Weakness is strength overdone

One of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with was coming to terms with the fact that sometimes the things that are our greatest strengths can lead to our greatest weaknesses.  In other words, there is such a thing as being so strong that you don’t even sense your own weaknesses.  There are actually situations when being “strong” is just not the appropriate response.  Just ask Mike Tyson.  As I get older and look back on my relationships I find that there were definitely times when that was the case for me.  So as I go about trying to achieve a catharsis by writing this blog, I hope it benefits you in some way.

First off, I grew up in a situation where I had to be mentally strong.  I don’t really like getting into these stories, but I don’t know any other way to make my point, so here we go.  I had to be strong because I grew up in a world that told me that I was supposed to follow a certain script for who I was going to be.  That in and of itself is not a unique circumstance.  We all have that situation where we come into the world and when we get here there’s this group of people that have some idea of who we’re “supposed to be”–some box that makes other people comfortable even if its a negative for us.  My box was young, black male from single parent household equals jail or dead.  Fortunately, I had a strong mother who did everything she could to expose my brothers and I to a world that was larger than our neighborhood and the script.  I also had some strong elders who tried to remind us that we could be great.

Alternatively, we and–when I say we I mean other young black males in my situation–had a lot of other influences that were competing for our minds.  The short story to this is that for a lot of us, our self esteem got all messed up and we thought we were unworthy of love and more than a few of us heard that we would turn out “just like our dads” which obviously was not a compliment.  But that probably isn’t anything you haven’t heard or don’t know already.  I’m not going to get into it.  Just use your imagination.  We all know that it hurts when people say harmful things to us, so just imagine that a society is in on it.  At any rate, my way of dealing with it was to not care what society said or thought about me and those who they put in my box–or any box for that matter.  And if anyone who I cared about cared about what other people thought, then I would ignore their comments too.

I basically felt like I was not interested in hearing anyone tell me who I was unless it was that I was a child of God.  I heard enough negative stuff and I felt like if God really loved us so much that we were given Christ (John 3:16,17), then the least I could do was accept the gift.  So I taught myself not to want anything else beyond my basic needs and to see anything more as a bonus from God.  And lastly, since I had pretty much accepted that I was not going to make it to age 18, I decided not to fear death.  All I wanted to do was get to know God.  I even taught myself to not be concerned about heaven or hell.  The way I saw it, it seemed every relationship that I witnessed people in was based on what they got out of it.  I didn’t want to be in a relationship with God for what I got or what I was going to get.  I just wanted to be in one relationship that was not about all of that.

Being that way got me through many tough spots and for the most part it kept me self esteem intact for a long time.  I was determined that  was not going to let anything make me feel like I was less than anyone else and believe me I have been tested in so many directions.  I was so confident in my identity that I wouldn’t even defend myself if people accused me of things I knew was not true.  I had no tolerance for what I considered emotional weakness if it was solely based on what others thought about me or others.  If I was in a relationship with someone and they told me so and so said such and such about me, I would just say “that’s there problem” or “well if you care so much about what so and so thinks go be with them.”

This isn’t to say that I had no compassion or sensitivity.  I just hated the idea of living up to anyone’s expectations or explaining myself mainly because I had disciplined myself enough that I wasn’t even motivated by most of the “carrots” society dangles in people’s faces to control them.  I refused to be anyone’s slave and honestly, I felt like all attachments made you a slave and basically I felt like people who felt otherwise were deceived.  Again, I didn’t think that people shouldn’t have anything, I just thought they shouldn’t be attached.

I stayed like this into my twenties until I had a personal loss that really wounded me.  Before that, I didn’t even know I could feel that type of loss.  If I knew better, I would have just cried and sought out a counselor or a pastor  or something. But instead of just letting myself be wounded, I chose to stay strong and to shake it off–not realizing that this hit was actually a blow to the foundation of my being.  Slowly, but surely, all the negative things that had been said about me for just being a black male started creeping in.  I didn’t become those lies, but I finally accepted that I lived in a world where people believed them and that for many people their experience of me did not matter.  Finally I felt how toxic it must have felt to my compatriots to have the world telling them who they are, growing up with very few male role models except for sports stars and entertainers, and being constantly warned not to be like their fathers.  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t just learning this.  It just didn’t start hurting until I was older and tired.

Since that heartbreak, I have been trying to make sense out of my life.  I guess it often takes things like heartache to make you wonder what the real meaning in life is.  I know it’s not just about getting what you can get and then dying, so I still stand on the foundation that I am a child of God.  I believe that we all are.  But somehow we have forgotten this.  We all have a story of how we forgot.  What I just shared was basically mine, without getting into the particulars.  What happened to me was that I was so confident in the strength that I thought was mine that I wouldn’t even let myself go through the healthy process of hurting and grieving.  I didn’t want to be weak.  I forgot that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.  Fortunately I learned it before I kicked the bucket.

I wish I could say that I was completely healed from that wound, but I have come to terms with the idea that I think God has chosen to take my dysfunction and turn it into my function.  Now I get to rock a thorn in the flesh like Paul and I just have to accept it.  I don’t necessarily think that everyone has to have that thorn, but I don’t think I would know how to be in this world without one.  It is basically a reminder that being a human can be hard and that if you think you get it all, then you are liable to get sideswiped.  So the next time you feel like you just might be overdoing the need to be strong, remember as someone once put it, “Our greatest weaknesses are our strength over done”.

I can honestly say that I don’t know if I would even be a Christian if it were not for Martin Luther King Jr.  Even though I was raised with the Bible and church, MLK Jr. was the greatest example of Christianity that I have known in modern times.  He lived out his calling and gave his life for it.  He was a true Christian who stood on the side of justice and believed in the power of love.  He said, “Hatred paralyzes life; Love releases it.  Hatred confuses life; Love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; Love illumines it.”

I also look at Dr. King as a prophet.  If you can’t see that, I recommend listening to his call to America for a Radical Revolution of Values.  In my opinion a prophet is someone who sees reality as it is and not as they are told to.  If you listen to his words and then look at the world around us, you would have to be blind, ignorant, in denial,  or a liar not to see that his message is still relevant today.

Another description that suits Dr. King is healer.  I learned from an African proverb recently that a meaning for healer is “an awakener of those who have slept too long.”  If that isn’t Dr. King, I don’t know what is.  We still revere Dr. King the way we do, because many of us are still asleep.  We’d rather hear an easy lie than the hard truth.  But Martin had been to the mountain and he knew that this world of separation that we cling to is a lie.  I believe that he knew that God’s reality is one of Unity and that all things that work to divide are false.

I am aware that like most people Martin Luther King Jr. had his weaknesses.  But I cannot say that they were any more than other prophetic figures in the Bible or elsewhere.  I think the point is that he made the choice to live by an ideal that transcended the “what’s in it for me” mentality that is rampant in this society.  In fact, I don’t think that he would have cared too much about the memorial that is up in his honor.  I am not saying anything against it.  I just think that he would have felt that the best memorial that we could erect for him would be in our hearts where we too can commit to an ideal.

