Have you been thinking about how the way we give our word shapes our spiritual community? In your personal life, maybe you’ve begun to recognize that you’ve given your word to some things that don’t really serve you. Commitments that don’t align with your values, but keep you feeling protected. Maybe you’ve even started to articulate a different vision for how you want to show up. Declarations about what your life-affirming values call you to do and be.
It’s a lot of work. Spiritual maturity takes a lot of time. And a lot of unlearning. We are taught a great many lessons about who we are “supposed” to be. We are rarely taught how to determine for ourselves what it means to be people of integrity—people who consistently embody shalom and interdependence in a way that influences the world around us.
We are much more accustomed to being influenced by the world around us. Reacting to whatever most recent stimulus has crossed our awareness. And our reactions become predictable and automatic the more we rehearse them. We develop an autopilot. In a way, we become predestined. We give up free will, without even realizing it, perhaps even while proclaiming that we are free to react to the world however we want. Which is true. But do our lives reflect that truth?
More importantly: Do our lives reflect our capacity to be shapers of the world? Do we fully and mindfully inhabit our roles as co-creators?
Becoming aware of our autopilot, protective reactions helps us examine more fully our potential to shape our lives and the world around us. Casting vision and declaring our values helps us shape our lives and our world into something that reflects our hopes rather than our fears. And these spiritual practices offer a consistent place for us to ground and center ourselves, rather than being tossed about on the waves of whatever stimuli cross our senses.
Another way of saying this is that our spiritual practices prevent us from confusing our temporary emotions with our abiding values. If we cast vision and make a declaration like “I am patient” or “I honor the inherent worthiness of every person” or whatever it might be—we invite those declarations to guide our behavior, even when we don’t feel like it.
There are times when I feel impatient. There are moments when my emotions might spur me to say or do something that doesn’t honor the inherent worthiness of someone. My emotions are transient, though. They are shifting sand. My values are intended to be a sure and consistent foundation for my life and behavior.
So, a goal of this spiritual work is to allow our internal guidance system to orient toward the abiding values we declare for our lives, rather than having a spiritual compass that spins in every direction. Our emotions are still an important part of our experience as human beings, but they don’t make good drivers when we have a clear destination in mind.
What does our congregation do out of a sense of protectiveness? Where do you see us trying to build on shifting sands? And where do you see our values guiding consistent, mindful action? What do we do that embraces our potential to shape and co-create wholeness?
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