Sync'd

The universe is speaking to us. Stories and lessons about how I am learning to listen.

What lies behind us, what lies before us, does not compare to that which lies within.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Constitution’d

In November of 2023 I snapped a of picture of a tilted street sign - Constitution Avenue - and sent it to a few friends sharing I hoped it wasn’t an ominous foreshadowing of our country’s future. The street sign is located at a busy intersection on Tamiami (Route 41) in the Fort Myers area and was damaged in hurricane Ian. I rarely pass through the intersection, but on Monday, the day of the inauguration, I found myself at the same juncture staring at a straightened Constitution Avenue marker. Oddly, or maybe synchronistically, it provided insight into this week’s planned post that’s taken an inordinate amount of time to write.

I attend a Unity church in Fort Myers. Unity was founded in 1889 and is not considered a religion, but a fellowship of worship that honors all faiths placing an emphasis on Christianity and the Bible. It is a welcoming place for people who consider themselves “spiritual” rather than religious. As an inclusive community it is also considered the church of recovery for people struggling with addictions. I’m grateful for the spiritual lessons and growth that I’ve received from Unity over the past 30-years.

Last Saturday I attended an annual interdenominational church service organized by my congregation to support the emergence of a more peaceful world. About 75 people attended the event. A small group, but larger than most of the Sunday services. Over the past six-months I’ve maintained a more peaceful disposition by intentionally shutting out 95 percent of the toxic political and policy narrative recycled by the talking heads. But with significant changes on the horizon, many not aligned with my values (but not all) I’m trying to find a constructive and peaceful way to civically engage. I hoped the service would provide some insight.

The interdenominational gathering was led by a guest minister, and I sat in the audience with overwhelming trepidation that his message would be loaded with lofty platitudes often found in the Unity narrative. Over the past few months, I’m increasingly irritated with affirmations that seem hurled my way with an irregular frequency. Thy will be done. Divine order will prevail. There are no mistakes. The peace that passes all human understanding. It’s all good. At a deep level I believe in the principles underneath these platitudes, but when they are used as generalizations to imbue the rescue of positivity, I feel like my human experience is being trivialized.

Surprisingly the minister’s focus was on how we need to seek individual peace when chaos, calamity and challenges abound. Oddly, or perhaps synchronistically, he gave a poignant voice to my feelings of being chaffed by superficial positivity. He even outlined a more specific and realistic way divine order prevails reliant on thoughtful human intention. In closing he focused on the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves and suggested one of the greatest barriers to loving our neighbor, is neglecting the ongoing interior work necessary to love ourselves.

The minister’s approach reminded me of an insightful Unity reverend in Chicago. She passed away in 2019, and to protect her anonymity I’ll refer to her as Reverend SD. Leading the Unity church for about five years, she frequently spoke about the duality of darkness and light in the human experience. Reverend SD stressed without the conscious pursuit of seeking to understand the creative tension between the duality existing within all of us, we risk ignoring our own vulnerabilities, judgements, weaknesses, jealousies … and all the other frailties of our God given humanity.

As I’ve spotlighted in previous posts, M. Scott Peck created a Community Building retreat process designed around age-old principles and practices from the Quakers, Alcoholics Anonymous and Christian mystics. He hoped this process could be another catalyst to help heal the world. As the author of the The Road Less Traveled, his career was filled with critical acclaim, but he also wrote courageously about human darkness and evil. In the book People of the Lie, he shared what I believe is a succinct and compelling definition of evil: militant ignorance. In so many ways this spirit of darkness seems to increasingly permeate many aspects of modern life.

A vivid and timely example is how Donald Trump’s father was a tyrannical devotee of The Power of Positive Thinking, published by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in 1952. The rigid approach of only seeing the positive and refusing to acknowledge any weakness or failure was constantly drummed into the Trump children throughout their lives. The man who gave us the framework of “fake news” to cover his own weaknesses, mistakes, indiscretions and unwanted reality – is now the President for the second time.

