Lesson 83: Review
Lesson 65: My only function is the one God gave me and
Lesson 66: My happiness and my function are one.
Back when I was a kid, we spent Saturday mornings glued to cartoons on television, and some clever folks decided to take advantage of our longer attention spans back then by producing educational videos called “Schoolhouse Rock.” The catchy tunes and lyrics helped us learn about everything from how Congress passes a bill, how to sing the preamble to the US Constitution and why three is a magic number.
One of my favorites was about a train conductor in charge of “Conjunction Junction.” His job, he sang, was about “hooking up words and phrases and clauses.” He sang about three (there’s that magic number!) conjunctions in particular: “and,” “but,” and “or.”
He puts all the boxcars together in these lyrics:
“Out of
the frying pan and into the fire.
He cut loose the sandbags,
But the balloon wouldn’t go any higher.
Let’s go up to the mountains,
Or down to the seas.
You should always say ‘thank you’
Or at least say ‘please'”
Today’s review is a visit to our function junction. We are faced with a choice between fear and love. We can live in the ego’s world of illusion or in our Holy, Divine Self. But we can only experience miracles when we put aside all grievances and accept that our function is to be the light of the world and practice forgiveness.
Our function in this junction of illusion is to be a reflection of God’s love and forgiveness. We teach by hooking up those boxcars of love and making them function to end the separation we feel in this world.
The engineer in Conjunction Junction has some sound advice for us: “I’m going to get you there if you’re very careful.”
The review of these lessons shows us how to exercise care as we arrive at our own function junction – by turning around phrases that disempower us into thoughts and reminders of our true function. We are here to love, to forgive, to disconnect any boxcars that create fear or despair in this world.
Like that engineer, just doing his job, love is strong but it does not seek for fame, Hafiz says:
But love does not mind any attention
it gets either,
if that attention increases
the capacity to give.
Love does not mind that place
where it camped for a while in a physical form
or where that body many come to rest,
and may even then be revered if that body
became a unique nourishment for others
That is what greatness does:
kindly leaves a shelter for us to gather under,
where more nourishment can be offered to all things.
Photo by James Peacock on Unsplash