“Everybody can be a hero … everybody is a hero.” Reverend Lola Wright began our new series for June, “The Hero’s Journey,” with her message this past Sunday, “The Adventure of Awakening!” Below is an outline of her message, featuring notes, quotes and takeaways.
Opening
1. Beau Biden
- Notebook in back pocket to write down the problems of everyone he met so he could go back to his office and work on solutions
- for Beau, it was a privilege to serve
2. Asked Caroline (6) – What is a hero?/Who is a hero?
- Uncle Boo
- Everyone
- Not insects
- Insects are heroes!
3. Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987) – American Scholar
- The Hero’s Journey/Stages of Adventure
- Suffering (wake up), Transformation (grow up), Liberation of Society/Humanity (show up)
4. Environmental, Economic, Educational Issues
We must wake up, grow up and show up to what is ours to do in these arenas!
5. Quote
“Some spiritual seekers use spiritual knowledge as a subtle way of dissociating from hands-on realistic social, economic, and political engagement in the world. Activists are often cut off from the healing and transforming wisdom of the spiritual traditions and the simple techniques, prayers, and practices that could sustain, inspire, and nourish them in their heroic endeavors.”
— Andrew Harvey
Question: How do we bridge the gap between spiritual resignation and engaged sacred activisim?
Objectives
1. To awaken (wake up/become aware)
2. To understand newly our circumstances and conditions – to FOR us consciousness – “The Adventure of Awakening”
3. To become curious about our sacred service/our divine purpose…how might we share our transformation with humanity? To what degree are we responsible for the greater good?
Points
Spiritual Backdrop
- There is a mystery to life that provides us with the privilege to assign meaning to our being.
- “God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought.”
— Joseph Campbell
Individual Soul’s Journey – The Adventure of Awakening.
- “A human being must be born twice. Once from his mother and again from his own body and his own existence.
— Sultan Valad - Jesus, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa (I belong to the world.), the Civil Rights Movement, the Stonewall Riots, Balitmore & Ferguson, Cleveland and New York City
Awakened Community
- We must be in this world but not of it…so how do we do that? I don’t know but I am asking the question. How awake are we? And to what?
- “There is a power transcendent beyond our needs, our little wants. Demonstrating a dime is good if one needs it, or healing oneself of pain is certainly good if one has it, but beyond that, at the real feast at the tabernacle (the dwelling place) of the Almighty, in the temple of the living God, in the banquet hall of heaven, there is something beyond anything that you and I have touched. Find one thousand people who know that, and use it, and the world will no longer be famished. How important it is that each one of us in his simple way shall live from God to God, with God, in God, and to each other. That is why we are here … that the living Spirit shall through us walk anew into Its own creation and a new glory come with a new dawn.”
— From Ernest Holmes’ “Sermon by the Sea”
Summary
- Grocery shopping – two transgender women (heroes walking through the aisles … all I could see was bad outfits. I observed my split second of judgement, condemnation … silent but just as deadly)
- When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you as a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And God will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
— Matthew 25:36-40
Closing
- Systemic change
- Policy issues
- Building the beLOVEd Community
- “The technology we need most badly is the technology of community – the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Our sense of community is in disrepair.”
— Bill McKibben - WE ARE IT, BODHI. WE MUST TAKE ON TRANSFORMING ORGANIZATIONS/COMMUNITIES/SYSTEMS.
- The Justice Conference (premier gathering of Christian leaders, justice practitioners, students and learners from all over the world.)
“You’re called to love. The rest is not your business.”
— Cornel West
Homework
- Eulogize Your Life: start with the end in mind
- Get into sacred service. Stretch yourself to be a contribution to humanity … that is our growth edge!
