BLOOM by Rev. Sharon
I, along with many others, have spent a good part of this month packing, cleaning, moving, cleaning and unpacking. In the reorganization of our move, I came across all kinds of papers from the last 16 months. Reading through a number of them, it appeared that someone else had written them, more like reading a book the reviewing my own experience. At the time, I did not know how the story would end. Exactly how would our Phoenix rise from the literal ashes?
There were times when we all may have felt we had been buried. It certainly seemed awfully dark! We had many milestones to work through – contractor quotes, city zoning etc. – while at the same time, keeping the church functioning as a spiritual and practical community. Just when we received our final go-ahead to rebuild, COVID-19 showed up. I found myself in a place with no answers. There was nothing logical, no strategic action that I could conjure up in my mind, that could move our Unity Community to a new home.
Perhaps it’s exactly then, when it feels like we are in total darkness, when we feel overwhelmed in our human frailness, that we can final respond to God’s prompting “Be Still and Know”. We did not need to know the “how”. We simply needed to know that God was (and is always) in the midst of the situation. Without answers taking up space in my mind, I could Be Still and pray. I could Know by simply being willing. In that mystical space between "Stiill" and "Know", I could be spiritually connected to Spirit and to each of you.
Now I sit in my new office and understand so fully that those darkest moments were not meant to be fearful. And fear was simply illusions adopted by my intellectual mind. In Truth, those dark moments we gifts to each us so that we could grow roots of strength to prepare us to breaking through the soil into a magnificent garden. We were alone, never abandoned, never in a dark place except perhaps in our minds. What we called 'buried', God called "panted". We were planted so that we could bloom into something beyond our most magnificent expectations for the future of Unity Spiritual Center of Lansing.
Green sprigs burst forth in the spring, buds become blooms in the summer, blooms let go so they can become seed in the fall and then, there is that time of rest in the winter, a time to Be Still and Know. This is the magnificent cycle of life in the microcosm and macrocosm, the cycle of life for each of us as individuals and collectively as a community. We are manifesting and experiencing a great adventure immersed in a divine love in which we breath and move and have our being. until we BLOOM!
B Believe in the (seemingly) Impossible
L Love all parts of the journey – each part brings a purpose
O Opportunities– putting feet to our prayers, taking action as we are guided
O Overjoyed – appreciation for the remarkable gifts we continue to receive
M Manifesting Miracles - the natural process when we allowed ourselves to be planted.