I recommend this month’s Soul Matters theme and materials: What Does It Mean to Be A People of Blessing? It could be your best twenty minutes of reading this month. And you will then be in shared community with the Spirituality on Tap discussions and the service reflections whether you can make the gathering or not.
I ended my initial write up for the May 1st service, “Bless the World” (see front page), by saying that “Much of the experience of ‘a life of blessing’ resides in attitude and practice. It can be your choice.” I then changed the “it” to read: “that much can be your choice.” (i.e. Attitude and practice are adjustable, but I don’t want to imply that “a life of blessing” is all in how a person thinks about it.)
A blessing is “a beneficial thing for which one is grateful; something that brings well-being.” Yet we know life brings things for which we cannot be grateful: illness, pain, loss, fear, want, cruelty, oppression, injustice, circumstances of birth; the pieces of a “broken world” we see in and around us.
I live my own personal struggle every day, but whether I am conscious of it or not, I am a blessed person, undeservedly lucky in birth and opportunity, situation and result. So the Soul Matters introduction speaks to me as I read: “When the world seems stingy to us, we are stingy to others. Those who feel blessed have little trouble sharing blessings with others.” I respond with an “oh, yes, this helps,” to “Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency.
Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. “It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough” (Lynne Twist. That helps change my perspective for the day. And then I read the question: “Is your high expectation blinding you to the blessing? What if your standard for blessing was: Living with integrity – most of the time. Loving your work [retirement] – most of the time. Loving the people around you – most of the time. Loving your self – most of the time. How would your life [feel] different if you added that one simple phrase to all your assessments: “most of the time.”?
That much is my choice. And the more I feel my life as blessed, the better able I am to share my gifts with others. And the more I practice and step into this spirit of gifts and generosity even in small steps, the stronger my sense of blessed sufficiency becomes and the more I am able to reach out and truly bless the world. A life of blessing. Make the choice. Blessed be.
Rev. Jim McKinley