The Man from Earth

Can you imagine what it would be like to live for over 14,000 years? What if you began as a cave man or woman and you never grew older. You would watch the earth change as oceans appeared and mountains formed. You would see evolution at work all around you. You could meet the Buddha, go study in India, and then later meet up with Van Gogh. Everyone around you is growing older so you must keep on the move so no one notices that you aren’t aging.

This very premise is explored in an interesting movie called The Man from Earth. The movie was made in 2007, and I would guess it wasn’t in theaters long, if at all, as I’m sure I would have gone to see it had I heard about it. I found in on Netflix…I just love Netflix!

The film begins with Professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith) packing up his things to move. Some of his colleagues have gathered around to wish him well and give him a farewell party. Someone notices a painting he is putting into his truck by Van Gogh with a note on the back “to my friend Jacques Borne” and this begins the questions.

His friends are all quizzing him about why he is leaving. John then poses this question, "What if a man, from the Upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?" Thinking he is working on a science fiction book they play along and keep asking him questions. These professors include an anthropologist, a biologist, a historian, an archeologist, a psychologist and a professor who is a devout Christian. John is able to answer all of the questions fielded to him and finally admits that he is this man. The conversation gets very interesting. Some find this idea interesting and agree that it can’t be proved or disproved. Others think John is crazy and should be locked up, but they have known him for 10 years and he has always seemed sane…until now.

As I watched this movie, I began wondering if I would believe someone who told me such a story. It feels unbelievable, but then I’ve been taught to believe anything is possible. What about you? Would you believe such a story? It’s an interesting film. If you decide to watch it, come back here and leave me a comment and let me know what you thought.

Heart and Souls

I just watched the most delightful movie! It is called Heart and Souls, and it came out in 1993. I don’t know how I missed it before now, except that I was ordained in 1993, so I may have been a bit preoccupied when the movie hit the theaters. However, I’m guessing the film didn’t get much press or advertising, because I’m certain I would have made an effort to see it. I just love those “Watch Instantly” movies on Netflix, and I sometimes watch them on my computer when there is nothing else to do. I discovered this movie from the recommended list which Netflix prepares based on my previous viewing. Boy, do they know me or what?!

The movie stars Robert Downey Jr., Charles Grodin, Alfre Woodard, Kyra Kedgwick and Tom Sizemore. It is about four people who died together while riding a bus. They were young people with unfinished business, and at the exact moment they died a young boy, named Thomas, was born. These four souls become delightfully attached to this child in consciousness. Thomas grows up thinking of these four souls as his imaginary friends. He talks to them, sings and dances with them; they especially love singing Walk Like a Man, by the Four Seasons, and I loved singing it right along with them. However, when Thomas reaches age 7 his parents and teacher begin to wonder about his imaginary life, and the four souls fear that Thomas will be committed to a mental institution so they become invisible.

Years later when Thomas is a grown young man the four souls discover that they are being called to leave this earth, yet they have work to finish before they can leave, and they need Thomas to help them. Thomas needs some help himself, as he shut down his heart after his imaginary friends disappeared. Together the five help each other with delightful results.

I was never a child who had imaginary friends, but it made me wonder if there might have been a guardian angel hanging around and helping me when I needed a friend. While I have thought about and even believed in angels and how they could be of assistance to us, I never gave any thought to that help being reversed. It’s an interesting premise for which I have no answer. I do, however, highly recommend this movie. It is a delightful film with heart and soul…and you’ll find yourself, singing and laughing right out loud.

SPIRIT RISING: ASSOCIATION OF UNITY CONVENTION

I have just returned home from our Association of Unity Churches Convention in Overland Park, Kansas. As usual it was a full week and I’ve come home richer and full of new knowledge and insights. Below are some of my notes from convention.

OPENED WITH PRAISE AND MUSIC

The convention opened with a powerful and moving service held at Unity Village by Rev. Sky St. John from Hawaii. He combined video, music, skits, prayer and a message, and I must say I left feeling incredibly full. I especially loved his portrayal of James Dillet Freeman’s poem “I Am There”. He divided the poem into two parts….someone feeling alone and crying out, and the voice of God booming…I am Here! How often do we feel alone and yet God is always right there speaking, if we could only open ourselves up to hear God’s voice.

The music was incredible! He used mostly praise music and I had forgotten its power. I spoke with a minister friend who told me she had to leave this service, because she couldn’t deal with the raised hands. I know to some that would bring back memories of another church where one worships a God up in the sky, but someone gave me a new perspective….that it is a Yoga pose. Raising one’s hands to the sky is not worshiping a God outside oneself, but rather opening oneself, and the heart chakra up to receiving more from Spirit and the universe. I like that!

