Terry Paul Choyce
February 10, 2008, Brunswick Street United Church
In the story I read to you today, the woman who visited Fiji was greeted by everyone she saw. In America, where she lived, people she didn't know generally ignored her and she ignored them. At home she felt isolated and unknown. She ended by saying "The Fijians are aware of a basic human law. We all influence one another. We are a part of each other's reality." (From Kitchen Table Wisdom by Naomi Remen, p.141)
This story illustrates how cut-off we often are in our society from each other. So many people cocoon themselves away from true connection with people. There is a fear of being inconvenienced, or hassled, or hurt. So we go through life with our eyes and our hearts barely open to others.
Christine Feldman wrote a profound book called Woman Awake in which she convinces us that it is better to live with trust, faith, compassion, and joy than with fear, skepticism and apathy. She writes " The blocking of our capacity to feel, the degeneration of focus into distance and withdrawal, is a disconnection from our capacity to transform our world and ourselves with love and compassion....The place of our emotions, our hearts, needs to be acknowledged - not just in our spiritual lives but in the whole of our lives. A mystic once questioned "Of what avail is an open eye if the heart is blind?" (P. 129-130)
So many of us live big chunks of our lives with blind hearts. We may see opportunities to be friendly or helpful, but we tell ourselves that we are too busy or too tired to take the time to connect with another person. Sometimes we go for months or more without even talking to our relatives or our friends who live a distance away. Sometimes we go for months, and even years, without saying "I love you" to our family and friends who are with us every day. We are blind emotionally to our own feelings and to the feelings of others. We DON'T feel.
In our reading today from Romans (13:9A-11) Paul wrote "Love your neighbour as yourself." If you love someone, you will never do them wrong; to love, then is to obey the whole law. You must do this, because you know it is time to wake up from your sleep." God wants us to be awake to the needs and the wonders of all people. God wants us to love.
Clinical depression is a condition experienced by 10% of the population of our society. Many millions of us are periodically depressed. Depression comes with a feeling of intense isolation and hopelessness. Our feelings are flat, or they are very negative. In my opinion depression is at least partially caused by the emotional coldness of our culture. We live lives of emotional isolation, even when we are in relationships. We function on auto-pilot, without really engaging in our lives. It is like we are asleep, and as Paul wrote, it is time to wake up from our sleep.
Christine Feldman writes "Love and respect, for ourselves, for all beings, and for the planet we live on, are born of a vision of fundamental connectedness. It is love that impels us to external action, to extend ourselves in a way that is dedicated to the end of conflict. It is love that enables our own spiritual potential to unfold and be expressed fully." (P.54) We are all connected. And we are all connected to God. God's main message to us is to love one another.
What can you do to bring more love into your life? Are you emotionally closed off? Is your heart often blind? How can you wake up to the love that is all around you, and in you? How can you be more loving? How can you be more like Jesus, who loved us so much he sacrificed his life so we could see and feel the depths of true love?
This week is the beginning of Lent. Often at this time we give up something, to symbolise all that Jesus gave up. I am giving up apathy. I am going to care more, to feel more, to express my love more. I am going to smile at more people, and say "I love you" often. I am going to be more in love with my life. What about you?
©Terry Paul Choyce. Used with permission from the author.
