{"id":2370,"date":"2010-09-19T12:25:02","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T19:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/?p=669"},"modified":"2010-09-19T12:25:02","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T19:25:02","slug":"september-19-2010-the-times-of-our-lives-spiritual-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/2010\/09\/19\/september-19-2010-the-times-of-our-lives-spiritual-wisdom\/","title":{"rendered":"September 19, 2010, The Times of Our Lives, Spiritual Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Message 34, The Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Wisdom, 9-19-10\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

Service-Program-9-19-10<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of you have seen and remember the recent Academy Award nominated movie \u201cPrecioius.\u201d\u00a0 It is not an easy film to watch.\u00a0 It portrays an overweight, African-American girl, living in a housing project with her embittered, welfare abusing mother, who regularly beats and taunts her daughter.\u00a0 Precious has already given birth to a Down\u2019s syndrome daughter \u2013 the result of being raped by her father.\u00a0\u00a0 And she is once again pregnant \u2013 also the offspring of her own father.\u00a0 Precious is functionally illiterate, an un-wed mother, overweight, a sexual abuse victim, poor and trapped in a life that seems to have nowhere to go but further down. \u00a0As a final punch in the viewer\u2019s gut, we discover along with Precious that she has tested HIV positive \u2013 also a result of being raped and sexually abused by her father.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I still choke up when I think about this young girl asking plaintively of her teacher, \u201cwhy me?\u201d\u00a0 This dark and horrifying portrayal of life in an urban hell is not pretty nor is it unrealistic.\u00a0 There are young girls like Precious who walk by these very doors.\u00a0 Pete and Ginny Patterson worked with girls like Precious and she is like the homeless young adults at Anthony House we help to serve.<\/p>\n

My point in reminding myself and all of us about the reality of such pain and suffering is to partially rebuke the easy and simplistic message I have offered and one might take away from my message series this month.\u00a0 In this series, entitled \u201cThe Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Awakening, Transformation and Wisdom\u201d<\/strong>, I discussed over the last two Sundays the concepts of awakening and then being transformed by the realization that life is not about us.\u00a0 Our purpose in life is not to serve ourselves but to serve and love others.<\/p>\n

As I have contemplated that ideal over the past week and in my research for today\u2019s message on spiritual wisdom, I realized that it is so simple and so nice to dispense such platitudes like the importance of forgiveness and sacrifice.\u00a0 How nice and yet how utterly arrogant that message is to those \u2013 to any of you \u2013 who have truly suffered.\u00a0 How dare I,<\/span> or anyone else, tell someone like a Precious Jones that life is not about them?<\/em><\/strong> There are people in this world \u2013 perhaps in this very room \u2013 who have never had the opportunity to feel like one moment of their lives was comfortable or enjoyable or even remotely about them.\u00a0 For many of us, including myself, the facile platitudes and messages about life that often come out of Scriptures or spirituality are what make us cringe when we consider organized religion.\u00a0 \u201cLet go and let god\u201d is one such platitude.\u00a0 \u201cDie to yourself\u201d is another \u2013 both of which I too easily offered the past two Sundays.\u00a0 Try offering those messages to a starving, homeless child in Haiti or to a poor, unwed mother living just blocks from here!<\/p>\n

And yet, I find I cannot totally reject the seemingly simplistic notion of self-sacrifice or serving others.\u00a0 Indeed, that is the one beautiful moment in the film \u201cPrecious\u201d when she embraces her Down\u2019s syndrome daughter and her newborn son and finds strength, redemption and, I think, spiritual wisdom in her decision to love and care for them.\u00a0 Precious chooses to love and care for her children while she also embarks on an effort to educate herself.\u00a0 She refuses to be a victim much like her mother had become.\u00a0 As the film ends, Precious walks into the future as a survivor and as one possessing innate wisdom.\u00a0 Perhaps, then, platitudes have elements of wisdom within them which, when spoken in the right context, have meaning and truth.<\/p>\n

What, I ask you then, is spiritual wisdom?\u00a0 If my simple platitudes of service and sacrifice and forgiveness can ring hollow and yet contain a germ of truth, are they wise?\u00a0 Can they enlighten us?\u00a0 At some point in our lives, I believe we all find a certain imperfect spiritual wisdom about life and meaning.\u00a0 We are awakened to a new reality that life is not about us, we transform our lives to act out that new understanding and then, after living some years as a newly changed person, we often realize all of our conclusions are not so easy, so simple or so perfect.\u00a0 We find wisdom to be something complex, elusive and holistic.<\/p>\n