Martin King Jr. was an adherent of Gandhi’s satyagraha teachings.  Gandhi taught that we must be the change that we want to see in the world.   That’s what Dr. King was striving for. I feel that Martin chose to look at the world with a view from the mountain and lived as if everyone should be able to see it.  He walked among us with the belief that the “Promised Land” is a present reality.  In so doing he lived into the Lord’s Prayer that God’s will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.  Personally, I don’t think that you have to be a religious person to see the value in treating others as you would like to be treated.  And essentially that was Dr. King’s simple message to the world.  That’s all it takes to wake up and live into God’s reality–where every land can be and in actuality is the Promised Land.

When is enough too much?

Do you ever  just feel like you can’t take it any more?  You feel like you have taken all that you can take but yet it seems like things keep piling up?  What do you do? Can you relate to the truck in this image.

Well for a long time I lived by the maxim that says, “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”  I adopted that maxim when I was young.  I had a lot of rough experiences growing up.  Often it seemed like the things coming at me were out of my control.  But then one day I realized that while I might not be able to control some of the things coming at me, I could control how I responded to those things.  When kids would joke me for being short or a nerd, I’d just let it roll off  like water off of a duck’s back.  If I was hoping for a certain outcome in life and it didn’t work out, I would just shrug my shoulders and say, “Oh well. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and sometimes winning is losing and sometimes losing is winning.  It’s all in God’s hands.”  I was so unattached to outcomes that a lot of people thought I was a Buddhist.  I, on the other hand, was doing what I could to live the tenet from the Bible that said, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”  That was something I knew from experience, because I had a lot of troubled days.  Why look ahead or look back?

Soon people began to notice that I managed to be exceptionally resilient to things that most people used as an excuse to shut down their hearts.  People wanted to know how I was able to “do what I did”.  But the fact was that I wasn’t doing anything. Doing implies manipulation of some sort.  When you’re not attached to the outcome, you don’t feel the need to manipulate.  So I was letting everything go.  I didn’t hold on to the “good” or the “bad”.  I pretty much took everything as neutral.  I learned that people’s attachments to outcomes seemed to be the very thing that they used to justify their anger and disappointment in life and it often led to people taking those feelings out on others.  I had been  hurt by hurting people enough to know that the only way to transcend it was to not want anything so much that I felt like I would be lost without it. Unfortunately, the negative side effects of this way of being was that many people felt like I didn’t care about them and you know what, I think they were right.  I didn’t care about them, but I loved them.

There are some things that Jesus says or are said about Jesus that are hard to swallow.  One of them was when some Pharisees said to Jesus in Matthew 22, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men.”  What does it mean that Jesus doesn’t care about anyone?  Does the thought hurt your feelings if you are a Christian?  Do you think that caring and Love are the same thing?  Well, caring is actually the opposite of Love because in actuality caring comes from fear of loss and Love is the reality of infinite abundance.  Jesus didn’t care about anyone because he was aware that no one could add or take anything away from who he truly was and he knew that this was ultimately all of our reality.

Another saying that is hard to swallow was in Luke 14:26-27  where he was to have “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  Is he serious?  Does he want us to hate everyone except him?  What in the world?  What was he talking about?  I’ll just say that I don’t hate my family and yet I consider myself a disciple of Christ. I guess how I interpreted that saying was that I should be more committed to the eternal Reality that he lived with God than the temporary cares that we are often pulled into and distracted by in the finite relationships we engage in or the illusory needs that we often feel are so important for our ideas of personhood.  The more we seek and love God’s reality the more we can truly love others because we are all a part of and live in God’s reality (Acts 17:23-31) despite what our illusory cares might tell us.

This might sound hard, but I think that often we find ourselves in situations that we cannot handle because we care too much and don’t really love enough.  We are attached too temporary outcomes that affect finite relationship conditions and we end up feeling like the truck in the picture.  Enough becomes too much because even though we pile on everything we can handle at one point in time, the old maxim that “what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger” proves false.  We are not stronger.  We are actually weaker for the experience and we use that lie to keep us taking on more than what we can actually handle.  Maybe the first few times enough was enough, but eventually, enough will be too much and something has to and will give out.

The last straw

I’m not saying this because I am trying to teach people how to be cold.  I’m saying it from experience.  I’ve been that truck plenty of times.  There have been time when I have found myself wiped out for what appeared like no reason.  I thought that whatever was getting me had hit me suddenly when in actuality, it was building up all along.  People who “cared” about me would have no problem piling more and more of their cares onto me because, they thought I was strong.  They figured I could handle it.  And when I said, I thought enough was enough, some caring person was always there to tell me that I could handle one more straw.  And because I cared about them, I often tried.  But you know what happens to the camel whose back is broken by the last straw?  It becomes useless.  It serves no one and I know from experience that the ones who piled too much on it will be the first ones ready to shoot the camel and put it out of its misery.

So for Love’s sake, if you ever feel like this truck do yourself a favor and stop caring and start loving.  Lighten your load. And if you’re like me and can’t lighten it for yourself, trust a friend like Christ who know what it is like and can help ease your burden.  And if you can master living in the abundant reality that never fears loss or demands to much from you, do what Jesus does and live the Christ among others. Don’t let enough become too much for yourself or others.  As they say, “God will never put more on you than you can handle.” But no one said anything about what other people would put on us or even what we will put on ourselves in the name of caring.

Spring is all around us

In the winter season, it is easy to forget that in spite of gray skies and lifeless looking trees, there is something wonderful happening.  Life is begetting life even when we cannot see it.  The same is true for the winters of our souls.  In each of our lives we experience seasons.  Things grow, blossom, and fade away.  As they fade, we often lament.  We grieve over apparent loss and we feel like the light will never shine again.  But spring reminds us that this is never so.  My friends, the spring of the outer world is a sign of the spring of our inner world which is always accessible to us.  Our very existence is an amazing event in God’s eternal Creation.  By God’s grace we can call for the Spring within our heart at any time.  The poem below was written by my mother and is a perfect example of  the creative power willing and able to spring forth through us if we are willing to surrender to it.

AND THEN COMES SPRING

By  Jo T. Silva

Inspired by P.S.S.II

Life is divided like seasons of the year
Changes are made in our lives as each season comes near

From infancy to toddler we are cared for and nourished
We still have our innocence and our joy is flourished

We have no worries because we don’t know what they are
We play with angels and fairies and we wish upon a star

And then we become a child and we are given some chores
We are subjected to childhood diseases that cover us with sores

“They” force us to take vaccines; they claim it is a cure
But it is a poison to keep our minds from staying clean and pure

We are trotted off in droves to go to a building called a school
Where we are indoctrinated to forget the golden rule

As we grow to be teens, we are forced by others to conform
Because being different is just not the norm

You are called on the carpet to fight or die
You are nonviolent and you ask the reason why

You are ridiculed and joked and called a bookworm, a nerd
And lots of other names that you had never heard

You pray for peace and angels to encamp about you from above
Because you were taught  to combat evil with love

You make it through the teen years by the grace of God alone
But you’re still an adolescent; you’re not officially grown

But according to the rules you become responsible at eighteen
And your parents admonish you to keep your record clean

Adolescence turns into adulthood and responsibilities grow
You go out into the world and realize how little you know

There is so much to learn and so much to unlearn
But you seek the Holy Spirit to help you to discern

You walk through the difficulties and challenges of life
Trying your utmost to avoid pitfalls and strife

You find that life is like a basketball, inside and out of hoops
You win some. You lose some.  You get time to change the flukes

Each moment, each hour, each day is a new beginning
It’s up to you to decide if you are losing or winning

Your brain is replete with many thoughts with which to deal
How can you be sure which ones are real?