Unfortunately, there is an abundance of militant ignorance in our country. Owning one aspect of my own interpersonal struggle, both the Democrat and Republican parties continue to stir some of the deepest frustration and rage I’ve navigated in my civic life. Tuning out the biased policy and political news being churned 24-hours a day by the media outlets, I’m more at peace. But without some degree of positive civic engagement, I’m also contributing to what I fear could be our teetering democracy.

I’m in my last semester of courses to complete a master’s degree in social work with the goal of practicing as a psychotherapist. As part of the curriculum, I’m in a clinical placement two days a week at a residential drug and alcohol recovery program. It is an amazing learning opportunity and an inspiration to see people of all ages, races, ethnicities and backgrounds commit to the tremendous interior work of seeking to heal their addictive behavior. Each of them must undertake the courageous journey of walking through the painful and challenging circumstances of their lives to rediscover a sense of peace and wholeness. With an estimated 200 million addicts in our country including compulsive behaviors of gambling, shopping, eating, texting, sexting and many other obsessions, most of us could spend more time in disciplined self-reflection about the content of our lives.

In the Community Building retreat process that I’ve mentioned in previous posts, there are four primary stages the circle of participants moves through. Emptiness is a stage when participants often feel moved to share deep and painful experiences, triggering or encouraging others in the circle to also empty their expectations, frustrations, and sadness about the grueling aspects of life. There is an emotional heaviness that fills the room. The somber weight pulls people into deep places, and this stage is necessary to reach Community. By sharing and processing/emptying painful and challenging life experiences, everyone in the circle creates space for a higher vibration of compassion, understanding and M. Scott Peck believed, a subtle descension of the Holy Spirit.

One fascinating dynamic is in the early 1990s the corporate and business community expressed more interest in the Community Building retreat process than religious institutions. Business leaders and corporate executives believed that when a group of participants reached the final stage of Community, they were then able to build consensus and move through tasks with extraordinary efficiency. From a purely secular point of view, businesses and corporations invested significantly in workshops for employees, managers and executives. Back then, at a typical workshop, half of the participants were expecting to receive a professional development and management training opportunity, and the others simply read M. Scott Peck’s books and wanted a spiritual experience. As a result, the first tensions that usually emerged and pulled the group into chaos were around discussions about God and religion. And from my experience, more often than not, the diverse group could reach Community without anyone changing their expectations or intentions of why they were present and what they were seeking to receive or discover.

About ten-years ago, a woman joined one of the weekend Community Building retreats after having been away from the process for many years. For the first and only time of all the circles I’ve joined, the facilitators decided to begin by going around the room so each person could share their name and something about their experience or expectations for the journey ahead during our weekend together. I’ll never forget her simple and poignant words below.

“I work with very wealthy people and every day witness their unhappiness, pettiness, jealousy and fear they will never have enough. It can be very disheartening. I’ve been away from this process and work for a long time, and I’m so grateful to be here. For me, we come together and hopefully are moved or inspired to share very painful, difficult and often hopeless situations and circumstances about our lives. Then we sit here together, with what’s been shared, until it all becomes beautiful. That’s when I know I’m in Community.”

We are often called by life circumstances to seek a deeper understanding and healing by revisiting the challenges, losses and traumas in our lives. This process is different for all of us and sometimes we get stuck in the darkness. Like having a wave in the ocean sweep over us, our footing may be lost or unsteadied, but as the rushing water moves on, a sense of peace and beauty can emerge. With hope and the guidance of grace, we try to steady ourselves by focusing on the renewed horizon ahead.

President Abraham Lincoln believed that the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution created an infrastructure to support our journey to toward A more perfect union. In this unending process every citizen will be called to stretch their interpersonal capabilities beyond what was manifested in the prior generation. The turmoil we feel now is simply the personal and collective creative tension of this unending process moving us forward or backward. In this time of uncertainty, the most important civic action is to do the interior work of finding and maintaining a sense of personal peace.