In my messages the past two Sundays I encouraged us to deny ourselves and to love and serve others as our purpose in life.\u00a0 Yet, even Jesus said that we should love others as we love ourselves<\/span><\/em>. \u00a0How can we love someone else if we cannot love our own selves?\u00a0 How can we serve another if have not first met our own needs to give us the strength to give?\u00a0 Buddhists encourage gentleness with the self in terms of recrimination or self-denial.\u00a0 In serving others, we must find context and nuance.\u00a0 By encouraging, fostering and meeting our basic individual needs, we can better serve, love and care for others.\u00a0 We find, then, that true spiritual wisdom regarding serving others is not so easy.\u00a0 Dying to the self must be undertaken within the context of dying to selfishness<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 It must then be coupled with a holistic appreciation for our Divinely inspired abilities to help others.<\/p>\n

It is the very complexity of finding wisdom that I believe brings us here every Sunday.\u00a0 Such is one purpose that the Gathering serves and which I believe makes this congregation unique.\u00a0 Andre Gide, a famous French philosopher, once said \u201c<\/strong>Believe those who are seeking wisdom; doubt those who find it.\u201d <\/strong>Such a statement humbles me.\u00a0 As a Pastor, I have no more insight into what is wisdom then any of you.\u00a0 What I offer on any given Sunday is, I hope, more thought provoking then it is conclusive.\u00a0 It is in our collective <\/span><\/em><\/strong>wisdom and in our continuous search for it that we find glimpses of profound insight.<\/p>\n

Spiritual wisdom is also inclusive.\u00a0 It is multi-faceted.\u00a0 It incorporates many traditions and many beliefs.\u00a0 It is NOT exclusive.\u00a0 True wisdom must, I believe, be open to many sources of insight.\u00a0 Those who are wise have learned and listened to many people, they have read and considered many books and pieces of knowledge, they look to the secular and to the religious, they accept inspiration from the Muslim, from the Hindu, from the conservative and the liberal.\u00a0 Wisdom accepts the ironic possibility that it is not always right and that it is not yet perfect.<\/p>\n

If wisdom is open to other insights, then it is reasonable to assert spiritual wisdom is ever evolving and ever changing.\u00a0 John F. Kennedy said, \u201cChange is the law of life.\u00a0 Those who look only to the past or to the present are certain to miss the future.\u201d <\/strong>And Kennedy has perfectly stated the progressive ideal in which I believe true wisdom lies.\u00a0 I do not assert a political statement but an attitude we must all seek.\u00a0 Progressivism moves into the future with confidence and not fear.\u00a0 It accepts new knowledge and new traditions and new sources of wisdom without necessarily throwing out all of the old.\u00a0 This is an ideal for us here at the Gathering as we move into unchartered territory of change and growth.\u00a0 If we choose to remain as we have been, we have chosen safety and comfort over the potential for finding new sources of wisdom.\u00a0 Many of you heard and appreciated Lisa Blankenship and her sharing last week. \u00a0She and her partner Genevieve are relatively new members here.\u00a0 If we forestall progressive but reasonable growth, and seek instead to hold onto what we have now, how many future Lisa\u2019s and Gen\u2019s and Bob\u2019s and Dick\u2019s and Debi\u2019s and Donald\u2019s \u2013 and their wisdom – might we be closing ourselves off to hearing from and listening to?\u00a0 I believe genuine wisdom is therefore open to change.<\/p>\n

Those who have arrived at a point of being spiritually wise are also listeners more than they are talkers.\u00a0 They appreciate silence and reflection.\u00a0 On this point philosophers and prophets throughout history have agreed.\u00a0 One anonymous author wrote, \u201cTo appear wise, one must talk; to be wise, one must listen.\u201d<\/strong> D.J. Kaufman, a noted contemporary thinker, says, \u201cWisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening.\u201d<\/strong> And the Biblical book of Proverbs asserts \u201cPride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who listen and take advice.\u201d<\/strong> How often do we consider those who dispense lots of facts or opinions as wise? \u00a0\u00a0In truth, we frequently discover that it is the person who listens more than speaks who holds the key to wisdom.\u00a0 \u00a0Listening and appreciating silence is an attitude of our hearts that involves a desire to be present and to seek enlightenment.\u00a0 Tom Nauer wrote in a wonderful poem of his, entitled \u201cThe Beauty of Silence\u201d, \u201cWithin my being resides a knowing, which is only now in the process of showing.\u00a0 Tranquility, serenity, mental fertility, the beauty in a silence of knowledgeability.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