Summer to fall; fall to winter, nature lives and it dies
Underneath the façade of life, somewhere the truth lies

Buried deep within; covered with dead leaves; ice and snow
And then comes Spring; and suddenly inside you know

You must die to self and be buried before you can truly live
Yeshua, Messiah taught us that in order to receive, we must give

© Jo T. Silva And Then Comes Spring  /12/28/2011

There's more to you than you can see

In his book, Unhypnosis, my new friend, Dr. Steve Taubman explains how most of us walk around hypnotized without even knowing it.  His theory is that in our early stages of life, when we had very little defense, we were basically programmed by those around us to see the world and ourselves in a certain way.  Some of us were fortunate and heard messages that contributed to our well being or somehow we managed to break free of the programming in order to create lives for ourselves that match the truth of who we are.  Then there are those of us who from day one have been handed a script that is less than ideal and either we never realized we could do anything to change it or every time we tried something pulls us right back into the old pattern.  Worse still though are those of us who interpret the world around us in a way in which we program ourselves negatively. Eventually we tell ourselves to give up.  We stop dreaming and we allow ourselves and our lives to be dictated by circumstance.  Steve says that the reason we keep getting pulled back in is because the thoughts doing the pulling are actually in our subconscious mind, working undercover to keep us at status quo or below.  To make a long story short, check out Romans 7.  In the mean time check out this chunk of goodness from that chapter:

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.  If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.  But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.  For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.  Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

In other words, Paul is saying that his subconscious mind is keeping him from doing what he knows he should do in his conscious mind.  We all know what that is like.  Maybe you think to yourself that you shouldn’t eat that next piece of cake or drink that next beer, but look what’s in your hand.  Yeah you know what I am talking about.  This battle is nothing new and no matter how lonely we might feel when we are going through it, as you can see, even ancient apostle dudes knew what is was like to struggle like this.  No wonder they were loving Jesus.  He gave them the option to be free from their unconscious mind and to see themselves as children of God despite their past and even their present.   When I look at the script I was given, I know that believing that it was possible for me to have the mind of Christ was my X Factor and was what pushed me through a lot of junk and it still is.  For those of you who think I can’t say that– read the Bible.

Still, those of us who call ourselves Christians can’t make Jesus an excuse for not cleaning house when it comes to mental garbage that is weighing us down.  As Paul also wrote, “don’t be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  That’s what Steve’s book is about–renewing our minds.  As you can see I haven’t posted a new blog in a while.  It’s because I have been renewing my mind for the past two months.  This semester in seminary called up a lot of subconscious junk for me.  I spent a large portion of the semester crying through my readings and papers.  I’m not afraid to admit it.  Studying youth ministry and liberation theology (essentially the theology of the oppressed) at the same time  can put some work on your mind if you grew up going to church as much as I did.  And I won’t even go into the oppression piece.  I’ll just say Black male, single mom, South, short on finances, short in stature,  articulate nerd who carried a briefcase to school in tough neighborhoods, had a big mouth.  You connect the dots.  Anyway, these classes forced me to spend a lot of time in the past looking at what shaped me and what informed many of my relationships and choices through the years.

Since I was all over the place, I decided not to write any new posts until I could say something coherent and not simply born out of frustration.  I’m sharing Dr. Steve’s book with you all because it was a good reminder to watch my thoughts as they emerged.  One of the things that came up for me a lot was my tendency to get harsh with people when I feel like they are being full of junk.  Growing up in my circumstances, I learned that I could not let other people’s projections define me.  I was no respecter of persons when it came to junk and I wouldn’t let other people believe junk about themselves either.  I’d just call it how I saw it.  I didn’t care if people cried or punched me in the face I would say what I felt needed to be said for the greater good even if it was to my mom, the principal, or even a pastor.  It wasn’t like I was a jerk.  I just loved people too much to let them sit around feeling sorry for themselves or to put their junk on me or anyone else when I was in earshot.  I gave them what I gave myself–tough love.

But after my divorce, I started subconsciously blaming that part of me for why we didn’t work out as well as  for every other tough spot I found myself in in life.  I started trying to avoid situations where my mouth might open up and say something “harsh”.  Essentially I was hiding a part of myself from the world because I thought it was undesirable. In the mean time I started reading all of these books so I could learn how to say what I meant without it coming out like a jerk.  I even went on an apologizing campaign contacting everyone who I still knew to say that I was sorry for being so harsh.  The funny thing was it turned out that every single person told me that they understood why I had been that way with them.  I won’t bore you with the details.  I’ll just say that in holding myself back, I learned a lot of valuable lessons and met some cool people that have helped talk me out of my cave.  Right now I feel like the groundhog who was afraid of his shadow side.

Besides all of my relationships that have helped me begin to reemerge, trying things like writing out my limiting beliefs and rewriting them in a more empowering fashion have helped.  Steve talks about that in his book too.  I reframed my belief that I was too harsh to “I am appropriately direct.”  So if you ever get a mouthful from me, just remember that it is appropriate.  Another tip that Steve mentions in his  section on “Tough Love” is that when we hold ourselves back or rest with our excuses we are ripping off ourselves as well as everyone around us.  He pushes the reader to “fix their dream machine and reboot their imagination computer”  and calls doing anything less “a crime against humanity.”  I think he’s also appropriately direct there.

Lately, I have been thanking God for my wife and my mom’s abilities to dream.  They really have a lot of faith because they can see a world where all of their dreams come true despite what is right in front of them.  I used to be that way but compartmentalized that part over the past few years until I could figure out how to get where I wanted to be without hurting anyone’s feelings.  Well I woke up from that dream.  Like they say, “to make an omelet, you have  to break a few eggs.  That also happens to be true for making pancakes, cakes, and french toast.  I’m hungry.  Anyway, the point I am taking forever to get to is that I’ve realized that to truly live out your dreams, you have to be willing to bring your whole self out to the world–even the parts you think are undesirable.  You have to emerge and see.  (I’ve been trying to work that in ever since I came up with that creative title.)  It might not feel easy, but it will definitely be worth it.  If you need help, check out Dr. Steve’s book, my friend Rev. Sandy’s Daily Inspirations, and this blog.  I will be sharing some other resources that I have come across and getting appropriately bolder over time so I’ll have your back if you make the choice to get unhypnotized.

Your friend,

Pedro

Only One Is Right

Sometimes I really get tired of trying to communicate to people because many of us only hear what we want to hear.  Especially these days when most people get so easily offended and feel like having everything go our way is a right.  If I could say it out of kindness, I’d say to them what I say to myself, “Get a clue.  Everything doesn’t just fall into your lap because you’re not that important. Most of us will come and go from this world and in three or four generations no one will ever know we existed.  Some of our memories won’t even make it beyond two generations.  So don’t sweat the small stuff.”  Sounds pretty pessimistic for a would be minister right?  Well, if you think that then you’ve obviously never read Ecclesiastes.  Besides God chewing Job out in the book named after that troubled man, Ecclesiastes is my favorite book in the Hebrew Bible because The Preacher in that book doesn’t pull any punches.  He calls this so called life in the apparent material world as he sees it, and for the most part it is pretty vain.  I know this might sound like bad news at first, but there is a mystery to this line of thinking that neutralizes some of the side effects of over estimating our personal influence.

