Co-Authoring Your Own Story With A Divine Power

I want to begin this morning by sharing with you the final day of my son's athletic career.

You know there's a couple schools of thought out there when it comes to teaching kids.

One is to really encourage them to excel at what they're best at.

Then there's another school that says to help them be a little bit good at everything.

Be kind of mediocre but have enough to pass by.

I played Little League Baseball and so I wanted Gavin to play Little League Baseball.

I had such a good time taking him out to the park like my dad had taken me to hit him ground balls and pop flies.

He was so adorable in his uniform out there in right field.

Nowhere can a child's imagination wander more than when playing right field.

And I received a call one day that Gavin was at practice but was now on his way to the emergency room.

The coach had pitched a ball that hit his foot and he was in great pain.

And so I got to the emergency room.

Mom was already there and waited about an hour,

Hour and a half.

And out comes Gavin with a huge cast on his foot.

Two crutches and the biggest smile on his face that I had ever seen.

And I knew in that moment his time playing sports was over.

He had his best time the last two games sitting on the bench cheering on his friends.

There's a third school to encourage our children to do what they love to do.

And that's what was in my mind when I saw Gavin with that big smile on his face in his crutches.

Do what you love kid.

Do what you love.

And that's my message to you this morning.

Do what you love kid.

Do what you love.

Life is too short to waste your time on doing anything else.

It's so easy to get caught in what I'm calling this morning pulp living.

Into a mediocre way of life that just goes through the motions and feels like it's not your life but it belongs to someone else and it certainly has nothing to do with the life of the spirit in you.

The great Ursula Le Guin said,

The unread story is not a story.

It is little black marks on wood pulp.

The reader reading it makes it live.

A live thing.

A story.

That reading of our own lives,

That's that love.

See when you bring your love and your uniqueness into your life,

You begin to live your spiritual narrative.

You begin to live the life that God has in mind for you.

It's the magic of embodying what Joseph Campbell called the pleasure of a lifetime being who you are.

The greatest story ever told.

I use this name pulp living based upon the old pulp novels.

These were mass-created novels created by writers who wrote them just to make money and all of the stories are pretty much exactly the same.

And they were throwaway novels because they were intentionally created to be cheap so they were printed on the worst quality of paper.

And what I would say about the pulp life is that it's not the life that's lived and based on the fruits of hard work but it's a life that's lived for convenience.

It's not a life that's based on meaning but on entertainment.

It's not a life that's based on rituals and rites of passage that honor our ongoing growth and deepening in life.

It's all about the routine,

Keeping things comfortable and safe.

Now you may hear what I'm saying about the pulp life and say,

Oh,

That doesn't sound all that bad.

But that's what makes it so dangerous.

Because when we give ourselves to the pulp life,

We deny the true life that is waiting for us.

The true life that the divine is calling us to live.

Our founder,

Ernest Holmes,

Said,

The greatest gift life could have made to you is yourself.

You are a spontaneous self-choosing center in life,

In the great drama of being,

The great joy of becoming,

The certainty of eternal expansion.

You could not ask for more and more could not have been given.

I'm not going to be naive here.

I don't think that you have to experience that truth every day but I hope you get a glimpse of it at least a few times a week.

This gift of life,

This thing that I'm calling your true life today,

You're calling your purpose.

It's more real than anything.

It's happening right here and right now.

But the question is,

Are you living it?

Are you living it?

I like to think that this true life is something that's ever available,

Calling us to embody and to step into it.

And all you have to do is be you.

All you have to do is to do what you love.

Seventy years ago,

Next year,

Marks the anniversary of when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.

And this sparked a revolution that ended segregation in our country.

And yet,

I'd like to think that all of the energy of that divine story was already present.

It was already ready to happen.

It just took this one courageous soul to say yes,

To embody,

And to step into it so all that needed to unfold could unfold.

She shared,

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired,

But that isn't true.

I was not tired physically or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day.

I was not old,

Although some people have an image of me as being old then.

I was 42.

No,

The only tired I was,

Was tired of giving in.

I'd given up my seat before,

But this day,

I was especially tired,

Tired from the ache in my heart.

It didn't just take Rosa Parks to step into her courage and her boldness that day.

It took a minister's son in Atlanta,

Georgia,

Who had his whole ministerial path set up for him,

Martin Luther King Jr.

,

To say,

I'm going to try something different,

And I'm going to leave this bus boycott in Montgomery even though I've never done anything like that before.

It took a young lawyer named Thurgood Marshall to realize that you didn't need new laws to make segregation possible.

You just needed to apply the laws that already existed in the Constitution.

It took the courageous actions of black Americans and a consciousness of the majority of the country to step into what in the heart we already knew was right and should be.

And I'm not trying to compare you to Rosa Parks today,

But what I'm trying to say is that divine breakthrough,

That divine good,

That divine meaning,

That divine fulfillment,

That deep down you know in your heart is real and true,

It's calling you.