Someone else said that praise music is trance-like. I’ve noticed that in my churches we seem to do more folk type music….and while that is nice, I really like the feeling of the praise music. In that sense, the fundamentalists have something. The music Sky used had Unity lyrics, but they captured that sense of awe and wonder. I want more of that in my church services!! Jason and deMarco were awesome NGUer’s (Next Generation Unity) and they bring a fresh kind of music to Unity.

Having said that….Karen Drucker did much of the music for conference, and I suppose some of her music is a type of folk music, and I absolutely love her. So there is room for all of it!

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

There were many great keynote speakers and I came away with lots of ideas, new information and a deeper understanding of some long held ideas and beliefs. Some of those ideas include:

• Church Change can be messy, but without it we remain stagnant.
• At the end of a sermon give a couple of minutes for people to share with another something that they’ve received, and it will provide a greater retention.
• Move from an ‘either/or’ consciousness to a ‘both/and’ consciousness.
• Check out Kidlead.com (for 10-13 year olds)
• Ministers should not be paid to do ministry, but to equip others to do ministry.
• It is important to move away from a minister-centric ministry to avoid minister burn-out.
• A healthy church has over 90% active volunteers, however most churches aren’t there yet.
  LIES OF SCARCITY by Lynne Twist

1. There’s not enough
2. More is better
3. There’s nothing we can do about it

• We have forgotten that we made up money! We have abused the idea of abundance to include a consciousness of ‘more is better.’
• Sufficiency is different from abundance.
• If you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to turn and nourish what you already have.
• Move from a consciousness of ‘you or me’ to one of ‘you and me’.
• “What you appreciate appreciates.”
• Check out: gratefulness.org and awakeningthedreamer.org
• Gratitude includes both gratefulness and thanksgiving
• Things that unravel…sometimes need to. (BOY ISN’T THIS TRUE!)
  
  HOLACRACY by Brian Robertson
  
• Holacracy is a sense of ‘spirit as work.’ The organization is dynamic…it is free to find its own purpose as a living entity.
• Governance is distributed throughout the organization and across time…it is evolutionary and is not stagnant.
• It is ‘sense and respond’ rather than ‘predict and control’. It’s like riding a bicycle….it’s better to steer as you go along rather than try to map everything along ahead of time and try to ride blindfolded. You hold the aim in mind and steer continuously.
• In holacracy you reach a workable decision, not necessarily the BEST decision. The best decision emerges over time as you move forward.
• Any issue can be revisited at any time. Delay all decisions to the last responsible moment—you’ll have more data and make more informed decisions. Then make small decisions and deliver fast.
• Can always fall back to predict and control if needed.
  
  

ROLES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES (Holacracy)

• In every relationship, one fills a role and is accountable for something. It’s not ‘who are you accountable to’, but ‘what are you accountable for.’ People count on you for things…but it is the role that is counted on, not the person.
• Separate ‘roles’ from ‘souls’. Conflict in organizations aren’t about people, they are about roles. (I LOVE THIS!!! THIS IS SO TRUE…IF ONLY WE COULD GET THIS!)
• Role descriptions (rather than job descriptions) contain verbs + ing: i.e. teaching, preaching, equipping, etc.
• These are defined based on reality over time, rather than what you think ‘should’ be done. In other words, over time one realizes what is being done and needs to be done…rather than projecting what you ‘think’ should be in that role. (Also people should be working in their ‘sweet spot’…if there is something that needs to be filled…find the best suited person to do it…it might not be the minister).
• Accountabilities are assigned to roles not a person. Shift from responsible to accountability. You can consciously choose to not do something (this is not irresponsible) but make a choice based on best needs in the moment.
• Church is not about serving congregants, but its purpose is to find its unique spiritual expression in the world—spirit in action.
• What could the church do if it were freed from the shackles of human ego?
  
  INTEGRATING PERSPECTIVES (Holacracy)
• Not about consensus (it’s about honoring all perspectives and integrating them)
• Not about personal feelings of being ‘for’ or ‘against’ anything
• About perspective of roles, not people.
• No one blocks decisions, they just add more to integrate
• Decisions aren’t made—they emerge.
  
  MORE

I didn’t take notes for everything. Bishop Spong and Dr. Rev. Barbara King were awesome speakers, and I was too wrapped up in them to stop and take notes. There is no way to capture everything from convention. Much of it was reconnecting with friends and making new ones, as well as a little Association and Regional business meetings.

The Conference next year will be in San Diego. You don’t need to be a minister to attend, everyone is invited. Start planning now to attend…you won’t regret it!

Communication: Learning the Code

I’m learning to play bridge. I’ve always loved cards, and have been pretty good at it too. I’ve played Rummy, Spades, Hearts, Whist, and Pinochle, just to name a few. Bridge, however, is another story altogether. Bridge is a complex game that depends highly on proper communication. It doesn’t matter how powerful your hand, if you don’t receive the proper communication from your partner or give the proper information to your partner, you will both be at a major disadvantage.