Check out this passage from Ecclesiastes 2:16-19:

For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever,
Since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come.
And how does a wise man die?
As the fool!

Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me.  And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity.

In other words he is saying, “I’m going to do all this work trying to be wise then in the end I am going to die like a fool and leave everything I worked for to some kid of mine who might turn out to be an idiot.  How pointless?”  Hahaha.  It’s funny because it is true.  This is just one of the examples that “The Preacher”, who many believe was King Solomon, points out that are so true about the things in life that we make a big deal out of to the point of forgetting God, ourselves, and everything that is really real in life.  I’m not going to go too much further into this, because I know if you are a thinking person then you probably have already figured this out even if it is hard to kick the vanity habit.  All I can say is, do yourself a favor and check this book out.  I warn you though.  If you read it only once you may get depressed.  If you’re going to take this on, you have to read it as many times as it takes until you crack up laughing.  I’ve found it to be great medicine if you find yourself getting caught up in The Matrix like I have in the past and get tempted to even now.

Anyway my main point in this post is to call out a major vanity in this world that pretty much throws everything in our lives off kilter.  And that thing is the inability for most of us to say “no” to something we know we should say “no” to.  Only God knows how many times I have heard people say how they “wanted to say ‘no’” but couldn’t for one reason or the other.  Most of these people end up getting mad at the people that they said “yes” to as if the person has Jedi mind powers over them.  But more often what they do is pass their frustrations on to someone else who they feel more comfortable disappointing.  And that is vanity if it’s anything.  More than vanity, it’s kind of evil.  Here’s what Jesus had to say on it in Matthew 5:33-37:

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

Hard to hear, but true as can be.  Saying “yes” when you mean “no” is straight up evil.  Now I am not saying it makes you a bad person or anything.  It just makes you a weak person and all of us have some of that.  I’ll admit it.  I get weak.  I’m a punk sometimes.  Woopity doo.  No big deal.  I’m human.  You know how it is.  But I’ll let you in on a secret though.  Weakness isn’t an excuse, because God’s strength is actually made perfect in weakness.  It’s no joke.  If you can admit weakness, all sorts of good stuff comes in.  Mostly wisdom and insight into why we do the things we do as humans that we don’t actually want to do.  For example, here’s the insight I received on why most of us can’t say “no” when we want to.  It’s as simple as the fact that we don’t like being told “no”.  No, this doesn’t cover every situation.  Some issues run too deep, but for the most part that’s why.  If you think that’s not the case with you, just wait and see how you feel the next time you ask someone to do something that they even hint at saying, “no” to.  If you notice yourself feeling very disappointed and you catch your mind trying to calculate everything you’ve done for them, guess what…  So if that is your issue, then learning to say, “no”, is as simple as learning to take “no” for an answer.

Unfortunately, if you have said “yes” when you meant “no” too many times, you are going to go through the withdrawals and so will the people who are used to you going along with everything they say.  You may end up finding out some hard truths like your friends and family don’t really care about the real you as much as you have liked to imagine.  But not to worry.  It might make you feel better to know that you didn’t care about them either.  I know, it sounds harsh, but most of the time when we tell people “yes” it is more about us than it is them.  This is where the vanity part comes in.  Besides not liking to hear “no”, a large part of the reason we say “yes” to some things is because we want the other person to have a certain image of us or want them to like us.  So you see, it is all about us.  It’s the ego.

It seems like those of us trying to be “spiritual” get caught up in that almost more than anyone else because we get spiritually arrogant.  We get convinced we are representing God and we think that if we disappoint people we are somehow making God look bad.  Think about that.  We confuse niceness with kindness when actually they are two completely different things.  Nice is fake.  Kindness is real.  Niceness makes you look good.  Kindness makes you do good no matter what it looks like.  People will approve of your niceness.  God approves of your kindness.  Niceness says, “yes” because that’s what someone wants to hear.  Kindness says what someone needs to hear.  Yes and no are the same to kindness. So be kind.

If you decide to take this step, you will feel so much better–eventually.  You have to watch yourself though.  Some people who finally feel the liberty to say “no” go as crazy as a baby Christian trying to save the world.  They’ll just run around preaching the “Gospel of No” and start saying “no” indiscriminately.  Someone will ask their name and they’ll say, “No.  I don’t have a name.”  So take it slow.  Remember to be kind to yourself and others.  It’s no one else’s fault when we get ourselves caught in the trap of saying “yes” too much, so have mercy.  If you want to take your kindness a step further, let people know that you are working on yourself and ask for their help and patience as you learn to say, “no” appropriately and set boundaries.  If they’re your true friends they’ll understand and they may even appreciate you giving them permission to do the same.

Free Your Light

This post is a little more personal than my other posts, but I thought it was worth sharing because for the past several weeks I have been having a difficult time reconciling my past with my present.  It started when my Systematic Theology professor gave us an assignment to name our biggest influence on our personal theology i.e. how we approached our beliefs in God.  The rules of the assignment were that we could not use anyone from the Bible or anyone that lived in our lifetime even if it was for just one day.  At first I thought that the assignment was going to be difficult.  I kept trying to think of other Christians before my lifetime who influenced my theology and I could not think of any.  Not even Martin Luther King Jr., who I really respected for sticking by his non-violence message, really felt like he fit as the biggest influence.  After a while, I just cleared my head and trusted that the first person that came to my mind would be the person.  All of a sudden it hit me.  It was Malcolm X.  My first thought was how my teacher might feel about my strongest influence in my Christianity being a radical Black Muslim, but I dropped that thought when I started writing the paper.

Just writing the paper brought up a lot of stuff from my past that I won’t get into right now.  But if that wasn’t enough, in my next class, Liberation Theology, I found out the disheartening news that there were a number of black Christian scholars from the 60′s and 70′s onward that were teaching a theology that mirrored my own in that it acknowledged the black experience and saw Christ as a liberator.  At first I could not see how black churches missed this whole movement.  I wondered why I grew up still hearing sermons about not questioning God and being unworthy of God’s love. I never bought that.  And eventually I discovered that many of these sermons were passed down from slave master’s pastors who besides teaching us that we were unworthy, were also using the Bible to teach us that we should be happy as slaves.  To me that meant I had the right to ask questions if I was going to stay a Christian and keep trying to understand what God was trying to tell me by creating this situation for me.  Somewhere in my quest for answers, I was inspired to write this poem:

Twisted

Open up your ears and hear

The story that I’m telling you

When I was a little kid

I used to get dissed on the regular

I used to get picked on

Poked at and made fun of

Because I was a sensitive cat

Always talking about One Love

Other kids my age

Had multiple distractions

Where as I was more focused on

Putting words into action

So when I took it to the streets

I didn’t expect to get straight dissed

‘Cause my shoes had too many stripes for Adidas

But not enough for K-Swiss

My words were for nothing

I only evoked laughter

I tried to get them focused off my clothes

But it just didn’t matter

They called me church boy

They said I talked “white”

But they were living cartoon

While I was living real life

I wanted to show love

But all they knew was hating

Perpetually playing themselves

Because they were mentally masturbating

They believed the lie

It had been passed down from their mama

Generations infected by an attempt

To keep the black man in drama

So I took it to the adults

I thought they would understand

But they were too “whitewashed”

To see this burgeoning black man

So I took it to my history teacher

Then he said this to my face

“You’re a smart boy

And a credit to your race”

He thought it was a compliment

Only a white man could say that

If he understood anything about me

He’d have known I wouldn’t play that

But I knew he had good intentions

I could tell he didn’t know

He was caught up like everyone else

So I decided to let it go

I then took it to my Grandma

But what she said left me unsettled

She told me tell white people I was Portuguese

So that they would treat me better

What the hell was that?