It's calling you.

And I don't mean this as fluffiness because what happens when we deny the call,

When we live only the pulp life,

That true life,

It haunts us.

It will haunt you like a specter.

It will come after you.

It will call you into embodying what it is.

And if you feel stuck and you're not sure how to get it going,

All you need is that greater expression of yourself,

That courageous act,

That willingness to be vulnerable,

That deep honesty.

As you step into being who you are and you embrace doing what you love,

Everything else begins to come together.

And that true life that you've been wanting to live,

You realize it's been waiting for you.

The great Gilda Radner said,

While we have the gift of life,

It seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die,

Whether it is our spirit,

Our creativity,

Or our glorious uniqueness.

It was Valentine's Day a few weeks ago,

Not my favorite holiday.

I love celebrating with loved ones,

But I'm one of those folks,

I'm always worried about the folks who maybe don't have someone that they have a romance with,

So I'm just on the phone and texting all day.

And it's a,

You know,

Materialistic holiday as well.

And this year,

I wanted to give my family chocolate and sugar,

But I wanted to give them more than that too.

And so I thought,

Gosh,

How could I create an expression that let them know how I best see them when they're living their true life?

That when I remember them,

How I will hold them in my mind as incredible beings.

And so I went through all my pictures and I tried to find a picture of each of them doing what they love,

And when I saw them as their whole self living their true life,

And I attached a little quote to each one.

And so for my wife,

April,

When I see her at her best,

She's with children.

She's teaching kids,

Creating environments for kids.

She's shy in general conversation,

But she's the most charismatic person I've ever seen when she's with children.

And I put a little quote from Viktor Frankl on there.

Someone in the class,

He's teaching man's search for meaning.

They say,

Well,

What's your meaning in life?

And he says,

Guess.

And the gentleman writes it down and he hands it to him.

He says,

Yes.

And the paper says,

To help others find their meaning.

I thought about my son when we were first really getting to know each other and connecting,

And we got a kite one day in Seal Beach,

California,

And he was flying that kite and I had a picture of him just exploring and wondering and imagining.

And I put a quote from the end of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott that says,

Something to the effect of,

They're up over the horizon are my highest dreams and aspirations.

I may never reach them,

But I endure to always follow where they lead.

And then for my little Nancy,

She had just bravely gone on the balance beam in her gymnastics class for the first time.

She's so brave and courageous.

And I put a little quote from Brendan Behan that says,

Our fears are paper tissue thin,

And a single act of courage would help us move right through them.

That's what I want my daughter to know is those little acts of courage will always bring her her true life.

How do you best see the people that you love the most in their true life?

When do you best see yourself in true life?

Three ways to embody your true life to share with you.

The first I've already mentioned,

But it's do what you love.

Do what you love.

There's that school that teaches to focus on what you're good at,

What you're talented at,

And keep doing that.

This is often what our loved ones want us to do because it helps us be successful.

It helps us support other people.

Then there's that school to try to be mediocre and know a little bit of everything.

This is what society wants for us.

But then there's that school that says,

Do what you love and only do what you don't love if it helps get you to doing what you love.

And this is what God's story wants for your life.

It's what that divine calling,

Who you were meant to be,

Wants you to do what you love.

And yet when we get too caught up in the pulp life,

We disconnect ourselves from meaning to the degree that we start to fear it,

To the degree that you actually begin to fear and resist doing what you love.

It becomes overwhelming.

The first thing we can do is we can reconnect with what brings us meaning in our lives.

Frankel said there were three ways to find meaning.

The first is through creative work.

The second is through serving a cause greater than ourselves or through loving a human being via more than our own egoic needs.

And lastly,

Through suffering,

Through struggle,

Through challenge.

If you can explore those ideas,

You can reconnect with the meaning of your life and begin to find that love is not some ghost,

Some faraway,

Overwhelming thing.

It's who you are.

And when we love not only our lives,

But what we do,

We begin to allow everything else to fall into line to support us.

The great novelist,

Stephen Pressfield,

Wrote a great nonfiction book called The Art of War.

Thank you,

Brian,

For the book.

And he talks about living in New York City,

An aspiring writer,

And he's just been driving a cab for a few years,

Not writing anything.

And he shares on a particular evening,

He gets home,

And there's about 10 days of dishes there in the sink.

And he finally brings himself,

Overcoming all the resistance he has to get out the typewriter as many years ago,

And to get to work and to start typing.

And he types and types for two hours,

And he throws away everything he's written.

And he gets up,

And he starts to wash those dishes.

And he shares,

To my amazement,

I realized I was whistling.

It hit me.

I had turned a corner.

I was okay.

I would be okay from here on.

Do you understand?

I hadn't written anything good.

It might be years before I would,

If I ever did at all.

That didn't matter.

What counted was that I had,

After years of running from it,

Actually sat down and done my work.

I know it sounds funny,

But stop running away from what you love.

Run into it.

