all I am is the existence of that very All-in-allness of good, of Love,  that I started with.  I am radiating out from a place of deep contentment.  My base of operation is an unfathomable sanctuary far below the surface, deep within myself, where God, the great I AM, exists and governs.

And when two, or more, outward reaching spirals are placed "in relationship"...each reaching out and wrapping its love around the other, yet returning over and over again to its core truth...it is the symbol of eternity that appears. A symbol in which our journey continually, perpetually, eternally returns to a shared, but deeply sacred "center" whenever we are impelled outward from that center by Love.


This is where I am trying to live.

There is so much to think about...from just this one sentence...about God.

sigh...this is why I love the silence...

always,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet..."

"...I will not forget,
your love for me and yet,
my heart's forever wandering...

...Nothing will I fear,
as long as you are near,
please be near me to the end.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
and a light unto my path.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
and a light unto my path."

I was listening to Krista Tippett's provocative interview with South Africa's Nobel Prize winning Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, last Sunday, and had one of those "driveway moments" when getting out of the car, to go into church, was like prying a clinging abalone shell from a coral reef...and I was the one doing the prying. 

I had to remind myself that the very message that had me clinging to the dashboard like a bi-valve, to hear just one more minute of the interview, was the exact reason I needed to get out of the car...the Bible, the living, breathing, palpating, life-transforming and empowering Word of God. 

If you weren't able to catch "Speaking of Faith" last Sunday, I highly recommend listening to the podcast of Krista's interview.   But I digress...ever so slightly, but a digression nonetheless.

Just to set the stage. We were well ahead of the game on Sunday morning.  I was scheduled to conduct our Sunday service that week, and we were on the road in plenty of time to get to church, lay out my books, write the hymn numbers on the white boards, and settle into my chair so that I could say "howdy" to well-loved friends, while we greeted visitors coming through the door.

But, I made the mistake I make every Sunday.  I turned on NPR and I was hooked.  When Krista introduced her guest, I knew this would be an especially difficult "driveway moment."  As regular readers know, I am smitten by all things related to the spiritual lives, and stories, of those who lived through South Africa's apartheid era of attempted minority rule, racial domination, the suppression of a aboriginal "voice", and the oppression of basic human rights.  My relationship to South Africa goes very deep.

For me, the lives of men and women like Steven Biko, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and my dear friend Dorothy Maubane continue to be an inspiration of spiritual poise, unconditional love, a faith that can move mountains of hate, and a sense of forgiveness that has the power to dissolve vengeance.

When I heard Tutu's unmistakable voice I felt a great knot of emotion fill my throat, and knew this was going to be a difficult morning of getting Kate out of the car and into "Sunday School"...

His interview was barely out of the gate, when, in talking about the role of the Bible in his life as an Apartheid era South African he replied:

"If these people had wanted to keep us oppressed,
they shouldn't have given us the Bible." 

He went on to relate how the Bible is the quintessential guidebook for emancipation, freedom, and liberty.  How the Bible is packed full of stories about "a people" who were oppressed, broken and enslaved, finding freedom through an understanding of their intrinsic worth as the image and likeness of God.   He said, "Discovering that the Bible could be such dynamite....The many parts of the Bible that were so germaine, so utterly to the point for us.  When you discover that Apartheid sought to mislead people into believing that what gave value to human beings was a biological irrelevance,  really, skin color or ethnicity.  And you saw how the Scriptures say it is because we are ceated in the image of God,  that each one of us is a God-carrier.  No matter what our physical circumstances may be, no matter how awful or deprived you may be, it doesn't take away from you this intrinsic worth as the image of God."

He went on to help me see,  that the very "apartheid laws" that said one popluation was of less worth...based on race...laws that were the basis for allowing "whites" to exercise dominance over tribal southern Africans, those "laws" of genetic predisposition to racial dominance, are, when exercised spiritually, are the basis for emancipation under the law of God that say that man (all men, women, and children) are "heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."