As Tom noted in his poem, in our silence we find an inherent knowing of wisdom.\u00a0 In silence we can hear and feel the Divine.\u00a0 She speaks to us without sound and without words.\u00a0 Her voice is found in the stillness of our souls as we ponder and sense the universe all around us and within us.\u00a0 In this manner, as I spoke last week, we find the imageo dei<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 the image of god – who is us.\u00a0 We are god and she is us.\u00a0 What profound feelings of love and beauty and oneness with all creation are found in being still?\u00a0 Genuine spiritual wisdom therefore involves a choice to listen, to be still, to be present and to be silent.<\/p>\n

I believe the wise are also those who know themselves.\u00a0 They are self-aware.\u00a0 With their flaws, the wise understand where they need to grow and to change.\u00a0 They are therefore quick to know when they have acted inappropriately \u2013 with anger, neglect or cruelty.\u00a0 They readily offer apologies and seek reconciliation.\u00a0 They are emotionally stable in that they are empathetic, compassionate, joyful, peaceful and lacking in complaint.\u00a0 The wise also have inner confidence and they understand their innate gifts.\u00a0 They are the truly<\/em><\/strong> humble, knowing where they are imperfect and where they are strong.\u00a0 True wisdom, I believe, does not need to boast or show itself for it is secure both in what it does not know and what it does.<\/p>\n

For Buddhists, wisdom additionally incorporates non-violence and a lack of anger.\u00a0 To be wise, according to the Buddha, is the highest attribute one can obtain.\u00a0 Wisdom involves being calm, free of fear, content and lacking the desire for material wealth or fame.\u00a0 The wise understand the things that are important in life \u2013 friendships, family, peace of mind, health, self-awareness and compassion.\u00a0 Spiritual wisdom for the Buddhist therefore includes an ability to discern one\u2019s true interests from those of the ego and the selfish \u201cme\u201d found in all of us.\u00a0 Such a message is echoed in the Biblical book of Ecclesiates which declares, \u201cVanity of Vanities!\u00a0 All is vanity.\u00a0 All the pleasures that people desire fail to give meaning to their existence.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

While there are as many qualities to being wise as there are opinions on the subject, my final thought on wisdom includes the ability to know when to act.\u00a0 The wise are not merely contemplative or silent.\u00a0 Qualities such as diligence, optimism, hard work and perseverance are evident in the wise.\u00a0 They are not impulsive but wisdom involves sensing when action is important and when it is not.\u00a0 The wise understand the value of action and of work.<\/p>\n

Implicit in this message about spiritual wisdom is the danger that I have offered ALL<\/strong> of its qualities.\u00a0 I have not.\u00a0 Inherent in being spiritually wise is being one who is fascinated with the big picture of life, who senses things that are important, who knows what is ethical and what is evil, who understands meaning and who is able to apply wisdom for the enhancement of life for all people and all creatures. \u00a0But those are merely my thoughts.\u00a0 Spirituality in general is ineffable and mysterious.\u00a0 It is known through the heart and in the soul.\u00a0 It is felt and not known.\u00a0 Spiritual wisdom is much the same.\u00a0 Indeed, wisdom is never the same as mere knowledge.\u00a0 One can be vastly informed and know many things without being wise.\u00a0 And, one can be profoundly wise without having multiple degrees or a mental storehouse of facts and figures.\u00a0\u00a0 I have known people who are deeply religious because they have exhaustively studied theology and the Scriptures but they are not wise.\u00a0 They can recite the doctrines of all the world\u2019s many faiths and they can quote by memory from the Bible, but they lack spiritual wisdom.\u00a0 Of Popes, Bishops, Doctors of Divinity, Pastors, Rabbis and Imams, these are all titles with worthless spiritual meaning.\u00a0 They are, in truth, false wizards hiding behind a curtain.\u00a0 Instead, we are all Pastors.\u00a0 We are all spiritual persons.\u00a0 We all have the imageo dei<\/em><\/strong> written on our hearts, indicating we have inherent spiritual wisdom within us.\u00a0 As much as we can be still and hear the Divine, we can also be still and hear the spiritual wisdom of all eternity \u2013 to feel, to love, to walk humbly, to work, to be at peace and to be joyful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Message 34, The Times of Our Lives: Spiritual Wisdom, 9-19-10 \u00a9 Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved Service-Program-9-19-10 Many of you have seen and remember the recent Academy Award nominated movie \u201cPrecioius.\u201d\u00a0 It is not an easy film to watch.\u00a0 It portrays an overweight, African-American girl, living in a housing project […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}