Commandment 5 2017 Today we are half way through the Big 10; the Ten Commandments. And it is interesting how the commandments are shifting. In this series, we are looking at the traditional scripture language for each commandment in the New Revised Standard Version of Exodus, chapter 20. We are looking at a literal meaning and why culturally that might have been helpful and why at a basic level it is a good place to begin. Then we have been exploring what guidance Fillmore might provide on a traditional metaphysical interpretation of the commandment and how this is also helpful. Finally, we have touched a deeper level of consciousness that Spirit might be inviting us into as we continue an evolutionary process towards expanded interpretation. This last level is really arising from my own meditations on what might be possible in this ancient guidance. I feel like this is totally in keeping with the Fillmore s insight into growth, changing your mind and expanding your possibilities. And with a spiral approach, each level is valid at different points in our lives and spiritual development so nothing is discarded. Our first four commandments focus on the Divine and our relationship with the Divine. You can go back and listen to sermons online, pick up past interpretation and affirmation cards or read the text from those past sermons if you need to catch up. Basically, we are invited into Oneness with the Divine and invited to allow that oneness to be a mystery, without the limits of our current level of understanding. We are invited to remain mindful of the creative power we access in our oneness and to continually acknowledge that our creative power flows through us as and from the Divine. The fifth commandment clearly shifts from the purely Divine to our earthly path. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. On a literal level, it makes sense in this group of nomadic Hebrews to keep the family unit intact. Parents are given equal billing and this sense of peace with our parents is seen as contributing to a long and enjoyable life on earth. Webster says to honor is to hold in respect. It is basic psychology to understand that being at war with our parents creates a war within ourselves because, for better or for worse, our earthly vehicles came from them and our sense of identity begins tangled up in our feelings about them. Our sense of identity doesn t need to stay enmeshed with our parents. That s a choice. 1
Making peace with and honoring our parents is also a path to making peace with parts of ourselves. At the literal level, the commandment moves beyond our relationship with God to our original relationships with other humans. Present or absent, known or unknown, we all have a relationship with parents. On a literal level, this may be a challenging relationship. Parenting is not an innate skill everyone comes with. We are taught parenting by those around us and later by our own choices. Not everyone had parents who were able to nurture the beautiful self we were born into this world to be. Honoring our parents becomes an invitation to forgive the ways we were not nurtured and make peace with the skills and abilities our parents had. We are asked to believe they try to do the best they can with what they have in this moment. And if the interactions were less than their best in any given moment, we must find our own peace with that; making peace also with those moments when we are less than our best in any given moment. For this commandment, even in its most basic, literal interpretation, compliance may prove difficult; yet it contributes to a sense of well-being on our earthly path if we can master it. The next level we have been looking at is a traditional, metaphysical interpretation. Fillmore doesn t specifically talk so much about mother and father as he refers to Jesus parents, Joseph and Mary and the masculine and feminine natures of our humanity. In the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, Charles Fillmore says that Joseph represents wisdom and Mary represents love. In other places Fillmore associates the masculine with our intellect and the feminine with our intuitive feeling nature. A traditional, metaphysical interpretation of honoring our father and mother would be to value both our intellectual and our intuitive natures. There have been many commentaries in recent years about the imbalance in our race consciousness or our collective beliefs: over-valuing intellect and discounting intuition and we have attributed those tendencies in our duality thinking to gender qualities. We have valued power-over philosophy of violence and domination and labeled it masculine. We have neglected seeking to develop a power-with philosophy of cooperation and collaboration and labeled it feminine. At this level of interpretation, we find additional challenges in social conditioning around gender and gender roles. Women who embrace their intellect and live into it with confidence are criticized. That was a fascinating aspect of the movie Hidden Figures. The women at NASA were ostracized not only for their race in the workplace but for their intellectual brilliance as women in not only the workplace but also their homes and communities. 2
Their triumph was changing the thinking about both of those issues at the same time. Men who embrace their intuitive and feeling nature with confidence are criticized. Men in work roles traditionally held by women may also be viewed suspiciously and people may attribute negative motivations to their aspirations. Having both an intellectual and intuitive nature, even without attributing gender to them, is only one of the divine paradoxes of our being-ness. A challenging enough paradox but what happens when we go deeper? Jesus tended to talk about his parents as his earthly mother and his heavenly father. I think he was trying to find familiar words people would understand as embodying the divine paradox of our humanity and our divinity. In the commandment, father comes before mother. Do we tend to value our divinity or spirituality more than our humanity? The familiar quote is We are not human beings trying to have a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Our true nature, then, is spiritual. But does that make our human nature false? Or is our eternal nature spirit and our temporary nature human? But