He told us, as listeners, about women in his small Soweto congregation...housekeepers, launderers, maids, and cooks...who had been deprived of their given names by their employers, tribal names that were deemed too difficult to pronounce, and had been renamed "Annie," or, in the case of most men, "boy."   These women were his parishioners, but they were also women whose very spirits seemed broken, heavy-burdenened, and tired with labor.  In his sermons and in private conversations, He would say to them:

"When they ask you 'who are you?'  Say, 'Me, I am a God-carrier.  I am God's partner.  I am created in the image of God."

Tutu went on to say that these women would walk out of church on cloud nine, with their backs slightly straighter.  "Each one of us," he said,  "is a God-carrier."  It was exhilerating to see...it was amazing. 

The Bible.  The Word.  The very thing that the early sub-African British and European missionaries came to disseminate, the very religiously superior reasoning for oppression, the very thing that "Christian Europeans" felt gave them the upper spiritual hand in suppressing the traditions, cultures, lives of native populations...calling them infidels and savages...was the very key to their true, and lasting, authoritative emancipation from oppression.  

Amy Grant and Micahel W. Smith sing "The Word is a Lamp unto My Feet" with a new message for me this morning as I write this.  

But Sunday morning, when I heard the authority of voice, the confidence of spirit, the inspired cry to rise against oppression, with which Desmond Tutu spoke of the Bible's promise, I could no longer sit in the car. 

I felt that moment's calling.  The weary bridge-builder, the peace marcher, the human rights advocate, the spiritual "feminist," the environmental activist in me absolutely flew out of that car.  Nothing was going to stop me from sharing The Word with anyone who was willing to hear its pure, clear, refreshing, revitalizing, restorative, recuperative, invigorating, rallying cry of spiritual self-governance, emancipation, and freedom from oppression, victimization, or discouragement.

I will repeat what, for me, was Desmond Tutu's gift to a world confused about what to do next.  How to respond, spiritually, to a world at war, in financial crisis, afraid of its neighbors, and feeling victimized by natural disasters and corporate greed:

"If 'these people' had wanted to keep us oppressed,
then they should never have given us the Bible."

It's really never about oppressive people, it's about oppressive beliefs, suggestions, concepts that would demoralize, stratify, and separate us into haves and have nots, good and bad, right and wrong...or even, right and left.  But when we can rip off the mask of it being about different kinds of people and take up arms against the beliefs that are causing us to take sides against one another's freedom, success, and peace of mind, we are can truly live as "joint heirs with Christ" and eliminate the apartheid, apartness, that is always at the heart of what will steal our freedom and oppress our spiritual right to live as brothers and sisters with one Father-Mother, God. 

Mary Baker Eddy writes:

"Citizens of the world, accept the glorious liberty
of the children of God, and be free, this is your divine right."

Today I am singing a new protest song with Michael, and Amy, and anyone else who loves this message of hope and freedom:

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
and a light unto my path..."

And it is. The Bible (which is the Scripture of my faith tradition, but certainly not the only scripture filled with inspiration for anyone longing for a spiritual path to freedom) is full of stories of promise and encouragement. The Israelites at the edge of the Red Sea, Joseph held in Pharoah's prison, Job convicted by opinion, David enslaved by the shackles of regret and remorse, Jesus walking through the angry crowds untouched, Peter finding freedom...through Christ's precious love...from the chains of guilt and self-doubt. Stories of hope and deliverance. It chronicles the accounts of women, and men who, like Jesus, remembered what was "written," and stood on the promise of what "could not God do."

Thank you Krista, Desmond, and all who have knowingly, or perhaps even unwittingly, shared "the Word" through your life, your witness, your mission...you have given someone a window on their God-bestowed and God-defended freedom...the key to their own emancipation.

with loving hope,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Open the eyes of my heart..."

"Open the eyes of my heart Lord,
open the eyes of my heart,
I want to see You,
I want to see You..."
- Paul Baloche

Have you ever heard a song that just takes you in and makes you part of its message, and its culture?  Michael W. Smith's performance of "Open the Eyes of My Heart" does this for me.   It's not much of a stretch to begin with.  I love Contemporary Christian music.  But there is something about this song that makes me want to stand, and pray with my hands open... held high to receive the grace of the Lord.

