SERMONS

Showy, Showy Spring! We can't miss it. Of all the seasons, it is the most naturally effusive. Like little children whose unstoppable energetic enthusiasm is ever awake, Spring bursts on the scene every year announcing the abundance of Life. Ancient rituals and celebrations have existed the world over to mark the Vernal Equinox and the returning of Light after Winter's darkness. Our human ancestors joyfully and gratefully celebrated Earth's annual resurrection, a word by the way that comes from the Latin, resurgere, and means to grow, rise, and lift again.

Today is Easter Sunday, a day of worldwide Christian rejoicing and celebrating the message and symbology of Jesus' resurrection, the assurance to God's children of the reality and promise of everlasting life. Much could be said about what is arguably Christianity's most holy day and its associations with the seemingly unrelated pagan traditions of celebration and renewal at this time of year. For example, you may know that the word itself, "Easter," comes from the name of the Saxon goddess, Oestre. Symbol of fertility and birth, Oestre's sacred animal is the rabbit, and our word for the female hormone, estrogen, is derived from her name. As goddess of the dawn, Oestre's name means bringer of Light - the light that comes from the East signaling the new day, especially the re-dawning of Life's enduring promise of plenty with the advent of Springtime.

Growing up as a Baptist child in the 1950s, my family always went to church on Easter. To me, though, the day meant just three things, things that felt so big that the first letter of each word was surely meant to be capitalized. First, I got to have a new dress, referred to ever after the rest of that year by Mama as "Your Easter Dress." Easter also meant waking up to that wonder of wonders, The Easter Basket, with its green, papery grass partially covering cellophaned "eggs," a euphemism that day for pastel ovals of pure cane sugar. Consumption of the sweet treasures had to wait 'til after church - though my brothers and I always managed to open and eat at least one egg apiece without mama or daddy hearing the rattle of cellophane. What we were allowed to at least begin before going to Sunday School was the thing I loved most about the day - the Easter Egg Hunt.

Hand-dyed, liquidy-colored hen eggs were the norm back then, not those big, clearly visible brightly-colored plastic eggs children hardly have to hunt for now. Sometimes it would take the better part of the day to find all the eggs so cleverly hidden by mamas and daddies in uncut spring grass, behind bushes and under baskets, maybe even stuck in the end of a garden hose (my favorite place to look). A few were hidden higher than my head. It was these I especially treasured and that were most fun to find. I'd avert my eyes as soon as I spotted one, praying no one had seen me see what I'd seen, and then I'd run ask some grownup to retrieve the seemingly golden egg from its lofty perch.

Although this children's ritual carries no conscious connection to Easter's Christian meanings, it seems to me that the two events - searching for the morning's promises and the resurrection of Jesus - are more related than we might think. Entombed in fragile shells, eggs are universal symbols of fertility and creation, are certainly promises of abundance and ongoing life and could be viewed as a sort of natural covenant. As such, they are not far distant from the revelation made to the those first followers of Jesus when it was realized that He had indeed arisen from the dead and moved beyond the not-so-fragile shell of a rock-sealed tomb, illustrating the truth of our eternal life as children of the Creator.

I believe that the annual search for eggs by Earth's children at a time when the year's energy and season is that of Re-creation is no coincidence and that the search itself is a symbol of the true nature of all us children who are looking for hope, renewal, and promises of life abundant. I believe, too, that the egg search may even exist by divine design as a cultural ritual of humanity to remind us on a subconscious level of the promises made by two of this world's great Teachers, Jesus and Mother Nature.

Nature is surely an ongoing instructor, teaching constantly through the ever-flowing movements and changes of Her cycles and seasons. On this Earthly realm, we spirits in human form create and re-create anew, giving birth to ideas, nurturing their growth, enjoying their maturation, appreciating the harvest that comes from their existence, then acknowledging and letting go of what is completed so that the next birthing can take place.

Earth, our home away from Home, is the abode of this oh so resilient and fertile, yet fragile flesh, which is itself temple to spirit supreme. That we are flesh with all our mistaken belief in separation from the Creator that flesh is heir to seems, like the cyclical hunt for Easter Eggs, not accidental. Nor can it any longer mean to me what I was taught in my Baptist Sunday School: that I am some sort of sinful, unclean, poverty-stricken stuff that can only either earn a place in some far-off heaven or, more likely, at least to a child's mind, easily fall into some closer-at-hand hell. This was the promise of my Sunday School teachings unless I accepted Jesus as my personal savior. If that promise, along with the preacher's oh-so-loud messages of a fiery end weren't enough to get me on the straight and narrow, surely Mama's repeating promise that God was always watching me - and putting a black mark in His book by my name when I did something wrong - surely sealed the door on my oh-so-certain tomb.

