Eric's Sunday Sermon; Using Our Spirituality to Contribute Our Talents

Lately we have been seeing and great influx of people taking “glamour shots” and posting them on social media. On first thought it looks as though the folks are trying to be models selling beer. We all know what that is. Like the billboard showing everyone so happy and good looking in a beautiful place because they buy Falstaff Beer.

And I like selfies too. My elder son is a champion at it. But that probably is because he is one of the aforementioned models. And he also shows some not so glamorous sides of life. But most of the ones we see make me sad for two reasons. They don’t have any family or friends to take the shot, which is really sad. And it seems as though they are kind of bragging. Do not get me wrong here I like it when my closest people send them via email.

But what is funny is reading a post of some kind with the person ripping into another human being in government and then the next post is a picture of a picture perfect life. The irony is just so amusing. If the leader is so horrible that life is too burdensome and lousy under their governance. Then why do you next show us a picture of how great your life is? These people really need to get some gratitude going from their minds and their wallets and their hearts.

And the defense of their dual personality positions is that if they do not attack someone that their picture perfect life will come to an end. Really? Violence does not beget peace. Violent words are quite often worse than physical violence. So this notion of my life is great because I attack the “regime” is not well thought out because that regime is currently what is making your dream life a reality.

Or maybe both sides of this reality are really that person deceiving themselves and others.

The cornerstone of all truth is telling yourself the truth. Facades and deep resentments can cloud the judgment in such a way as to be self-mutilating. What of the man who declares that he loves God but does not pray. And what of the man who says he believes that by scientific standards all life on earth at any moment could cease from an uncontrolled catastrophic event. Claims he has no faith, and then has an IRA and $20,000.00 in a “savings” account? Sometime we like to call that hypocrisy. Like the celebrity who rails against our horrible man caused global warming and yet flies in private jets and rides in a Suburban.

Now about here some would expect that the author would pass moral judgment on the hypocrites. Happily that is not my job. Just suppose that over half of us citizens in affluent societies act like that in some ways, like the proverbial, “do as I say not as I do.” If this was a live meeting you would see me sticking my hand up and yelling “I do it”.

I especially like the argument that a guy who attends a worship service and then sins is a hypocrite to whatever faith. That is bizarre. That is like telling the boxer who declares he will win is a hypocrite because he loses. Neither of those are hypocrites they are just faulty humans, like all of us.

So we have failure on one hand and hypocrisy on the other hand.

All of the above situations are a direct result of a problematic view of the world and ones role within it. Somewhere along the line our talent gets pushed aside. This pushing can be both or either enjoying a lifestyle or lamenting over what we do not have. Perhaps the “both” is hard to reconcile. Think of that selfie coming at you from the beautiful beaches of Hawaii and yet you know that person hates their job. And we also know that the man is a very talented musician but something is holding him back from pursuing that talent. Of course it could be that he is working just for survival. But we know that is false as he is vacationing in Hawaii. So what is that thing that is holding him back from giving the world the beauty of his musical talent? We could go so far as thinking that the art is already within him but he suppresses it out of some kind of fear. Something else is within him that fights his calling and suppresses it.

Do we owe to society to produce from our real talents? One dance, one writing, one song, one sculpture or even one new business or one volunteering to help another can transform another’s life. If beauty exists it first must exist within and then be shared without. Can we even imagine if our creative part of us is kept inside of us and so the world is denied our talent?

And so we become aware that our resistance to providing our beauty to the world comes from some kind of fear or other roadblock. Many at this point are saying it is ego v. self. Maybe that is a good phrasing of the issue. And others will suggest it is an engrained need to keep up with the Jone’s in appearance of success. Takes us back to the selfies showing how great our lives are. If we spend most of our time on the outward material part of our lives what time do we have to explore our inner self?

Now here is where spirituality comes in. Spirituality unlike religion is an inside job. This is no criticism of religion. More like suggesting that religion is like seeing the doctor and spiritualism is a healthy lifestyle creating much less reliance on the doctor. Spirituality in most instances comes from within.

I like the Christian notion of “The Kingdom of God is within us”. If this be true then we need some spirituality because most everything else comes from without and so cannot deal with the within. And if a kingdom is within us doesn’t this also mean that our creativity is already within us? We have just got to tap into it.

Here is a fun one for contemplation. If the human creator puts too much emphasis on being successful to others, like having a creation get critical acclaim, then even in creating he is succumbing to the without. Just think of Bach, Dickinson, van Gogh, Thoreau and I think Poe. They all died before their work was famous. So were they ahead of their time, or they labored in their talent and did not write for popularity but rather to satisfy their inner talent.

It seems that we could create simply to please our God. Although I think that would depend on whether our relationship with our God was an inny or an outy. Or maybe if we tapped into that pre-existing kingdom God and our self would be basically one.

However it works we know there is something in our life that is blocking our creativity from being expressed. It would be good if you let your spirituality help you unleash your talents and let them soar.