Was this some conspiracy?

Everyone and their mama working together

To try to instill fear in me

They saw something I thought was impossible

While I saw something else

They were choosing to believe a lie

But I chose to believe in myself

I knew that God had made me

And I know He only makes the best

So I knew the fact that I was not white

In no way made me less

Someone had gotten it twisted

And I was going to find out who

There was no way I was letting these scared victims of society

Tell me what to do

So at first I examined the white man

Since everyone thought he was so smart

I discovered so many despicable deeds

It was as if he had no heart

Then I checked out the black man

I figured they were more like me

But I got pissed to find out some of them helped

When we were sold into slavery

My mind became consumed with anger

I had to let it out

So I decided to tell every black and white

What I was all about

Well both sides called me a racist

In that they agreed with each other

Whites said I was an uppity nigger

And blacks called me siddity brother

So I then turned to God

Well turned on Him is more accurate

Because I didn’t like the way He made this world

I told Him I wasn’t having it

I said “You better do something

Before I fix this world myself

If You are the One responsible for this

I might as well pray to someone else”

He responded, “While you’re sitting here pointing fingers

How about looking in the mirror

I am the One that made all you see

Call nothing I made inferior

Who are you to judge?

Are you the scale by which all things are measured?

Are all things imperfect as compared to you?

Did you put this world together?

There’s a point to all of this

Just listen to what I’m saying

Perhaps I created this entire world

Just to have you right here praying

In Me anything is possible

To all those who believe

This world is as beautiful or ugly as you see it

It depends on what you choose to perceive

I made this world out of perfection

But in your Ego you thought you could fix it

This world will change when you change your mind

You are the one that got it twisted

© Copyright 2004 Pedro S. Silva II

As I wrote for my class in light of what I maintained from the poem above, I felt all of these emotions rising.  Most of them were feelings of frustration, anger, and powerlessness.  I started thinking about growing up with Muslim cousins and constantly comparing my religion to theirs as a kid.  I thought about Brother George who had an Afrocentric book shop on the corner near my Aunt’s store, Shabazz Fashions, and the mosque and how I would go in there and read about black history from a black perspective.  I thought about marching with my mom for voter’s rights, Jesse Jackson running for president, and L. Douglas Wilder being elected as the first Black post Reconstruction  Governor.  That’s what I grew up around and yet when I started public school, I also remember my grandmother telling me to tell white people I was Portuguese so that they would treat me better, kids joking people for being “black as tar”, and the stupid belief that being lighter skinned somehow made a person smarter or better.  But the thing that really got me was the big picture of a white Jesus we had in our church.  That was the icing on the cake.  What message was that giving black kids?  While personally I don’t see Jesus’ race as important in and of itself, at some point, not questioning the psychological affects of this imagery borders on the irresponsible.

I had heard Muslims saying that we worshiped three Gods (The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as we said at the time.) and that we followed a white Jesus.  Of course with that picture in a prominent position in the church and on our church fans, I really couldn’t say much about that.  All I could try to do was make sense of it, which was no easy task.  I took to reading and investigating Christianity and the history of slavery and Black people.  I used a lot of Malcolm’s criticism of Christianity and the state of this country in his time to inform me.  Of course as I read his autobiography and stories of other great minds of the Black consciousness, I went through a lot of emotions.  I got angry with white people and black people equally for slavery.  I was mad at white people for thinking it was okay and black people for not choosing to die or kill their oppressors.  I was also angry that other Africans helped in the slave trade.  Christianity became pretty suspect too during that time.

One of the only things that really kept me from going overboard was the realization that in the end Malcolm became a peacemaker and realized that he could work with white people for the freedom movement as well.  Still, I needed to make sense of how I was going to deal with this legacy for my own life.  I knew that there was still so much pain in our community that we needed to deal with.  I hated it that we were dividing ourselves by complexion and that most of the other black kids I knew didn’t know anything about people like Dr. Charles Drew or Madame CJ Walker.  They hadn’t read any slave narratives or had coloring books filled with great African Americans in history like I did.  When I would tell them that the modern traffic light was invented by an African American, Garrett Morgan, they just thought I was lying.  I was raised to be proud of who I was and to see myself as equal to anyone.  Even being a little guy like I am, my dad would remind me that, “you can’t judge a man by the size of his palms.”  Although I only really saw him in the summers, that advice really helped me to be confident in myself.  Still, all of that reinforcement seemed only to make things harder on me growing up, because to most of the other black kids it made it look like I thought I was better than them.

Now, I want to switch gears here because I don’t want to make this a “poor me story” because it’s not that.  I just want to use my personal experience to shine some light on a very real issue, that in my experience, it seems like this country has yet to come to terms with, which is the issues that slavery has had on this country–not just for black people, but for white people as well.  At our core, we are all going to stay messed up until we face our issues.  There is so much going on subconsciously that is effecting how our country makes decisions and until we get some help it’s just going to keep eating away at us until we have no choice.  Just look at this thought as an example.

This country was built on trying to pay as little for labor as possible and that is exactly what is taking it down.  Have we changed?  I say “we” because most of us have gotten caught up in the system too.  We can no longer point fingers because on some level, most of us know this.  I know I am a part of it frequently when I try to find the lowest price for something instead of the fairest price which would be more considerate of the people helping to make it in some poor country.  I don’t say this to make anyone feel guilty.  I am just saying it so that more of us can start trying to wake up.  At this stage, it doesn’t matter who started any of this mess.  What matters is what we can do as individuals to decrease our participation in it.

One thing that we all can agree on is that we are here and that we want a life of meaning.  Just like the poem says, our world will change when we change  our minds.  It’s time to wake up and take responsibility for our freedom and respect the freedom of others.  Instead of fixing others, we need to do the work on fixing ourselves as individuals.  To some extent Earth is like an insane asylum.  We have to be crazy to get caught up in a place that tries to convince us that we are separate from one another.  Even more insane is that thought that we are separate from God and unworthy of God’s love.  That is impossible!  God created an entire universe just to let you know that you are loved and worthy.  It’s time to receive it.  But more importantly it is time to give it.  In the end that’s why I remained Christian.  Besides telling us that our walk with God was our responsibility, Jesus taught the possibility of Oneness with God and neighbor.  Despite what my ego might want to see sometimes, I see that message as One that is, can, and will save this world if more of us work hard to live it.