Lest I painted too idyllic a childhood picture while sharing my Easter Sunday memories, let me say that my parents' personal pain (played out as alcoholism) became the central shaper of my growing up years. While I never could have said so at the time, their pain - and mine in result - was one of the two great gifts of my life. Their inability to look at their own lives meant that their alcoholism was, in an odd way (and unknown to them), a sort of sacrifice made for me so that I might use this collective pain as a way in to healing years of self-hatred and belief in what I've come to know as the world's Great Lie - that we are unworthy. Moving into and through my healing work led me, over time, to a very real, personal resurrection and brought me Home to my Authentic Self, that spark of the Divine that I Am and that we all are.

The other of my life's two great gifts, my Baptist heritage, was the co-conspirator in my healing by forcing me to search for what I call "a story big enough to live in," a greater Truth not only about myself, but about the Source and Ground of All Being. Two earthly teachers shepherded my awakening to this bigger story - my eighth grade English teacher, Becky Whitaker, and metaphysician and author, Ernest Holmes. Becky was the first to tell me a bigger story about myself when she said, "Amy, you have a spark of Divine Fire." Her seeing me as so much more than I believed myself to be literally saved my life. Some fifteen years later, reading Holmes's The Science of Mind provided my first true spiritual instruction about what being a spark of the Divine really means and led me toward a grounded understanding of who I am and what I am capable of. Thank goodness for Ernest Holmes, because his metaphysical teachings helped me approach God the way I most needed to at the time, through my logical mind. Childhood beliefs are not easily healed, though, and it would be another twenty years before I could say that word - God - without feeling as if I might throw up.

Eventually, I came to truly realize that this so-called "sinful" flesh, doomed to hell without the church's Jesus, is actually Spirit's free-will vehicle for learning through consequence to choose from a higher place than self-centeredness, greed, and fear. I came to know that on Earth, this temple holy IS the vehicle for our ultimate remembrance that we are literally sparks of God. Viewing oneself as anything other than this is spiritually irresponsible, since it continues the deadly illusion of separation. But when brought into the Light of consciousness, the resurrection through us of this long-buried Truth allows healing at a level that lifts us all and places us squarely back where we have always been, but believed we are not - held in the heart and halo of heaven.

Most Christian churches do not teach the fullness of Jesus' words in his three statements re-acquainting us with the truth of both our ultimate equality with him in the "Sonship" and of our Oneness with Father-Mother God/All That Is: "These things I do, ye shall do and more," "Love your brother AS yourself," and "I and the Father are One." More than teachings, the three are actually profound covenants of reminder, of admonition, if you will, of what he fully knew and what we had forgotten: that we are made in a spiritual image and likeness; that like our True Parent, which I sometimes call the "Ace of Hearts," we are powerful creators and are One with our Creator; and that we lost sight of why we were made in the first place - that Great Love (another of my names for God) might be shared.

In every Baptist church I ever attended, the words "I Am That I Am" were above and behind the pulpit. Plain to see, yet almost never talked about, the words captivated me from an early age, became a conundrum that wouldn't let me go. Even years after I'd given up on being a Baptist and a Christian so that my inner knowing that all paths ultimately lead to God could flourish, those five words stayed with me. No pastor's answer or personal spiritual study was enough to fully satisfy my yearning to understand the declaration. As time went on and my deepening spiritual journey turned into service and ministry, I kept teasing my way into little bits of meaning about "I Am That I Am" 'til one early morning two years ago when I awoke hearing the sentence in my head. What I heard that Spring day was the word "that" being emphasized, followed by a comma: "I Am That, I Am." The deepest Truth fell into place then, and I knew that when Moses asked God for His name some 3500 years ago, God, answering from a burning bush said, "I Am That, I Am," giving Moses the key to every miracle he'd create in God's name by providing him the way to unlock the meaning of Ultimate Truth: not only God as "I Am That Which Causes To Be That Which Is" (the translation of the name "YHWH"), but God as "I Am Every 'I Am;' I Am All of This."

This straight-from-the-horse's-mouth statement is God's direct confirmation of what many traditions teach, that we are One with the Mother/Father, are individuated souls, or cells, if you will, in the Body of God, imbued with the very nature of the Creator.

Just before giving His Name to Moses, God told the prophet to take off his shoes, because "the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Holy not only because at that moment God had come to speak directly to Moses, but because God was present AS Moses. Holy ground is wherever the I Am is - in You and Me, in All That Is - and that is everywhere.

If I am right about this, and I trust that I am, then two conclusions are immediately apparent: First, when we say the words "I Am," we invoke our own creative power as the individuation of the Grand Creator; we actually create that which we repeatedly claim - "I am afraid, I am thrilled, I am sick to death, I Am Love." Second, and most profoundly, there is only One of us here, and whatever I do to any one, I do to all, because there is no separation. As Jesus states in A Course in Miracles, "I receive what I am giving now."