And as you embrace and do what you love,

You will be amazed at how that magic of life,

That sacred creative process gets to work for you because you are reminding your life of who you are.

And in turn,

It will remind you of why you're here.

Congruence,

Harmony,

Resonance,

Reverence.

Do what you love.

And second,

Listen for God's voice in your life.

Life is lived so much more fully when we realize we are not just living our own life,

But in our own way,

We live the life of the Spirit.

That we are not just the narrator of our life stories,

But there is something that is composing a plot.

There is a spiritual narrative working through your life,

A golden thread of who you are.

And if you could let go of all the old stories and the false stories,

And remember that you are that child of love,

Just like we celebrated Juniper today,

You can get back in touch with that.

And you can listen for the voice of that divine plot in your life.

Frederick Buechner,

The great teacher,

Said that even that walk to the garbage can that you've taken over a thousand times can be that right opportunity to hear the voice of God in your life.

Viktor Frankl,

Before he went into a concentration camp,

He was already a successful psychologist,

And he was living in Vienna,

And he received a visa to go to America.

And I can't imagine how difficult the decision was for him,

Because if he went,

That meant leaving his parents and his family for an almost certain fate of death.

What a difficult choice.

And he shared that he prayed and prayed about it,

And he prayed for a hint from heaven on what he should do.

And one day he got home and he saw that there was a piece of marble on a table,

And it had some Hebrew lettering on it that he didn't know how to read.

And he asked his father what it was.

And his father told him that the National Socialists had destroyed a synagogue,

And he had tried to retrieve part of this marble.

And he said,

Dad,

What does that say on there?

And it said,

Honor thy father and thy mother so that your days may be long upon the land.

And in that moment,

Frankl made his decision to stay with his family.

Those hints from heaven are all around us all the time.

If we can do that deep spiritual work of getting quiet,

Of listening,

Not just in our meditation,

But in that everyday life,

Stop giving it the pulp narrative of the same shit,

Different day,

Right?

And live in that universe that knows better than that tunnel vision that we've provided it,

That can inform us with such wisdom and grace,

That we can find that harmony,

Step into what we love,

And live more authentically,

And guess what,

More joyfully as well.

Lastly,

Do what you love,

Listen to God's voice,

And remember who you are.

There are so many people out there who will be willing to provide you with a story about who you are.

Don't listen to them.

There's a story that the divine has already written for you,

And you only have to choose to live it.

As I mentioned,

Zamira starts a class on Tuesday on Gnosticism.

And one of my favorite Gnostic stories comes from a gospel that wasn't included in the New Testament called the Acts of Thomas.

And it's called the Hymn of the Pearl.

And I'm paraphrasing it here today,

But it's about a young man who lives in heaven.

He wears glorious robes,

And he's beloved by his parents.

And he's sent on an adventure to earth to retrieve a pearl of great price that is deep below the water and being guarded by a great serpent.

And he's sent to Egypt.

And if you know anything or have studied metaphysical or metaphorical Bible interpretation,

Egypt always represents the senses,

Sense consciousness or materialism.

And so this young man gets to Egypt,

And he's on his mission,

But he loves the people there.

And he loves the music,

And he really loves the food,

And he really loves the clothes.

And he gets so into living his life in this community that he totally forgets his mission and his purpose.

So his parents recognize this,

And they send a letter on an eagle that goes and just hits him.

And he reads this letter from his parents.

Remember who you are.

Remember your glorious rose.

Remember that you are a child of the divine light.

And the young man remembers,

And he goes under the sea,

Symbolizing going within.

And he lures the serpent,

Symbolizing fear and resistance to sleep.

And he recovers the great jewel,

Something you can't take out of the water because it is symbolic of inner knowing,

Inner realization.

The greatest gift of life,

Knowing at that deep inner level who you really are so you can live it out loud.

It's kind of a simple story,

But for me,

It's the story of all of us.

It's all of our stories.

We are all born of a magnificent light.

We all come from a divine beingness.

We are all children of God.

In this material world,

It's a wonderful place.

It is so much fun.

There is so much going on.

But the danger is to think that that is all there is.

When we get so caught up in the everyday that we think it's all that is,

We lose touch with who we are and why we're here.

And so the divine has placed letters and messages and relationships and possible epiphanies and really good music and sacraments to remind us of who we really are.

And as you remember it,

As you rededicate yourself to your mission,

Even if it's a mission you have to rededicate yourself to every day,

We come into alignment with who we are,

And our true life no longer feels like something alien,

But it's the very heart of who we are,

Why we're here,

And what we're all about.

I got to thinking,

I couldn't help but think,

Putting those pictures together of my family about how I see my true self living my true life.

And it's been a great gift to me that for me it's getting to be a parent.

Getting to be a parent,

Totally letting go of any superficiality and stepping into my true being.

I'm so grateful for that experience of being a parent of what my children teach me about life.

The second picture,

Right here,

Getting to share with you.