What’s also interesting in Bridge is that sometimes you have to lie.

Well, not lie exactly…more like speak in code. For instance, you might open at 1 club, even if you don’t want clubs as trump. It’s a signal to your partner that you have opening points and you want to know what she has in her hand. So then your partner has to respond telling you how many points she has and what her best suit is in. But of course, she doesn’t just say, “I have 10 points and I’d like to play it in hearts.” No, that would be too easy and would give your opponents too much information. A response of 1 heart to an opening of 1 club tells your partner that you have a minimum of 6 points and at least four hearts. While speaking in code is a bit tricky to learn, once you understand it, you can communicate fairly well with your partner.

While speaking clearly is certainly preferred in regular day-to-day communication, the truth is all of us speak in code at times, and it would behoove us to remember that and learn how to recognize when someone is saying something other than what they mean.

Children, especially, cannot always tell us what they are feeling, so we must learn to decipher what is really going on with them. I used to be a nanny and I quickly learned that if I didn’t pay attention there would be a ‘failure to communicate’. Charlie (age four) once acted up when I was trying to get him and his brother out the door to go to their first swimming lesson. He insisted he wasn’t finished playing his game and couldn’t leave yet. He screamed and resisted, and nothing I did or said would convince him to leave. Had I not understood his code, this could have been a much more frustrating morning. What I realized was his disobedience was really about his fear of swimming. When he was three he had a frightening experience with water, and so now with that memory still intact, he was afraid to go to his lesson. I was able to discern his code and reassure him that he would not have to go into the water if he didn’t want to, but that we still had to leave so his brother Will could go to his lesson. We went to the lesson and the teacher, also very understanding, was able to reassure him, and Charlie, eventually, not only went into the water, but learned to become a great swimmer!

Our children, our mates and our friends sometimes speak to us in code. It sure would be nice if we all said what we meant, but sometimes we aren’t even clear about what we are feeling. I’m reading “The Idiot’s Guide to Bridge”, which is helping me learn the code language of Bridge. Too bad there isn’t such a manual for relationships; that would sure be helpful! This isn’t to say we are all idiots when it comes to communication (or Bridge), but that we want to learn the basics in an easy to understand format.

The book “The I of the Storm” by Gary Simmons is sort of a manual about learning to communicate in conflict. Simmons tells us that when people lash out at you, it is more about them than about you. There is something missing in their relationship with you, and they haven’t figured out how to communicate what is missing for them, so they make it about you. Once you understand this code, you can say to them, “Tell me more”, so you can get more information about what is really bothering them. While I’ve read this book, I still sometimes forget the ‘code’ when someone lashes out at me, but I’m determined to remember to not get defensive, and to ask for more information.

I’m going to keep practicing Bridge, because the more committed I am to learning the code, the better I will get at communicating with my partner. The same could be said for communicating in normal life: the more we practice understanding what the other person needs from us, but isn’t able to say, the better we will be able to communicate effectively in return.

Wow! Compared to relationships, Bridge is beginning to look easier and easier!

Remembrance

I have been re-reading Angels and Demons in preparation for the movie coming out next month. I love the book, because even though it is fiction—there is so much history and truth to be found in it.

One of the things that the author, Dan Brown, mentions in telling his story is a Buddhist philosophy called Remembrance. The idea of remembrance is that if one is having a difficult time figuring out the answer or solution to a challenging or impossible problem, then instead of trying to figure it out, simply ask the mind to remember the solution. “The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist…thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness.”

I love this idea for a couple of reasons. One, it embraces the idea that time is not linear. In our limited thinking, we think of time in terms of past, present and future happening along a straight line continuum. However, what if they are all happening concurrently?

If that is the case, then somewhere my future self already knows the solution, and I simply need to connect with that future self to figure out and bring the solution into the present. This idea is a bit difficult for us to grasp our mind around, but I love it. Maybe that’s why I love Star Trek so much!

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been using the idea of reaching back in time to communicate and bring resources to our inner child, I see no reason why we can’t reach forward in time as well.

Another reason I love this idea of remembrance is that in Unity we teach that we are one with the Divine Mind of God. Since God is all-knowing, then God already knows the solution to any challenge I may be facing and I simply need to connect my mind to God Mind to remember the solution that already exists.

So next time you or I are feeling frustrated, we just need to take a little time to be still and to REMEMBER. The solution isn’t something we must search after, it already exists, right here, right now.

After all, God’s in charge and all is well.

Sunset in the Keys

My attempt at Monet

My friend Peggy told me this looked like a Monet painting. It was a photo I took in Key West.