I remember the first time I heard it.  It was the fall of 2001 and we were all, still, reeling from the shocking events of September 11th.   I'd happened on a local inspirational radio station one morning after dropping the girls off at preschool. The songs were beautiful and full of comfort.  But their gentle tone only perpetuated my feelings of sorrow and confusion...none of it made any sense to me that morning.  It was a gorgeous autumn day...cloudless, Aegean blue skies, soft yellow leaves just beginning to turn, pansies still spilling out of clay pots and window boxes...and yet, we were in mourning.  Every song that came on was a somber response to that collective sorrow.

It hurt.  Everything hurt.  Like most everyone I knew, I vacillated between human heartbreak and spiritual clarity.  Children were having nightmares, I was exhausted from sleepless nights spent on the phone with friends who were afraid and angry, and nothing seemed to lift the pall of gray ash that had drifted west from New York, and settled heavily on our hearts.  Even the birds seemed to have stopped singing. 

That was when "Open the Eyes of My Heart" came through on the radio.  It not only spoke to what I longed for...an open heart, but also reminded me of what I needed to set my focus on...the things of the heart.  I knew that this was the only place I would find Him, God.  This was the place of His sovereignty.  He ruled it with a song.   And then there was that sound...pure joy.  So full of expectancy, surrender, and hope.  It seemed to lift my spirits with each repeat of the chorus. 

An easy song to sing along with, I was in full voice by the time I reached the next stoplight.  I rolled down the windows and turned up the volume.  I sang out to the birds, I sang to the men planting mums in the freshly-tilled berms of dark rich soil on either side of the shopping center entryway to my right.  I sang to the sorrowing, the angry, the hopeless, and the helpless.  I sang to myself and I sang to my neighbors.  I sang for my family and I sang for strangers.  I just sang.  By the second chorus I was lifting my hands to heaven, tears were streaming down my face, my heart was full of hope. 

The lyrics started to penetrate the coldness of my heart, the helplessness that had taken hold of me by the back of the neck and wouldn't stop shaking me to the marrow of my bones.

I felt strong and empowered.  I now had my own protest song against the oppression of fear and anger, hopelessness and terrorism, retribution and revenge.  I sang it loud.  I sang it strong.  I opened the eyes of my heart,  and I looked...and what I saw was remarkable.  I saw the man in the car next to me, and he was smiling at his young child.  Another driver allowed someone else to pull in front of him, so that they could make a left-hand turn, at the last minute.  The barista at the Starbucks, listened patiently to an older woman who was visibly rattled, and had changed her order about five times before she felt she'd gotten it right.  I saw senators on the left "yield to my colleague on the right," and news correspondents were rising above the political leanings of their networks in reporting the truth. 

The eyes of my heart were opened to the love, the kindness, the integrity, the compassion that was being expressed all around me...and, that I now believe, had been there all along.  The eyes of my heart, when brought into spiritual focus, saw things cast in a softer light, possessing a kinder texture, reflecting an expanded, more compassionate spectrum of colors, races, religions, and beliefs.   I don't think I closed them again for a very long time...and when the eyes of your heart are open...you don't feel exhausted by the view, but refreshed.

A deep physical ache, one that I hadn't found relief from for a number of days, disappeared without note as the heartache of feeling helpless in the aftermath of 911 dissolved. In its place was the depth of peace that only comes when we know that an all-powerful God, good...who is Love, and is the source of all being...is at the core of every man, woman, and child's thoughts, motives, and acts.

Seeing things through the "eyes of my heart" was what, I think, Mary Baker Eddy was speaking of when she wrote,

"When speaking of God's children, not the children of men, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you; that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God's image is unfallen and eternal.  Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals.  In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.  Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy."

I really love that Eddy uses the word "beheld," rather than "saw," in this statement.  The definition of the word "behold" includes:  "to see, and call attention to."  It offers the spiritual thinker a non-passive, deeply active, role in response to all the ugliness that would parade itself before us as "reality," and  implies a divine imperative upon the seer...to live out from that perspective, and in doing so, to actively share it with others.

