A Few Suggestions

Photo credit: Gino Crescoli, Pixabay

After my deluge of Sanctuaries during the Christmas season, I’ve taken a bit of a break from my blogging in the new year. I may not have been writing posts, but there certainly has been enough going on to occupy my brain in these last few weeks!  However, I resist being reactive. Instead, I usually wait and take a longer, broader view when the time feels right.  So, I’m ready now to weigh in with a few suggestions that I hope might be helpful to you in what is a highly charged and chaotically critical moment in our world and nation.

From my own reading and keeping up with social media, I have found myself constantly torn between feelings of 1. helplessness and fearing that I’m not doing enough to counteract the demise of our country…and 2. the call of my soul to keep on my path of contemplation and trust following the breadcrumbs of joy, creative expression, and calm presence.  On any given day, I pinball around that gameboard multiple times. Exhaustion and overwhelm usually is the result. I don’t think I’m alone.

I then often do what is a tried-and-true path for me to find some peace: I try to gain both some big-picture understanding and some insight into human behavior, motivations, and perspectives. This sends me down rabbit holes of reading trusted sources that seem to have a handle…if not on what’s happening…at least some insight into why it might be happening or why in the heck the perpetrators might think it’s a good idea. This usually ends up against a brick wall of realizing there actually ARE people with very different motives and priorities than I have, over which I have absolutely no control.

So, this then points me back toward my contemplative soul and how I might create some parameters of discernment for myself when I get into these places of quandary.  Where do or can I find my Truth? On what Authority and Core Values can I use to guide me? I came up with a few that help me, and I simply want to offer them to you.

1.      When there is a choice between fear-based action or joy/love-based action (or reaction), ALWAYS choose JOY/LOVE.

In all of this, FEAR is the real enemy. I believe fear is what has the ability to work in our human hearts and become the root cause of everything that is destructive, insidious, violent, hurtful and isolating.  HOWEVER, as I write this, I realize that is not necessarily true.  FEAR is actually a warning flag. It becomes destructive only when it is interpreted as something real.  The more we believe there actually is something to be afraid of – a person, a possible scenario, a cause and effect, the more we actively contribute to making it real, to manifesting it if you will. We contribute to it by adding our own fear and amplifying its power.   When we can take note of our fear as we would a warning flag, we can then decide mindfully, and not reactively, what action would be best to take (or no action).

When I’m on the lookout for expressions and actions that are based in joy and love, I am grounding myself in my Source, God, my higher self and truest calling.   

It was helpful to define for myself what love and joy actually look like for me, because fear is really good at masquerading! (i.e. “I LOVE you, so I’m going try to keep you from being gay or being liberal, or I’m going insist on putting the 10 Commandments in all classrooms so our children will not end up in hellfire and eternal damnation!  This is obviously the primary tactic the Christian Church has used for the last 1800 years! So, it’s GOOD at it.)   I won’t go into the definitions that I came up with personally, but I do encourage you to define your own: what does it feel/look/sound like when you experience joy and/or love?

This parameter of a simple assessment (it this fear-based or is this joy/love based?) gives me a quick tool.  There can then also be secondary questions that follow on the heels of my decision. If I judge something as coming from a basis of fear and I resist reacting, doubts quickly come (as I said, the Church was VERY good for centuries at indoctrination by fear!). Ideas such as: I’m living in denial, I’m being weak, I’m not stepping up to the plate and taking my responsibility.  I need to double down in my belief that following joy and love ARE means of responsible action and resistance. I then pray to be guided in actions that I can take, AND when it is appropriate and possible for me to do so. Those that operate out of narcissism, greed, an addiction to power have only fear from which to operate – their own fears and those of others. This, I believe, is why Jesus commanded, “Love your enemies.”  Love negates their attempts to hold power over you and also offers their soul the true healing it longs for, whether or not they choose to accept it.

I know when I feel love and joy. I know their power to motivate me, to call me, and even if I’m nervous to answer the call to action, love/joy give me an inexplicable power to do so.  When they call, I do not feel the fear of ambivalence. The summons is usually crystal clear with a feeling of empowerment that comes from somewhere else.  The process also involves trusting that if I don’t act out of fear, that is a valid choice.  Spirit will empower the right actors to respond at the right time in the right way.

2.      Know yourself and choose your trusted authorities.

These can be people to talk to about your feelings and your discernment. These can be sources of information that you trust. Focus on them.  We are in an age of information overload.  When people are overloaded, we don’t think critically. Those addicted to power use this weak link in the fence to keep us overwhelmed.  Our social media is built on an addictive system of drawing people’s attention most effectively to cause fear and reactivity, or compulsions to buy things or focus on something, a particular, a distraction.  Know what your own vulnerabilities are, and then where you can go to find authority that you feel you can trust.  One of my parameters on Facebook for instance is that if I repost something of substance from someone else, I trust either the sharer or the source of information, or the type of information it is – thoughtful, based on sound expertise, non-reactive. I’m sure MANY people have different or opposing opinions, and I don’t mind them saying so in a thoughtful way, but I believe to the best of my ability that it is a trustworthy authoritative post that might help others.

To my United Methodist friends’ delight, let me say John Wesley had some stellar parameters about what can be authoritative. It is known as the  “Wesley Quadrilateral:”  Discern your quandary using your experience of four criteria:  Scripture (does scripture say anything relevant to this?), Tradition (what do the traditions of church or culture or community over time say?), Reason (what makes sense in your brain and thoughts?), and your Experience (what does your heart say, or your previous experiences, particularly held in prayer?).

3.      Once you gain clarity on an action to be trusted or taken, do that, and release it.  Release any expectation of specific results. The clutter of lingering doubts and questions are a sure path to overload and paralysis…and more fear.  Trust that you have discerned to the best of your ability and act boldly.