The Eight Qualities of a Healthy Spiritual Life

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "The Eight Qualities of a Healthy Spiritual Life"

Christina Berry
5 years ago
Views:

1 OPENING (Barb) The Eight Qualities of a Healthy Spiritual Life A service lead by Barbara R. Call and Rev. Carolyne M. Call at the, MA, Unitarian Universalist You ve all seen them magazine quizzes or articles 10 signs that Jealousy is Wrecking Your Relationship The idea being if you answer 5 or 10 or 15 questions you ll be able to assess if you re jealous or secure, happy or miserable, messy or neat Today my sister and I are going to talk about the 8 qualities we associate with a healthy spiritual life. Now you could interpret today s sermon as that same type of quiz or self-assessment you can rate yourself on these 8 qualities in an effort to determine your spiritual worthiness. You know, sort of like an end-of-year spirituality job review do you meet expectations? Do you add value? But instead we invite you to consider our experience with each quality, and then reflect on how understanding that quality, questioning it, turning it on its head, maybe embracing it can lend depth and breadth to your own spiritual practice, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum So here s our list of the 8 signs of a healthy spiritual life. [Barb reads hers, Cab reads hers, back and forth] 1) Compassion (Barb) 2) Forgiveness (Carrie) 3) Gratitude (Barb) 4) Humility (Carrie) 5) Generosity (Barb) 6) Authenticity (Carrie) 7) Hope (Barb) 9) Openness (Carrie) I can see that some of you have already run through this list in your heads, assessing whether you embody that quality or not... that s fine. starting with your first paycheck in January the universe is giving you a raise for your excellent spiritual performance

2 But with that out of the way I invite you to consider each quality in depth COMPASSION (Barb) Since my divorce about 5 years ago I ve been faced with an assortment of angry, mean-spirited people I used confront their anger with my own anger, which never led to anything particularly valuable or positive... And it wasn t until I spent a great deal of time pondering my own angry outbursts that I really saw things differently I ve come to recognize that what those people give me is what they have in other words, if they re spewing anger it s because anger is what they have inside them. Now stop and consider that for a minute. Consider living in a place where all you feel is anger towards a particular person or cause or situation. We all know it takes a lot of energy to be angry energy that could be used to fuel healing or introspection or loving kindness. but really, what a sad place to live! Angry at the world, chaotic inside, turbulent, unsettled and then, the underlying roots of that anger, such as fear or spite or insecurity which may or may not be conscious.. I know personally that s not a great way to feel inside. And hence: Compassion. I have a friend whose father abused him, in turn giving him an angry and distrustful outlook on life. How different is it if I feel compassion for my friend versus my angry enemies?! Is it right for me to show understanding for my friend, who I know very well, versus those other angry people, when it s very likely they are suffering from the same pain? We can t see what s inside every angry person, but we can imagine where that emotion might be coming from and arrive at compassion. Here I offer the words of author Steve Maraboli.. Consider how would your life be different if You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey. FORGIVENESS (Carrie) Sometimes it is easier to consider what forgiveness is by looking at what it is not. Forgiveness is not giving in. It is not a sign of weakness, and it is not a sign that you approve of what happened or that what happened was okay. What we can say about what forgiveness is that it is a process. It is a spiral in which you return to some events or moments again to revisit forgiveness, but at a different place on the spiral.

3 It is the relinquishing of the right to judge another person. Ponder this. Relinquishing the right is actually very difficult. And it s also hard for the people around you. Your friends and family may not want you to forgive because they are trying to protect you, or think it means you re giving up. However, forgiveness is not giving up or giving in. It is choosing to turn away. It is changing your spiritual orientation away from the painful person or event and toward freedom and a new spiritually healthy horizon. It means the person or event no longer determines your life. One thing we can definitely say about forgiveness is that it s hard. It requires practice. Some years ago an Amish community in Ohio dealt with a school shooting that killed a number of their children. The adults in the community knew the boy who did the shooting and his family. They forgave him this heinous crime. When members of the press expressed their disbelief at this act of forgiveness, and asked the Amish adults how they could possibly do it, they responded simply. They said we do it because this is who we are. We practice forgiveness every day, and so it is possible even when the worst happens. So too for our own spiritual health, we must consider forgiveness carefully and practice it daily. GRATITUDE (Barb) Gratitude is the attitude. I ve seen this slogan on bumper stickers, magnets, Facebook posts, even t-shirts. But it took me awhile to really stop and not only consider what it meant, but actually put this quality into action. I m a writer, so I spend a lot of time on websites like dictionary.com and thesaurus.com. If you look up the definition of gratitude it reads as follows: The feeling of appreciation or thanks; the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. But what does it mean to practice gratitude? For me, it started with flipping things around. Like after a long bike ride, when an old injury in my left hamstring kicked up. Yes, I felt frustrated it stinks getting old. And then I flipped it around.. I m blessed to have 2 legs that can pedal my bike. And I m thankful for the woods to ride that bike in. And I m grateful for the friends I ve found who want to experience the simple joy of riding a bike outside in the woods with me. Recently 4 of us from my office volunteered at the Lazarus House... we left our warm and comfortable office on typical Thursday a day I might have skipped over to Stop & Shop to pick up lunch or grab an iced coffee from Dunks we drove over to Lawrence and parked our spotless car and locked up our cell phones and leather jackets. We went inside and served lunch at the shelter and as those folks came through the line, picking up chicken and mashed

