Humanity's Team: Be the Change
Sermon preached August 7, 2005
by Holly Phares
Centering Prayer: O Wondrous Creator, we thank You for the abundance of light and energy that surrounds us everywhere we go. We are grateful for the ability to release our disquieting and busy thoughts and feelings into Your grace-filled and healing spirit. Continue to open our hearts and minds during this time of reflection, so that we might grow closer to You - and, in turn, grow closer to ourselves and one another, which IS You. Amen.
Well, here I am - after 14 years in this wonderful church community, actually in a new and quite unfamiliar place - the pulpit! I'd much rather be sitting at the piano, the organ, or standing and conducting our amazing Tab Choir, but alas, - I volunteered to actually preach to ALL of you - and not JUST the choir!
As someone who was not raised in any particular church, but having attended church & synagogue services throughout my youth - and oftentimes having joined a particular church because they had a great choir in which I could participate, I have always been open to many faith traditions. I believe it has been through this exposure to diverse forms of religious faith over the years that has resulted in my consistent disappointment with how so many factions of organized religion tend to Exclude rather than Include. This has always seemed to me to be so contrary to the teachings of the God of Love who is seemingly at the helm of each of these belief systems. It is because of this lifetime of conflicting involvement with the church that has resulted in my perhaps labeling my own spiritual path as one of seeking - which has been abundantly strewn with experiences ranging from the tragic to the joyous, so often testing my own faith in a God of Love - a God of Forgiveness - a God of Infinite Possibilities.
I believe it is this seeker in me that attracted me to the Seeds of Transformation conference that I attended in June up at Bard College in the beautiful Hudson River Valley in upstate New York. I want to take this moment to thank you all for this experience, as it was partially funded by my continuing education money in my annual salary here. When it was time for volunteers to come forward to preach during Patricia's sabbatical time, I felt it only natural to share my rich experiences from this amazing conference - hopefully as a way of giving back for the gift you gave me that enabled me to attend.
That being said, I'd like to back up a bit to share how I actually came across this conference to begin with. It was this past Spring - March, to be exact - when I first became acquainted with this circle of like-minded spiritual seekers, in the way of a film entitled Indigo, a film that brought many of us into the awareness of a fast-growing movement towards a New Spirituality - a vision of unity of humanity - ALL humanity, living together in common resonance with one another and Mother Earth - a humanity who shares a common God of Love - God of Forgiveness - God of Infinite Possibilities!
The film Indigo focused on the lives of a particular group of children, whom many believe were sent here as messengers to teach us how to co-exist - to teach us that we are ALL God - not separate from one another. This special generation of souls was born at around the same time - anywhere from about 9 - 12 years ago (give or take). The Indigo child typically exhibits challenging behavioral issues, oftentimes misdiagnosed as ADD or ADHD, and also with extremely high IQ's. They often appear as belligerent, contradictory, impatient, highly creative, and many times are found to isolate themselves. Those who believe these children were sent to us by God as messengers for Humanity, have sought to conduct extensive research on these children, understand their make up, and create a cadre of techniques and methods by which to raise them with love and compassion, in order to allow these Indigo children to flourish and manifest their ultimate beings and purposes, while on this earth.
As I am really trying to keep this sermon under 2 hours, I will not get into the plot or outcome of this mind-bending film, but only wish to encourage any of you who are interested in knowing more about this film, and many more films like it What the Bleep Do We Know to check out the Spiritual Cinema Circle, which is included in the sheet of further references in your bulletin today.
Seeing this film, along with thousands of other curious folks throughout the world, opened up my heart and mind even wider than I could have imagined, as it led me to further explore the world of those who believe in Global and Universal change through Collective Consciousness.
The premise behind this consciousness, according to spiritual author, Neale Donald Walsch, in his book What God Wants, is that when many individuals make the same choice collectively, the combined energy of collective consciousness can have an immediate and detectable influence on the larger reality in any environment. Ultimately, this can affect life on earth itself.
I'm going to read this again:
"...when many individuals make the same choice collectively, the combined energy of collective consciousness can have an immediate and detectable influence on the larger reality in any environment. Ultimately, this can affect life on earth itself."
Sound familiar? Could this be yet another twist on the concept of Quantum Christianity that Patricia so beautifully and thoughtfully unveiled to us throughout the late spring in her Quantum Christianity sermon series? Could this be part of the new paradigm of faith for ALL humanity that so many enlightened 20th and 21st century thinkers and spiritual leaders are subscribing to? In my humble opinion, YES - indeed. These, however, are NOT new ideas. Prophets and great thinkers throughout the ages have proclaimed a need for spiritual unity and collective consciousness through their writings, their scientific data, their art, and their music, much to the chagrin of the leaders of those adhering to more separatist theologies in organized religious circles.
Neale Donald Walsch, the previously mentioned author of the New York Times' best selling trilogy of books, entitled Conversations With God, (and also one of the main characters in the film Indigo) is the Founder of the organization Humanity's Team, who sponsored and co-presented the Seeds of Transformation conference. I was blessed to hear him speak on many occasions throughout the weekend, and every time he spoke, it left an indelible imprint on my own consciousness -- on my own wounded soul.
He opened his initial address to us with a story about a dream he had. It was actually a nightmare. In the dream there were different groups of people, from all different religions - countries - all fighting with one another. He stood in the middle, observing these people, killing one another and the earth around them. He kept reaching out and trying to stop them. Nothing seemed to work. He kept calling out to God for help. It seemed as if they were each their own exclusive team, trying to win and prove they were the best and all other teams were wrong and therefore worth nothing, thus their need to be removed from the earth. He awakened from this nightmare bolt upright, sweating, heart pounding, screaming, "Who will be on Humanity's Team?!?!" Still in the deeply emotional throes of his prophetic nightmare, he picked up the phone in the middle of the night and woke up his manager, exclaiming with urgency the need to form Humanity's Team. He went online to find out if Humanitysteam.org was available and it was. He purchased it, and thus was birthed this grass-roots organization he calls a civil rights movement for the soul, whose mission is to renew and restore our connection with God and with each other. Since 2003 to present, 10,000 people from 94 countries on six continents (and counting!) have joined Humanity's Team. They seek to free humanity from oppressive beliefs about a separate, angry, violent, and fearful God, about life and each other. This freedom, they believe, will allow each and every one of us to live a richer and fuller existence, enabling us to utilize the tools and gifts inherent in each of us to illuminate the world and live together in peace.
As Walsch concludes in his book What God Wants:
"Our opportunity now is to create the space of possibility for a New Spirituality to emerge upon the earth, a kind of spirituality that will not in any way hinder or destroy our traditional faith traditions, but that will re-invigorate them, refresh them, enliven them, expand them, and allow them to flourish, bringing to our world at last an individualized experience of the Divine in a unified form that makes no one wrong for the way in which they are approaching the God of their understanding, and that creates no condemnation or conflict in God's name.
The mantra that permeated that weekend up in New York State was one we've heard chanted here at Tabernacle on so many occasions - that comes from our brother Mahatma Gandhi, who charged us to "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
In conclusion, I wish for all of you to take time to look deep inside yourselves, inside one another, and see the God who lives within each of your hearts - a God of Love - a God of Forgiveness - a God of Infinite Possibilities. With this Good News, we are all capable of Being the Change! As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the radical Jesuit priest and noted paleontologist, once stated: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
God bless us one and all. Amen.
© 2005 by Holly Phares. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