Choose

I would have to say that in my experience, the hardest vocation one can take upon himself or herself in this world is that of loving God completely.  Of course, I tell myself that I love God and God’s ways.  Daily, I crucify (figuratively) myself in my mind in an effort to see just where I stand.    I go forward in faith believing that I am doing my best to surrender to God’s One True will for my life–what many of us now call, living authentically, but the truth is I have no idea.  I could find that I have gone the wrong way just as easily as anyone.  Often I have to say these words, “But for the grace of God, there go I.”  I ask God to show me that I am going the right Way, but often I receive Silence at best and doubt from myself and others at the worst.  But it would be faith if I knew for sure, so I keep going.

Many people teach that loving God, or Holy Spirit, or the Law of Attraction or whatever will guarantee an outward showing of your internal awareness of Truth.  But the Truth is, conscious or not, we are all governed by the Creative Laws of the Universe in perpetuity.  That is the Word that was, is, and always will be and no matter how many religions, dogmas, or rituals we come up with to describe it or contest it this will remain the same.  I think that was the essence of Jesus’ Good News—there’s nothing we can do to change the world because it is what it is.  Loving God completely is the acceptance of this.  If we love God completely, we can dare to live as One even as Jesus lives as One with God and all of Creation.  We won’t change the world by what we do, but rather we will see the beauty of the world as it Truly is when we surrender our vision and see with the vision that God* has no matter what the our “I”s (eyes) tell us.

This is how I make sense of this.  I tell myself that there are at least two types of people in the world.  There always is when you think of anything the world has to offer.  There are:

1. Those who believe the world consists of at least two types of people and
2. Those who believe that we are all One. (The paradox is that those who know we are One can still see that there are others who seem to believe that we are divided.  Yet, by God’s grace, they maintain their belief in Oneness and work on themselves to heal the false appearance of division among us.

With the first group, there is always an enemy—an Us and a Them.  It is always our goal to win.  They have to win at all costs because if they don’t win then they think something is wrong with the world.  Though some of us with this mindset claim to want to improve the world around us to make it a better place, subconsciously we know that if we succeed, we are out of a job.  We need an enemy so that we can have something to do.  Despite our good intentions, we will find what’s wrong with the world, because we find our meaning in fixing what we see as God’s mistakes (even if we won’t admit it).  I mean no offense is saying this.  In fact I am sometimes that person myself.  Those of us like this would be crying in the streets if we encountered a world that matched our idea of perfection and we’d probably be bored.

The other group—those who believe that we are all One—will not be crying in the streets unless it was for joy.  But what you will likely see us doing is pretty much whatever we were always doing.  That is because we never thought the world was unfair before.  Our world view will be as consistent as it ever was.  This is because our world view was never based on an outward showing, but rather an inner knowing.  Whenever we perceived an injustice, we did not go out trying to change others.  What they did was adjust their perception.  They always aligned themselves with the governance of God’s Laws, which are higher than are own.  They rarely tried to work against the Laws or go around them in any way.  People like this are few and far between.  But that’s okay.  There’s a Law that works with them that we all can benefit from.

Jesus’ talked a lot about leaven or yeast.  The thing about yeast is that it takes a relatively small amount to expand a comparatively large mixture of dough.  A little goes a long way.  And the longer it sits, the more it expands. When we live from Oneness, we are the leaven God has provided for the world.  And don’t worry, even though we may appear to switch sides from time to time, like a coin, the two are truly One.  The only division is in our perception and it is temporary.  Only what is eternal is actually True, because God is eternal.  Hopefully what I mean by this will get clearer.

Earlier I said that loving God completely meant accepting that there is nothing you can do to change the world.  I will now try to make sense out of that statement.  I think that the best way to open up to understanding this idea, is to ask yourself the question: If the world is what is, then what am I?  The quickest and most complete answer to this question is: If the world is what it is, then I am what I am.  Any answer other than this complicates things.  For example, if you broke yourself down into a thousand ideas of what makes you who you are, then in order to understand how you relate to the world, you would have to break it down as well.  You would also have to break down every person you encounter or try to relate to.  This can be very hard to keep up with.

Here are the benefits of acceptance.  Things happen faster when you accept them for what they are. Ok.  Let’s say you want cookies right now.  You accept this.  There are none in the house.  You accept this.  You have all the ingredients to make them yourself.  You accept this.  The total baking time is 45 minutes.  You accept this.  You have to be at work in 45 minutes.  You accept this.  You can’t be late again.  You accept this.  Your job is 30 minutes away.  You accept this. It will take you 5 minutes to pick up cookies from the store on your way in to work.  You accept this.  Now given this information, what would be the most harmonious decision to make?  Of course you should get ready for work and pick up the cookies on the way in. It’s a simple decision.  Or is it?

Now here is what many of us will do in the same situation.  You want cookies.  You accept this.  There are none in the house.  You don’t want to accept this.  You spend five minutes looking for cookie alternatives but can’t find any so you accept it.  You have all the ingredients to make them yourself.  You don’t want to accept this.  You start complaining about how long it will take to make the cookies.  You have to be at work in 40 minutes.  You don’t want to accept this.  You start wishing you worked later or won the lottery.  You can’t be late again.  You don’t want to accept this.  It was never your fault that you were late before.  Those other times shouldn’t count. Your job is 30 minutes away.  You don’t want to accept this.  You get angry that you have to drive so far.  You think about quitting and getting a closer job.  It will take you 5 minutes to pick up cookies from the store on your way in to work.  You don’t want to accept this.  You hate stopping once you’re on the road.  You just want to get there and get it over with.  Besides you can probably make cookies better than the ones at the store.  What do you do now?

What would make sense would be to give up the cookies at this point.  Given the above information you should go to work and then make the cookies when you get home.  But many of us given the same information will make a choice like this.  They will calculate that they still have 35 minutes to get to work.  If they hurry, they can make the dough and then jump in the shower.  If they make the cookies a little smaller and turn the heat up, they should get done a little faster.  Sometimes it only takes about 25 minutes to get to work, which gives them a little more time.  Besides, they usually drive the speed limit.  If they go a little faster, they’ll get there a little quicker.  Also they’ll only be about 5-10 minutes late anyway and because everybody usually is just settling in around that time, no one will notice if they go straight to their desk.  To top it off, if they bring in some cookies, everyone will be so happy about the cookies that they’ll forget about everything else.  Proud of themselves for their calculations, they will go forward with this plan.