4 potatoes from my boss Mike, then stopping at my area to take a bowl of fruit cocktail and a slice of cake, they looked up at me and said thank you. They were grateful for a hot meal a friendly smile a fork and a spoon and a napkin a table to sit at. They were thankful for all the things I take for granted. Such a small thing, a tiny moment in time, and yet it shifted my perspective. And now, on a regular basis, I thank the universe for my gifts and my blessings as I m riding my bike I will say thanks for the woods.. as I clip into my pedals I say thanks who bought me that bike and that s where gratitude becomes an action, rather than just an attitude. HUMILITY (Carrie) If you want to learn about humility, there s no better person to teach you than the Dali Lama. He said recently, In contemporary life, humility is more important than ever. The more successful we become, both as individuals and as a family through our development of science and technology, the more essential it becomes to preserve humility. For the greater our material achievements, the more vulnerable we become to pride and arrogance. Humility is not the same thing as being a doormat. It is not, Oh I am a worm, worthless. It is instead the acceptance of one s own limits. The limits of our knowledge, our power, our capabilities. It is the awareness and the acceptance that we are flawed, sometimes deeply damaged, human beings. And that others are as well. The Dali Lama teaches that the ability to disregard ourselves or to take ourselves out of the center is what allows us to be genuinely altruistic. Disregarding ourselves does not mean we are worthless. But removing ourselves from center stage can affect our ability to be altruistic toward others. We all have value. We are all equal souls. Humility is accepting that while the world may say differently, I am actually neither more important, nor less important, than another human being. GENEROSITY (Barb) In our society generosity is usually defined as giving away money, like the family who donated enough money to build a healing garden on top of the parking garage at the Brigham & Women s hospital in Boston I define generosity as understanding our own gifts and then sharing them with the world. For me generosity means paying it forward, paying it backwards, paying it sideways paying it anyway you can without depleting your own light.

5 AUTHENTICITY (Carrie) Authenticity is the marriage between humility and integration. Integration is the ability to balance, accept, and speak from all aspects of one s life and experience. We all know what inauthentic people look and sound like. We can recognize it in ourselves when we re faking it. (Most of us can perform and recognize a fake smile!) Authenticity means that we can stand for our own perspectives, beliefs or opinions without defensiveness. Instead, we re grounded in what we hold to be true. In its most true form, the authentic person carries her beliefs, standards, values and ethics into every situation, no matter how difficult, instead of allowing the situation or circumstances to determine her values, standards or ethics. To be authentic is to know who you are completely and to live it without fear. HOPE (Barb) Hope is hard. It s hard for me to define, and hard for me to offer words of wisdom. So instead I ll rely on the words of Emily Dickinson: "Hope" is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all. And sweetest in the Gale is heard And sore must be the storm That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm I've heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest Sea Yet, never, in Extremity It asked a crumb of Me.

6 OPENNESS (Carrie) Openness is a personality trait. It s visible within infants in terms of how they respond to novelty. Some babies are more open to novelty than others. The same is true of adults, as you surely know. Some of us are more open to new or novel situations than others. If you re not a very open person, then a mark of greater spiritual health would be to allow yourself to be more open to new situations, arguments, information, people, or places. What research finds is that our minds (our perspectives, beliefs, and complexity of understanding) are broadened and deepened by engaging with novelty by being more open. The more open we are to other people s experiences, perspectives and stories (especially stories!), the greater our own capacity for empathy. Openness at its best requires withholding judgment. It includes the ability to listen carefully and engage mindfully. We cannot become completely judgment free it s not the way our brains work. But we can choose to suspend pre-judgment. Openness requires patience, non-defensiveness, and respect. It also requires an acceptance of our strong temptation to pre-judge. Stepping away from that temptation allows us to be open to new stories and new worlds. The world is a remarkable place. And it is filled with remarkable people. Open your heart and your spirit and see what might happen. CLOSING (Barb) Those self-assessments I mentioned in the beginning, the quizzes you take to determine whether you re happy, jealous, or neat? Although we poke fun at them, they do have an underlying purpose: Not so much to categorize yourself, but to raise awareness of your own traits, habits, or behaviors. And, as we all know, self-awareness is often the first step towards personal evolution. So we invite you to consider those 8 qualities of a healthy spiritual practice, and instead of judging whether you re adequate or where you fall on the spirituality spectrum, consider which of the qualities you d like to incorporate into your life, build on, focus on, breathe life into, perhaps even cut back on in order to nurture a different quality. Perfection of any of these is not the goal. You ll only veer into spiritual unhealthiness if you expect perfection. Instead, the goal is to reflect and to take small steps forward. Health is in practice, not in perfection. Whether you make it an on-going intention, a new year s resolution, or perhaps as your continuing quest towards your best, authentic self, make it real.

LOVE YOUR LIFE NOT THEIRS

LOVE YOUR LIFE NOT THEIRS Sermon Outline 1. INTRODUCTION: WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST THOUGHT WHEN YOU WOKE UP THIS MORNING? a. Most likely, it wasn t something like, Today will be a complete success if I just