This statement became my spiritual, Love-impelled manifesto, and along with "Open the Eyes of My Hearth" and Smith's other 2001 anthem for the spiritual revolutionary, "Awesome God," I felt fully prepared for singing and praying my way through the ashes of 911.  Together with my regular Bible study, insights gleaned from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, and inspiration from other spiritual texts and songs, my heart was garrisoned in God's fortress of love, hope, peace...and joy.

This morning, over eight years later,  I found myself listening to Smith's "Open the Eyes of My Heart" again with spiritual purpose, but for very different reasons.  However,  my internal response was the same.  I started singing, my hands went up in praise, and I felt like I was part of a great congregation of worshippers, ready for the blessing of divine grace...even while sitting alone in my office. 

A great song can do that to you...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Since so many readers have written notes letting me know how much they like the Randy Travis version of "Open the Eyes of My Heart"...I thought I'd add this link to his performance.
offered with love,
Kate

"...she judged Him faithful..."

"Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power and love
our God is an awesome God..."
-     Michael W. Smith

My Scriptural study this morning took me on a journey with Biblical matriarch, Sara.  I get Sarah.  I understand the love she felt for Abraham, her desire to provide him with an heir, her giving up hope that it would be a gift from her own womb, her compromise in finding Hagar as a surrogate, her jealousy of Hagar, her laughter when God re-affirms His promise that she would conceive long after "it had ceased to be with her as it was with women", her feelings of failure...and her astonishment at the fulfillment of the promise. 

I can relate to her on so many levels.  But this morning my heart found new light in a statement from Hebrews. 

Paul is writing to the Hebrews describing "faith".  He lists examples of faith and cites cultural precedence to these people of God through the lives of their forefathers Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham…and yes, Sara.

Sara as an example of faith…hmmm.  I had never really thought of Sara that way.  She seemed so desperate and afraid.  She seemed to spend years trying to take control of her situation.  Finding Hagar, convincing Abraham to "lie" with her, feeling our of control when Hagar and her son took their place in the "tribe" as the mother of Abraham's heir and his child, banishing them from the family in order to secure her own son's place.  

She seemed to make so many mistakes of faith.  Weren't there other patriarchs, prophets, faithful women that Paul could have cited?  Heck, she actually laughed at God.

I've been there.  I've had times when I tried to make my outward life fit my inward prayers.  I have laughed when God promised answers to questions I thought were unanswerable, or a solution to a situation that seemed hopeless.  Times when I have tried to shoehorn the reality of my life into a model of faith that I thought would be acceptable to others.

Often I've been left feeling hopeless, because I knew how desperate and fearful I felt.  I based my expectations on my own ability to pray, another's willingness to yield, or the circumstances at hand. 

But this morning I heard Paul describe Sara's faith in a new way.  He said, "Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and she was delivered of a child when she was past age…

…because she judged Him faithful who had promised...

It stopped me in my inspiration-seeking tracks and I have been sitting here ever since.  I've been sitting here not wanting to move a spiritual muscle.  It's as if the barometric pressure of the air around me has changed and I am breathing in an environment so light and rarified that there is no pressure.  I am reveling in this new sense of faith.  It is a feeling so free and pure that I can't believe I have been wrestling with how to "do it right" for so long.

I am seeing, more clearly than ever before, that it isn't about what I am thinking, who I am with, whether all the elements are right, or even if I stay on track…it's not about judging my own life, character, faith…it's all about how I see God.

Do I judge Him faithful who has promised?

Do I, like a child, see my Father as a "man of his word"?

Do I judge my Father as someone who loves me enough to keep His promises?

There is a peace beyond anything I have ever felt in surrendering all the promise- keeping to His faithful love for me, and mine…and all.   As His child He has made me that way…I am designed to trust Him.

Our God is an Awesome God...and really trusting Him to keep His promises is finding freedom to be as free as a child and love each moment…

With joy,
Kate