I hope you haven’t been missing how Rev. Kitty has been artfully weaving together her current book study on Gary Simmons’ “The I of the Storm” with her sermon series on “One Humanity, Many Stories”. This is a lesson for our times. We exist in a world with people from many backgrounds who are on a rich diversity of paths. However, we may encounter feelings of fear or lack in encountering those differences with others. Competing needs, wants and values, combined with misperception, defensiveness and the need to be right, create an energetic field of influence that is the storm inherent in interpersonal conflict. Dealing with that conflict will be dependent upon a person’s innate sense of wholeness.
Gary Simmons says “As independent and isolated as we often feel we are, or as separate as things appear to be, people and things exist only in relationship to all other things in the universe.” While we have differences, we must focus on our own sense of wholeness and spiritual essence in order to experience our differences without resisting them. It is the resisting that results in conflict, and we must remind ourselves that no one is against us.
I have felt, and several people have commented to me lately, that it feels like the world has sped up, and there has been a shift in the global consciousness. These lessons, and most of what Rev. Kitty is providing us with, will be essential parts of my tool kit going forward to deal with the shifts that Spirit is bringing us.
