Lesson 116: Review of
Lesson 101: God’s Will for me is perfect happiness, and
Lesson 102: I share God’s Will for happiness for me.
I blew up at myself this morning. A fairly minor technological foul-up sent me into a rage, complete with obscenities, spittle and the total destruction of a plastic trash can. I’m not proud of my outburst, by any stretch of the imagination – and I have not had such an outburst of rage in a very long time. (Yes, they used to be quite frequent when I was identifying as an angry and cynical being.)
What sparked it? Certainly not my technological glitch. It was not worth all that pent-up energy – but it did serve as a catalyst. I suppose it probably stems from the stress of these times. Coronavirus has us all on edge and being off of our normal schedules has stressed us all out. I thought I was handling it okay. I work from home all the time so that’s nothing new.
However, this pandemic has put other areas of my life in jeopardy. Will my spiritual community survive as an online only entity until we can come back together physically? Who knows how long that will be? How do we stay relevant in the meantime?
I ordered dinner from one of my favorite restaurants last night, but it wasn’t the same. The food was tasty, but what I like about this place is its funky atmosphere and its open windows during good weather. The people, the noise, the beer on tap, the friendly waitstaff and bartenders. I got none of that last night, and even stood six-feet away from another person ordering takeout as we both hoped the place would still be here when this is all over.
When this is all over. Who the fuck knows when that will be? Will it ever be, really?
I guess I’m not handling the stress as well as I thought. My explosion, ironically, came after I had just finished writing a sermon about how trust and happiness go hand-in-hand. You really can’t have one without the other.
The Jesus story I used was from John 10 where Jesus talks about being the gate for the sheep. We trust the gate to keep us safe – to bring us the joy that is ours to experience. The gate is “God’s Will,” if you will. It is the Love that we all share that brings us into the fold – back into unity with God and one another.
My emotional meltdown belied my lack of trust. And why not? Listen to the news for five minutes (if you can bear it). Who can you trust? The CDC? The health experts and statisticians? The White House doctors? The president?
Trust is in short supply these days. Oddly enough, so is happiness.
I wonder why I haven’t broken down before now?
Anyway, one of the major points that I had wanted to make in the sermon never made it in with all the other things I tried to pack into it, so consider this a supplement, or Sermon 2.0.
Nobody likes to be compared to sheep. They’re not the smartest animals in the paddock. But here’s the thing about sheep – they know who their shepherd is. They know his (or her, I suppose) voice. Sheep from many flocks can be kept in one paddock and when the shepherd is ready to set them loose, they follow the voice that they know.
Our thoughts then, are like sheep. They follow the voice they know the best. My sheepish thoughts followed that old, well-trodden rut of anger – that ego voice within me that protested the reality of my situation loudly and profanely. I pushed back against the reality of a malfunctioning computer with every ounce of rage I could muster.
What did it change? Not one damn thing. I still had to restart the computer and sacrifice every bit of work that was swallowed up in the reboot. I had to start over a document I was working on three different times because of the technology.
I had a choice. I could have done that calmly. Accepted my fate and shook my head over the fragility of technology. Or … I could rage.
I chose B. I followed the familiar voice of outrage. Nothing changed. The outcome was the same.
Honestly, I felt sheepish. I had followed the wrong shepherd and what did it get me? A headache, a scratchy throat … and I still had to start over from scratch.
It is God’s will that I be happy, but if I refuse to trust that is true – then I will follow the voice of distrust right into the wolf’s mouth. The egoic shepherd has no intention of keeping me safe. I cannot trust that voice.
As this lesson points out, suffering happens when we follow the wrong voice, when we cede God’s will to the ego’s will. It’s understandable that, in the stress of this moment, we lose track of a trusted voice to guide us. But, happiness is offered us in every moment. It is God’s Will for us and God speaks our name of joy in each moment, calling us back into the fold of unity that we’ve never truly left.
When we follow any other voice, we just end up feeling sheepish.
Photo by Sam Carter on Unsplash