does the temporary nature of humanity make it less worthy of respect and esteem? The commandment, apart from order, holds father and mother, male and female, humanity and divinity in equal balance. Jesus embodied that balance and demonstrated the possibilities available in that mastery. There are times in the gospels in which accounts of Jesus have been interpreted to point towards a much higher esteem for his divinity. In Luke, when he is separated from his earthly parents on a journey for a Passover festival celebration, he turns up in a temple, teaching. He is a little smartalecky when he says to his distraught parents, Didn t you know I would be in my father s house. However this is followed by Then he went down with them and was obedient to them. Sometimes we are caught off guard when children demonstrate the innate knowing of their divinity and can access that knowledge. How many of us know stories like this about ourselves or children in our care? But ultimately Jesus is back in balance, honoring both the divinity and humanity of his creation. Isn t it interesting that our earthly creation is one of duality and our earthly view is consistently one of duality. Our earthly view is consistently one of contrast and compare and value, even when we are focused on spirituality. The extraordinary skill Jesus demonstrated was holding all the parts we view in separation in oneness. He was not human and divine, he was beingness. 3
As a child in this story and at the end of his life, Jesus refers to his father s house. Charles Fillmore, in the Revealing Word says, It is the center of man s consciousness and is made manifest to him by mind processes alone. I am struck by Fillmore s imperative by mind processes alone. Perhaps Our Father s House is simply our place of oneness. Accessible to everyone by our very nature as children of the Divine. My work with people with intellectual disabilities and the writings of Henri Nouwen and Jean Vanier give this a ring of truth for me. Sometimes it seems to me that the lack of intellectual training in seeing myself and my life in separation provides a clearer path to oneness than the intellectual discipline of moving beyond the mind s training. Think about it and come to your own conclusions. And perhaps our oneness is not a destination, a journey we have to make but an awakening to what already is. I feel like the 5 th commandment invites us once again into Oneness. This time, the oneness is not only between us and God but oneness within the perceived parts of ourselves. We are invited to embrace all of the divisions we have been conditioned to believe exist and embody our wholeness. Whether it relates to male and female; humanity and divinity; sense or spiritual; we are invited to hold in respect and esteem our wholeness. Julian of Norwich was a 14 th century, English Christian mystic. Her writing in 1395, Revelation of Divine Love, is believed to be the first English language book written by a woman. She has this beautiful concept of oned ; a noun, a verb or adjective to describe us in relation to God and to all. She says, The soul is preciously knitted to Him in its making by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it is oned into God. In this oneing, it is made endlessly holy. She also says, By myself I am nothing at all, but in general, I AM the oneing of love. For it is in this oneing that the life of all people exists. Our oneing is by grace, not by effort. It is a recognition not an accomplishment. If it is our intellect that has constructed the separation, then it is our intellect that must awaken to our oneing. With or without intellectual recognition, we remain whole, oned in God. With or without the judgment or acknowledgment of others, each one of us is whole and holy. This was the awakening of Henri Nouwen during his time at Daybreak, the L Arche community outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada. An esteemed theologian and teacher, long celebrated for his intellect, he suffered a breakdown. At Daybreak, he was simply a caregiver for a young man named Adam, severely handicapped by seizures and the consequences of prolonged 4
seizure. Upon Adam s death, Nouwen wrote Adam: God s Beloved as his own reflection upon what he had experienced caring for Adam. In the book Nouwen writes: Adam was sent to bring Good News to the world. It was his mission, as it was the mission of Jesus. Adam was very simply, quietly, and uniquely there! He was a person, who by his very life announced the marvelous mystery of our God: I am precious, beloved, whole, and born of God. Adam bore silent witness to this mystery, which has nothing to do with whether or not he could speak, walk, or express himself, whether or not he made money, had a job, was fashionable, famous, married or single. It had to do with his being. He was and is a beloved child of God. It is the same news that Jesus came to announce. Life is a gift. Each one of us is unique, known by name, and loved by the One who fashioned us. When we look at ourselves and when we look at others we often see only what we perceive is broken, what we perceive is conflicted or out of alignment. We see the labels we have constructed, we see unmet expectations and we see the boxes we have come to believe are normal homes for our being-ness. We see gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability-all the characteristics of our humanity we see as divisions. I believe the 5 th commandment invites us to honor all parts; hold all of what appears to be a paradox in balance; and know that we are already oned in God. Look at your card for today. On its face the commandment says: Honor your father and your mother. Our deeper interpretation invites us again into oneness through the practice of holding in balance all of the divine paradoxes of your being. Our human nature goes first to duality and so we begin by practicing balance where we see paradox, awakening again and again to the idea we are whole and holy. Our affirmation is: I honor the perfection of being a spiritual being in human expression. That perfection is our oneness. The perfection is ours through being oned by God. The thing we most desire is already our gift through the grace of our creation. What else could we possibly desire? Next week the always practical commandment: Thou shall not murder. 5