On Sunday, Rev. Lola Wright—inspired by President Obama’s recent address on gun control—continued our January series on #ThisThingCalledYou with her message, “What’s Your Super Power?”
Message Notes
Opening
This morning was inspired by President Barack Obama. I didn’t listen to his full speech on gun legislation until late this week but moments after he spoke pictures and quotes started hitting my newsfeed and I heard Spirit say “That man has a super power.” And so I started wondering about Super Powers:
- Super Power of Communication
- Super Power of Determination
- Super Power of Boldness
“We are fed the excuse that common-sense reforms like background checks might not have stopped the last massacre, or the one before that, or the one before that, so why bother trying. I reject that thinking.”
— Pres. Obama
New York Times Article
“After Mass Shootings, Some on Wall St. See Gold in Gun Makers”
New York Times, January 6, 2016
“Since President Obama took office in 2009, shares of Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger have each increased more than 900 percent, far surpassing the return of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (up 147 percent) and even outperforming the stock of Apple (up 800 percent). But some investors have missed out on the rally in gun stocks by choice. A number of public pension funds and other money managers have moved to sell their stakes in gun and ammunition companies in recent years, arguing that their profits come at too steep a price.”
Law of Polarity: We must look at this METAPHYSICALLY
His super power of determination enables him to stand convicted even in the face of polarity. Called Brian Walls (Managing Partner of Trading Firm); he said, “Buy the rumor, sell the news.”
- Rumor = Pres executive orders on gun legislation
- News = eventual determination on gun legislation at which point the market will respond more appropriately
A lot of things don’t happen overnight. A woman’s right to vote didn’t happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn’t happen overnight. LGBT rights — that was decades’ worth of work. So just because it’s hard, that’s no excuse not to try.
— Pres. Obama
Objectives
- Recognize the Super Power In You!
- Affirm the Super Power As You DESPITE appearances!
- Stand convicted in your divinity!
Keywords/Stories/Takeaways
“Here is a fine point in using the Power within you. You must develop a spiritual awareness which is transcendent, which knows that it is as easy for the Truth to say, “Get up and walk,” as it is for a tired man to say, “Lie down and rest.” This calls for faith and understanding – a complete conviction that God is right where you are, that Life is speaking through you, and that the Law of Life is obeying your will. Words without this awareness have no power. Spiritual awareness is the healing agency loosed through your word. While it is true that thoughts are things, they are things in your experience only in such degree as your inward consciousness pours the fire of conviction into the form of your intellectual affirmation.”
— This Thing Called You by Ernest Holmes
This Week – Noelle McWard, mother of Kayla McWard
Kayla McWard is a Junior in High School at Whitney Young Magnet High School. 2 years ago she quietly expressed her intention of becoming a senate page; she contacted Senator Dick Durbin and went through all the motions and held it in mind.
Video (embedded above): “Are you God?”
Summary
See Kayla knows her Super Power – it’s her Mind. She knows that she is a mighty creator. You have a Super Power that is unique to you. It is available to serve you all the time.
Closing
I see through all physical and mental obstructions to the one perfect Presence within me. I see through all apparent contradictions to the one perfect Being in every person. I see through all confusion to the one Divine Presence at the center of everything. And so it is.
— This Thing Called You by Ernest Holmes
Spiritual, not religious, really should mean leaving politics and politicians out of your messages.
However, since you brought up the subject, how can it be that President Obama’s “super powers” proved impotent five months after this message was delivered? I refer, of course, to the slaughter of 49 innocents at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. After listening to several messages and reading your blog, I can only surmise that you live in La-La Land by choice, in denial about the (often painful and sharply edged) real world, and therefore, time and again, you find yourself bankrupt, living beyond your means and looking for a bailout (referencing last year’s #Drive to 75, for example).
It’s a stance characteristic of New Thought/New Age in general, which attracts many younger women, and perhaps this is understandable, since often “the world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”
Browsing the distance learning catalog at Emerson Theological Institute — which would be more aptly named after P.T. Barnum — I am struck by the mindless credulity, the utter lack of discernment and critical thinking skills applied — for example — to vibrations, attraction and “scientific prayer,” which has been disproved by well-designed experiments many times since Ernest Holmes published his book on the subject. And since, like Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll, I am partial to mathematics and formal logic, let me add that the lapses in logic and misuse of scraps of scientific discovery pervading the performance art linked below (shown at Bodhi on January 3, 2016) boggle the mind. This is truly worthy of a trip through the Looking Glass or Ken Ham’s Creation Museum,.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHqWfT6b7vI
No, Virginia, most assuredly, I am not God, and neither are you. To quote the Wizard of Oz replying to Dorothy’s impassioned accusation after the curtain had been torn down by her dog, Toto — Oh, you’re a very bad man!
“Oh, no my dear. I’m (really) a very good man. I’m just a very bad Wizard.”
And so it is. The sooner we mature and uncover the actual limits of our powers — what George Vaillant called “Adaptation to Life” — then paradoxically, the easier life becomes, as we live fruitfully, creatively, within those limits and accept the inevitable (dying of cancer, perhaps) without praying for miracles that never happen.
It’s just easier that way. Peace.