We're living in times of great global change. Depending on your personal lens, the change might be viewed as tragic or as revolutionary, as damning or as promising, as apocalyptic or as the dawning of a new and golden era. Many of us today in the metaphysical community still look outside ourselves for quick fixes to personal problems while giving lip service to Oneness. However, without truly embodying what Oneness impels in us - seeing the Holy, the Divine in All, and choosing to live as if the God in all Life matters - authentic spiritual responsibility is not achieved. The resurrection of the long entombed Ultimate Truth, "I Am That, I Am," is THE call in our times to a total spiritual responsibility for both personal and global resurrection.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, "Your resurrection is your reawakening; . . . rebirth is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it," placed there by God. He also states, "The crucifixion was a call for peace" and means "teach only love, for that is what you are." Our resurrection, our reawakening requires that we unearth this Truth of who we are - Oneness in Love.

Separation is the mis-belief, a small lie (with huge consequences) that we tell ourselves so that we don't have to take responsibility for ALL our actions and, thus, for healing our world. This single mis-belief in separation is the cause of all misperception and is the root of all suffering. Once Truth sees the light of day in us, we will either choose to take personal, spiritual responsibility for our own - and the world's - healing, or we will take a volitional stand in opposition to it. The choice, as ever, will be freely made.

For some of us, replacing mis-belief with Truth at the intellectual level is as far as we go, and seems to be enough. That isn't far enough, however. Unless we heal what I call "the holdings of the heart" - meaning the unexamined wounds encountered in childhood that lead to the unconscious perpetuation of suffering - we do not heal the perceived split between our Creator and us. There exist a number of reliable, grounded ways and means for coming to embody genuine healing, including spiritual mind treatment, and that's a conversation for another day. Suffice it to say, when the heart of the wounded child is healed, so is the perception of separateness. With the Truth of Oneness in Love in its place, we no longer believe and teach the world's Great Lie - that we are not worthy. This greatest of all misperceptions is rooted in two simple and deadly beliefs: we're not lovable enough and we're not good enough.

The demise of the Great Lie takes place from the inside out and, when healed, means that we love ourselves wholly and deeply, and in a holy manner, no longer causing suffering to others or ourselves. We become as little children, radiating the Light that is our deep nature and Ultimate Truth. When an individual makes the choice to heal, because there is only one of us here, then all of us, along with this little garden planet, are lifted up as well. So, our healing, while personal, is never private. Far from daunting, when we know and live the full truth of who we are, the world's healing occurs naturally, and our responsibility to heal it is experienced simply as a joyous way of living rather than a burdensome task.

The goddess Oestre as reminder of returning light and Jesus as reminder of Light Eternal are not really so far apart. Both serve us at different stages in our conscious evolution to re-mind us of forgotten Truth. Oestre reminds that the darkness of Winter always gives way to the Light of Spring; Jesus reminds that we are imbued with eternal life so that One Great Love and Light might be shared. The messages of both are hidden within our annual ritual of searching for the promises of Easter morning, those eggs hidden in and under baskets, a place where we have been known to hide our Light as well. Keeping that Light under a bushel is no longer a luxury we can afford. To continue supporting the illusion of separation from one another and from our Creator only continues the damage we do to each other and to our Earth. Worst of all, maintaining separation perpetuates our complete misunderstanding of our relationship to God, to "I Am That, I Am."

As Marianne Williamson teaches, it is our Light that the world most needs, and it is this very Light that most frightens us. Why is this so? I say it is because the Light Itself is a profound call to personal healing, which at the deepest - and highest - levels leads to spiritual responsibility for embodying Oneness. It allows, as Andrew Cohen says, "an uncommon level of integrity, a challenge to rise to a relationship to Life that would allow each of us to become a living expression of the opposite of everything that's wrong with the world." Oneness, realized, naturally eliminates selfish motivations and means we automatically consider the effects of our actions on the Whole, on one another and all our kin.

Innate at our emergence as individuated cells in the body of God, the Light we carry is meant to remind each other that we are souls born not in original sin, but in Original Love, from and out of the Light and Heart of God. The Light of that Love as us is our true nature and will eventually prevail, because all paths ultimately lead to God as Rumi so beautifully taught when he wrote 700 years ago, "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

As thousands of heaven's earthly children part Spring's dewy grass this day in a perennial search for sweet, colorful eggs, as they uncurl a garden hose or lift trash can lids and baskets, let us too lift those bushels we have unconsciously spent our lives creating, the ones we have used to shroud our Light - the Light of the One and universal, the Light of the individual and personal. Let us now trust the Light that we are, trust that in living as if the God in all life matters, the One that we are, the I Am presence, automatically brings forth both the personal and global resurrection the world so desperately needs.

Before I offer a spoken blessing to you, I offer a musical one, a song I wrote and recorded a few years ago for all us Divine Sparks of Mother/Father God. I share my "Waltz for the Child" with you today with gratitude for all that each of you do in this beloved world. . . .

For our blessing, I now invite those of you who wish to do so to take off your shoes and stand on the holy ground beneath your feet.

Always remember, dear ones, that there is only One of us here, and that One is the Divine. "When the soul lies down in THAT grass," Rumi wrote, "the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense . . . Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."

Namaste.

©Amy Pierce, MA, April, 2009