Some people will laugh when they read this, because everyone either knows someone like this or they are this person at one time or another.  The way I see it, this is a free world.  And all things being equal, I cannot say that the first logical decision is the best one.  I can say it is the best one for me, but who knows what’s in store for the person that makes the more creative decision.  I can tell you what I’ve seen so far though.  Most of the time the results of making the latter decision will yield this kind of outcome:

The shortcuts that the person took in the preparation of the cookies will result in a product that is less than desirable.  They will be far worse than the store cookies.  They will dig through trying to find one decent looking one to justify the entire project.  That cookie in hand, they will rush to the car with wet hair and a wrinkled shirt.  As they drive they will get crumbs all over themselves.  To top it off they will bite into a chunk of flour or an eggshell from the ill-prepared mixture.  Stressed out that they are at least 25 minutes from work with only 17 minutes to get there, they will nearly scream when they run into traffic.  They don’t want to call to tell their boss about the traffic because then it will be obvious that they left late or at least draw attention to them when they get in.  Frustrated, they decide to get off at the next exit and take the streets.  This will probably add 5-10 minutes to their tardiness, but it is better than the 30 minutes that the traffic will probably add.  They drive all around town to only get ahead by about 2 exits.  When they do, they see that the traffic is still there.  They move forward by about 300 yards to see that traffic has miraculously broken up and they are moving at normal speed.  They may as well have stayed on the interstate in the first place.  They finally get to work 25 minutes late.  It looks like no one is around so they sneak to their desk only to see on their calendar that there was a meeting that started 15 minutes ago that they were supposed to attend.  All this trouble for a nasty cookie.  Life isn’t fair.

Some of you are still laughing, but the sad thing is that this occurs everyday in some form or fashion.  But that isn’t the saddest part.  No, this is actually pretty funny.  What’s sad is that given the chance, this person will likely do the same thing again.  Why?  Because they will not be able to accept that their decision was the main ingredient in this recipe for disaster.  Their brain will search and search for the culprit.  “How did this happen?” they will ask.  Ironically, this little incident is filled with treasures for success.  If they could just find it in their heart to love God completely, they would see His Laws at work.  They would see what is and find their place in it.  And when they find that place it will be just right for the person they are.

You just have to accept things as they are in the space that you are in.  If you can do that, you will be able to align yourself and then work with what is in order to go where everything is going—toward God.  This can only be done by letting go of what you want things to be and building on the eternal foundation of what has always been.  The bottom line is, you can’t have two masters.  According to the Bible, Jesus taught if you love one you will despise the other.  Knowing him, I don’t think he would mind me rephrasing that to say, if you truly love One completely, there is no other.

*Genesis 1:31 New King James Version (NKJV)  it says, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. “  If God really sees and knows everything and is not bound by our limitations of time and space, isn’t it safe to assume that the way that God sees the creation is a little more accurate than ours, given our limited context?

How Much Is God Worth To You?

Nothing used to annoy me more than the preachers of the Prosperity Gospel.  I felt like they were turning Christ’s message of faith into something you could find on an infomercial.  It seemed like money and “blessings” were the only things on their minds and like any other pyramid system it was the people on the bottom who were “blessing” the people on top.  I could barely listen to it.  I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs “WAKE UP!!! CAN’T YOU SEE YOU’RE BEING PIMPED!”  But instead, I kept my peace and only shared my opinion when someone brought it up to me directly.  Usually it was some frustrated person who paid their tithes, but couldn’t pay their light bill who would be “waiting on the Lord for a miracle.”  Here’s an exaggerated example of a conversation for some imagery.

Broke Person: Pray for me brother, I need a miracle.
Me: Of course, what’s the issue?
BP: I can’t pay my light bill.
Me: What happened?
BP: Well, earlier this month the Lord blessed me with a flat screen TV, a gold watch, and some new clothes.  Then toward the middle of the month the blessings stopped flowing right when we were running out of food and our lights were about to be shut off.  I prayed but I didn’t receive any sign that God was listening.  The light bill was $125 but I only had $122.  I wanted to pay them the whole thing instead of coming up short so I bought $20 in lotto tickets and a bag of Fritos.  Then I put my last $100 in the plate at church believing that God would multiply it 10, 100, or maybe even 1000 fold.  But so far nothing and the cutoff notice is for tomorrow.  What should I do?
Me: Well, how much was the TV, watch, and clothes?
BP: About $1,000. Why?
Me: Well, I’ll pray for you, but it seems to me that God already multiplied your $100 tenfold in advance ($100 x 10= $1,000). Have you considered the possibility that perhaps God blessed you with what you need and that you blessed yourself with those other things?
BP: Do you think you’re better than me?  I don’t want to hear your negativity.  I am a child of God and a good person who goes to church and pays my tithes.  I deserve all of my desires and no discomfort in life.  Everything should go my way and it is nothing but the Devil that has put me in this situation and you are in league with the Devil.  When I get blessed with all my material desires and am living in my mansion, I am not inviting you to any of my parties with important guests dressed in beautiful clothes who all love me.  You can keep your prayers you Antichrist.
Me: OK.

Now of course this is an exaggeration, but the essence of it is true.  I have known so many people who literally believe that God is their Santa Claus and that if they are good people all of their dreams should just come true.  For a long while I held prosperity preachers responsible to some degree, but one day I realized that they wouldn’t have an audience if that wasn’t what people wanted to hear.  I also prayed for God to show me some other good that was coming from this message and came to understand that for some people this message was actually helpful, because before this word was preached to them, they were on the opposite end of the spectrum, believing that they were worthless and did not deserve anything.  For those people, hearing that they could have what they wanted was helping them to see that they had value in the world.  My blessing was that God showed me compassion for them and for the preachers and I got over my complete aversion to this message.

Still, there are those who have become addicted to this idea of looking for miracles in the form of external and material manifestations.  The needs for these kinds of signs is like Spiritual training wheels.  In Matthew 24:24 Jesus warns that false christs and prophets will try to deceive, even the elect, with signs and wonders.  So while I celebrate as much as anyone when a Spiritual desire takes shape in a pleasing form, I think it is unwise to be attached to these forms and to see them as our “right” for being good and “spiritual” people.  This mentality just weakens our emotional, mental, and ultimately our physical constitution and leaves us susceptible to the control of anyone or anything that offers us promises that all of our dreams can come true.  When it says, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” Psalm 23 is giving a strong clue as to how we should approach desires in this world if we claim to know who God is.  God provides all of our needs.  Consider the lilies. The thing is that many of us do not know the difference between what we want and what we need.  The video below might add a little perspective though.

Now here’s the part that might sting.  All of our dreams do come true, but sometimes our dreams are nightmares.  By focusing on the material so much we are often distracted by our selfish desires and do not see the truth of the Spiritual being within us trying to be born into the world for the glory of all beings.  I’ll let Paul try to explain it.

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

For the purposes of brevity, I am going to focus on the passage that says, For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 

First off, I consider it a fact that most of us have no idea what we should pray for.  We are so programmed by our upbringing, marketing campaigns, and other forms of media that we actually don’t know what we truly desire or need.  We know what we are “supposed” to want or need primarily based on our demographic, but in reality, in a world of infinite variety, it is very unlikely that hundreds of millions of unique individuals are attracted to the same things for similar reasons unless they are conforming to some external standard that is telling them what they want.  But enough of the conspiracy theories, the point is that we don’t know what we should pray for so those of us who pray consciously are likely praying for things that we don’t really need.  As I like to say, “If we really believe God provides all of our needs, then we can only want what we don’t need.”  This is why materially based miracle mindedness will throw you off every time even if its only by a tenth of a degree.  Over time that tenth will put you way off the mark.

