Bearing Witness

A friend used to say, “don’t give up five minutes before the miracle.”  This is not so simple, of course.  We do give up; then, with the support of friends, we get up again.  Or, we get up if we don’t become caught in the netted lies of discouragement and doubt.  If we remember that just before breakthrough the resistance is greatest. 

We are meant to believe in the calling of spirit, in the soul of who we are, the way it pulls us forward.  If, as papa said, we are given a portion of God at our birth then how could we do other than believe?  We are spirit made substance.  We are children of the heavens.   

So, why this struggle?  Why do we fall into doubt and mistake it for truth?  The answer is in acculturation, in what we are taught.  Social training of family and school, of religion, is aimed at adaptation to norms that want all the rough edges worn away, that want us easy to control.  If these norms were taught as skills rather than as reality, we would fare better. 

I can see no purpose humility serves unless by this I mean knowing you are as loved by God as I am.  Or that the universe fills you with messages from the stars to which I am not privy.  That I can love you without diminishing myself.  That the pull of my spirit toward the miracle might not take me where I thought.   

There is, of course, a place for discernment.  If my spirit retreats from an individual, I should follow its lead as some people get their gifts tangled into the twists of how they learned to survive.  My brother and I talk about this – to acknowledge the gift someone has, to avoid offending it, and still stay away from the person.  It is an important skill as the spirit does not always seem to care that the individual may be appalling – powerful and gifted – but otherwise dreadful. 

Still, no matter the package, the magnitude of what we are seems clear.  Yet sometimes we forget the love creation has for us, the support and affirmation.  We get bogged down in the chattering mind, its familiar thoughts and feelings.  The spirit pulls.  Fearfully we resist.  

So, even in the disorder of a new calling, let's remind each other that we are children of the sun sent for a purpose.   Let's bear witness to the unique magnificence of what we each carry; to the fruit that pulls.