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Larger, Freer, and More Loving

By June 18, 2018February 11th, 2020Home, Messages

This weekend Lola Wright continues our June series, Divine Discontent, with the message “Larger, Freer, and More Loving” and we honor our graduating teens.

Transcript

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Notes

Opening:

In 2012, we reentered Bodhi after leaving in 2009 with no plans of returning. At the time we were in the throes of a self induced survival. We still felt recently married – it was a long 5 year beginning. We had four kids, a newly formed business, a recent departure from Corporate America, strong personalities and life felt hard. In the preceding years our lives had started to feel smaller, constricted and bitter. We wound up back at Bodhi longing for community and for connection. Through much discomfort we realized, we didn’t want to do this thing called life, and marriage, and parenting, and adulting – alone. Divine discontent was stirring in us and it caused us to move – take new action and re engage in community.

Trey, now 18, was in middle school and I felt strongly he needed a larger, freer, and more loving community than school was able to provide at the time – some place that would support him in navigating his interior and making sense of this thing called life.  

SLIDE: If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of God. – James Baldwin, from The Fire Next Time (1963)

Objectives:

  • God is to make us Larger, Freer and More Loving
  • Movements have been mobilized by young people that demand a larger, freer and more loving world – Chinese students in Tianamen Square, Children coal miners in Philadelphia, transyouth in schools across this country, The Greensboro Four in North Carolina, Malala Yousafzai ([YOO] + [SUHF] + [ZY]) education access in Pakistan

SLIDE: If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. – James Baldwin

Keywords/Stories/Points:

 

  • CORY, who you’ve been for our teens, for our parents and for humanity – larger, freer, and more loving.

 

      • SLIDE: If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of God. – James Baldwin, from The Fire Next Time (1963)

 

  • TREY – be patient, be kind, be affirming
  • SLIDE: Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today. – Malcolm X

 

    • MARLOWE – focus on the good, notice what you have

 

  • SLIDE: Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. – Ludwig Jacobowski

 

    • VICTOR – stand, be clear, assert your voice, own your space

 

  • SLIDE: He would not call me King. He laughed to think a black man could be King. I did not want to lose my name, so I told him to call me the name my father gave me, and he laugh. He would not call me King, and I beat him hard with a stick. – Hedley from August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars”

 

    • ERIN – your mental fortitude and freedom will enable you to see things that many will accept as normal. That which many will call crazy we call awake. You’re not here to go along.
      • SLIDE: Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along. – Assata Shakur
    • IMANI – be bold, be brave, be courageous

 

  • SLIDE: It’s only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you’re not expressing the utmost of your human experience. – Lupita Nyong’o

 

Summary:

As you find yourself in new territory you may be called to “disturb the peace” (Jae Brown) for you bring a new paradigm and you will be “called to lead” (Lincoln Rogers) – new places and spaces, new friends and new community. May you remember that your breath and your stillness can always return you to the center in you where the source of all life exists. You are never far from home. A larger, freer, and more loving presence is in you.

SLIDE: Nirvana is not something that we should search for, because we are nirvana, just as the wave is already water. The wave does not have to search for water, because water is the very substance of the wave. – thich nhat hanh

Closing: Prayer & Meditation

Bodhi

Bodhi is a conscious community in Chicago, IL. We offer in person and online experiences for people who are ready to transform themselves and their world. Bodhi uses media, education, entertainment, and like-minded community to support transformation.

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