As far as the Spirit interceding for us with groanings that can’t be uttered, well, that is difficult to put into words for obvious reasons.  It says it can’t be uttered right?  The power of this statement can only be sensed when you are able to be comfortable with paradoxes.  It is the sound of silence and the action taken in stillness.  Still I will try to give you an example.  Have you ever used a GPS and when it told you to go one way you went another way that you felt was better?  If so, then you might know the feeling of getting so annoyed with the GPS continually saying “recalculating” that you turn it off.  Well, within you there is a perfect GPS (God Positioning System) that tells you where you can feel the Power and Presence of God.  But with this GPS, you know you are getting closer to your destination when you no longer feel the need to look for signs and messages that tell you that you are going the right way.  Why is it that way?  It is because God is always absolutely and fully Present right here and right now.  If you are looking outside for God then you are going the wrong way.  This can’t be uttered because people with materially based miracle mindedness don’t want to hear this.  It makes their survival instincts kick in because they think you are trying to take something from them, when the irony is that it is just the opposite.  But in order to “see” the fruit of this message, one must walk by faith and not by sight.  I’ll leave you with these words attributed to Jesus as the final clue of how it works.

It Goes Both Ways

In my last post, You Won’t Like Me When I’m Angry, I said that in my opinion the greatest miracle Jesus ever did was stay on the cross.  Well, if that was the greatest, the second was to pray for the people who were cheering to see him there.  Imagine that you have been betrayed.  It could be something simple like one of your friends told you that they couldn’t hang out and then you run into them in public with someone else.  How would you feel?  I know most of us would have hurt feelings.  We would get upset to some degree and go over in our heads trying to figure out why they would do that.  After pining over it for some time we might find ourselves still unable to connect the dots.  It just doesn’t make sense.  We might think, “What did I do to them?”  Unable to move forward without some type of closure, we will likely react in one of several ways to include:

1. Think of additional reasons to be angry with them
2. Make up a story of why they did this that has us playing the victim role
3. Tell ourselves that the next time they ask us to go out that we will say “no”
4. Start surveying mutual friends to see if they have ever been a victim of this so called friend’s neglect
5. Take out our disappointment on the next person that we encounter

Ultimately when we feel slighted we don’t care what the other person’s story is and we sure as heck are not thinking about their well-being.  All we know is that we are hurting and that we want some degree of relief no matter whose expense it is at.

As I said, at the level of consciousness that I am at right now, if I were Jesus I would have jumped off the cross and gone off.  But I hold in my heart his example of how we should respond to slights against us whether they are real and imagined.  With Jesus’ greatest miracle he showed the first prerequisite for being able to live these words he taught in Matthew 5:43-45:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighborand hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

It is difficult for most of us to live these words because most of us are stuck in survival mode.  We have been so programmed by the “What’s in it for me?” mentality that our survival instincts are turned on in instances of the littlest importance.  You can see that very visibly just driving on the interstate.  People don’t want to let other people in.  We act like it is our mission to teach other people a lesson by slowing down or not moving over when we see them speeding up behind us.  It’s all pretty ridiculous and yet most of us live in that mode most of our lives.  Jesus on the cross willingly, contradicts this instinct.  He was selfless or at least he was able to see himself as One with the Whole and so could give himself up for the good of the greater body of humanity.  We cannot do anything like this when we see ourselves as separate from others.  In other words, we have to love them at least as much as we love ourselves.  That’s the key to miracle one.

Miracle two of blessing them and asking that they be forgiven is a branch off of that same tree.  When we see ourselves as one with others we see their hearts a little more clearly.  Being beyond the survival mode, Jesus could see that these people were cursing him out of fear.  Let’s not forget that Jesus was a troublemaker in the eyes of some people.  There were many people who were comfortable with the status quo of that time.  They had found their niche and Jesus’ message threw that off.  On the other end of the spectrum, there were those who wanted radical, even violent, change.  Well, Jesus was saying love your enemies.  So how do you think that went over?

Basically everything Jesus said ran contrary to the survivalist mentality that the majority was and still is living in.  He knew that.  He also knew what it felt like to want to live.  That’s why, in the garden of Gethsemane, he cried to God about the possibility of passing the cup some other way.  He could sympathize with them.  He knew that if they were not operating from that base level of existence then they would not have chosen that he be crucified.  In fact, I think we all know what that is like.  When we give other people good advice that we can’t do ourselves, it is because we can sympathize with them and in that moment we are not thinking about our own survival.  Many of us are capable of recommending forgiveness of others when we aren’t the one that is hurting.  Jesus simply took it to the next evolutionary stage of consciousness.  Being in the world but not of the world, he could look at the crowd from a “beyond” state of mind and say those words, “Father, Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  He could say this because although he was present in the circumstances, he was not limited by the circumstances.

One time I was reciting one of my poems at this back to school event.  I began by saying that we appreciated the school supplies, but I wanted to say something to the kids who were going into this school year with uncertainty and fear.  I mentioned that many young Black males don’t expect to live pass 18 so in addition to school supplies we needed to encourage them to see beyond their present circumstances. The poem started off with me talking about my frustration with the false perceptions among the races and was intended to end with a talk between God and me that resulted in my realization that my mind contributed to those false perceptions as well.  It was kind of like the riot act that God gave Job (see Job 38-42).  But before I got to the end, this Black lady came up to the stage and demanded that I get down.  After she said it a few times, I got down without finishing.  She pulled me to the side and said, “You are going to embarrass us in front of all of these good White people who brought us all of these school supplies and food.”  Her survival instincts were in full effect and in her mind I had to go.

I didn’t bear my cross very well in that moment.  I got up there, but when the lady started going off I got right down.  I don’t blame her now nor did I then, but I did use that experience as an excuse not to get back up there.  Still, I learned a lesson and that is what I am sharing with you in this post.  Once everything calmed down, the lady came up to me and apologized.  She said, “I’m sorry I did that.  I don’t know what came over me.  I heard you saying all this Black and White stuff and I thought about those people who brought the supplies feeling uncomfortable and the next thing you know I was yelling at you.”  I told her it was okay and that I understood and we hugged.  It was pretty special.  The fact was that I too was nervous that I would make the people feel uncomfortable, but had decided to say it anyway.  In the end I finished the poem to a group of about 6 college students who wanted to know how it ended.  Maybe the poem was just for them.  At least that’s what I tell myself.

Anyway, that lady taught me the meaning of FFTFTKNWTD.  When she told me that she didn’t know what came over her, I felt compassion for her.  Had I felt that compassion when I was on the stage, I may have been able to complete the poem and still have that moment with her.  Who knows?  The point is that she had nothing against me when she jumped up there.  She was just caught up in the fear of loss.  Once that fear subsided she saw more clearly and was actually awesome enough to enlighten me on why she had that reaction.  I think we were both blessed by the encounter.  This may sound crazy, but in that experience I considered the possibility that Jesus was blessed by his experience as well.  As he said in Matthew 5:43-45 quoted above, “pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,that you may be sons of your Father in heaven”.  A lot of us talk the Talk, but get upset when Life gives us an opportunity to walk the Walk.  Like I did on that stage, we find reasons not to finish.  But thank God we are not limited to those moments.  We always have an opportunity to learn from these encounters and because one of us has spoken those words we have it in us to say, “FFTFTKNWTD” for others as well as ourselves.