Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: Oct. 2, 2004
Good Sabbath
October 2, 2004
"O Lord, Guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile."
What is the meaning of life and when do we wonder about it? Not when we are
born, or are a teenager, or under 40 or.....? Perhaps as we approach old
age and worry about death? So, maybe it should be "what is the meaning
of death?"
"Fleeting as were the dreams of old, remembered like a tale that's told,
we pass away." (Longfellow)
"Death and love are the two wings that bear the good to heaven."
(Michael Angelo)
So what is the meaning of your life? Humans seek the pathway to meaning because
we are surrounded by mystery as powerful as the God we worship, for God is
cloaked in mystery. Humans spend their lives puzzled by God's supposed actions;some
call it "fate". However I like to believe that we do have choice
in life and it is God's most important gift. Mostly we ignore it, blaming
everything on Madam Fate as if we have no power over every moment of our
lives. Lately our society takes blame for none of its choices as if there
were no consequences for our actions; but there are and to comprehend that
there are and that our choices are what cause fate and defines our feelings
and faith for God, is the beginning of wisdom.
Elie Wiesel wrote: "On your way through life you'll meet people who
cling to reason, but reason gropes like a blind man with a cane, stumbling
over every pebble; and when it comes up against a brick wall it stops short
and tries to tear it down, brick by brick, quite ineffectively, because an
invisible hand builds it up again, higher and thicker than ever.
We on the other hand believe in the power of faith and ecstasy and no wall
can stand against us."
For, you see it is we who have choice and make our fate, while we discover
and define our gods. Some gods are human scale like the Christians and Moslems
worship. Some believe in an unseen power whose size we imagine and whose
miracles are often visible when we open our eyes and minds.The power can
be manifested as a humming bird or the parting of the Red Sea.
We create the meaning of our gods and subsequently begin to focus on the
meaning of our lives. When we cross some invisible line, we feel that we
have sinned and need forgiveness. Sinning may even help us believe in our
gods, just as pain frequently does; even when terminal we reach out for some
clue to this mystery called death, so terribly depicted in books and movies.
Therefore, the propellant of our lives and values we have chosen, more frequently,
flow out of our acquired fears, of God , the devil, of the unknown exploited
by our imaginations and fears.
Frequently we are sabotaged by forgetting that it is we who cause our consequences,
as Pogo wisely pointed out. It is we who must come to believe that we do
make a difference. Politics causes us to heap blame on some other person;
in doing this habitually, we mutate the native goodness in ourselves and
corrupt our society - always - for what we do, does make the difference in
our lives and in our culture.
Too often we seek scapegoats against which we can rub our sins and send them
out into the wilderness of blamelessness. In this way our society retreats
into yesterdays when we could point our finger at a playmate, saying "it
was his fault."
Goethe put it this way: "What shall it profit a person if he gains the
whole world and loses his own soul?"
Indeed that is the ultimate meaning of all human values, that the soul is
our compass and the compass is human-made into our pathways, our value system
which informs us when we have sinned, when we have done evil, when we are
good. God can guide us through ancient fables and such, but it is we who
define and practice meaning as we construct our souls. We do not create our
hearts, our brains, our limbs, but we do create - action by action or inaction
- our souls. The soul is unique for it is "man" made, though it
can approach holiness as we live the years as kind, good, justice-seeking,
golden ruled humans. That is under our control, yours and mine.
This Sabbath, build your soul into a holy vessel that is overflowing with
kindness and love,
sandy
