Thank you. There is deep wisdom within. There is a still small voice. The voice of the child.
Haven’t our hearts and minds been deeply damaged and colonized already?
Haven’t our instruments been scrambled?
Haven’t we been handed inaccurate maps on purpose?
When I was a little child, I could go outside at any time and turn in a circle to notice what I saw around me, and it terrified me. What I saw was ecocide. Where ever I lived I saw that we humans were killing nearly all of the life around us.
When I look around me today I see the same thing. When I look around the world I see the same process that I see locally.
The problem is that we have been socialized to be emotionally disconnected and off-balance. We have been taught not to trust our bodies, hearts, and minds.
We have been taught not to trust our instruments.
Layered on this is the reality that we have been forced to live as though a terribly rapacious, unjust civilization is benevolent and just.
We are deprived of our true child.
Jesus taught us that we must be born again and to be children of the wind — but we cannot bear the absolute vulnerability of that.
It is safer to “color inside the lines” and to be obedient, conformist, compliant, complicit.
Your aviation instructor taught you to fly an airplane very well.
We have been taught to crash and burn our own bodies, hearts, and minds — along with the body of Mother Earth.
Your reflection questions are very good. We need to ask ourselves how it is that our spiritual communities have become part of the fear, outrage, denial, and exhaustion that cause us to crash.
We need to ask ourselves if we can find our true instruments as the complex catastrophic crash accelerates around us.
I am re-connected to my own true instruments when I can take regular time with silence and solitude and also with soil, plants, animals and all more-than-human sentience — sky, water, light, and rock.
Deep study requires much physical stillness and much physical movement for me.
I think and feel with my body and the spaces right around me. I also think, feel, and see through mystical visions that are difficult to call physical or spiritual.
Most of the media (both the technologies and the techniques) we connect with provides a simulacrum of sentience and sense.
Our hearts and minds are thinned out and hollowed out and made into phantom hungry ghosts even as we are fed within this context.
I do not see an escape, but feel that we are moving through this liminal time of monsters and monstrosity — to a great degree, we are ourselves the monsters now.
But we are fugitive in form and being.
We are being made new.
We are most certainly not in charge of the process.
Be like the bird.
Be like the flower.
Be like the seed.
Murmurations, clouds, mists over water or forest, small vulnerable creatures — these tell us who we are and are the most important wayfinding and orienting beings in our lives.
These are our instruments. And we are — in some mysterious way — gifts to them as well.
I do not comprehend this. I know it with my body….
I go outside and turn in a circle and my body feels this…..
What arises for me from reading Rev. Cameron’s reflection is this:
What I call "Sacred Listening" asks us to become trustworthy to ourselves, to be silent enough to hear the inner guidance speaking.
To listen beneath the fear, noise, outrage, and certainty that stems from that which cannoot be trusted: our own reactivity.
And remain in relationship with the quieter instrument panel within.
There is an inner integrity that knows when something is true, even before we can fully explain it or even understand it. It is the place where inner and outer meet as one.
This points to the deeper rudder of the soul.
The practice is learning to listen there.
And then having the courage to live from what we hear.
So sorry for that strange reply, Amba. I was traveling and somehow push the Send button too quickly. My intention was to thank you for your wisdom about sacred listening and your observation that, like Cameron's example of the instrument panel, we too each may discern how to move forward through those quiet practices of listening for our innate integrity and then to act with courage when that voice points us toward Truth. Thank you for your invitation to say more about that. The Commons is such a gift~!!!!! Barb
Dear Rev. Cameron, VFR direct. Depart the fix of lies and disillusion. Pray for inly sight to discern the truth in what is being offered. Accept or reject. I've been doing a lot of both these last 2 decades or so. Thank you for your daily reflections.
Brilliant. Thank you for the truth you always tell.
Amen! Thank you for this homily! We are in this together. 🙏🏻
This is excellent, sage advice!
Thank you. There is deep wisdom within. There is a still small voice. The voice of the child.
Haven’t our hearts and minds been deeply damaged and colonized already?
Haven’t our instruments been scrambled?
Haven’t we been handed inaccurate maps on purpose?
When I was a little child, I could go outside at any time and turn in a circle to notice what I saw around me, and it terrified me. What I saw was ecocide. Where ever I lived I saw that we humans were killing nearly all of the life around us.
When I look around me today I see the same thing. When I look around the world I see the same process that I see locally.
The problem is that we have been socialized to be emotionally disconnected and off-balance. We have been taught not to trust our bodies, hearts, and minds.
We have been taught not to trust our instruments.
Layered on this is the reality that we have been forced to live as though a terribly rapacious, unjust civilization is benevolent and just.
We are deprived of our true child.
Jesus taught us that we must be born again and to be children of the wind — but we cannot bear the absolute vulnerability of that.
It is safer to “color inside the lines” and to be obedient, conformist, compliant, complicit.
Your aviation instructor taught you to fly an airplane very well.
We have been taught to crash and burn our own bodies, hearts, and minds — along with the body of Mother Earth.
Your reflection questions are very good. We need to ask ourselves how it is that our spiritual communities have become part of the fear, outrage, denial, and exhaustion that cause us to crash.
We need to ask ourselves if we can find our true instruments as the complex catastrophic crash accelerates around us.
I am re-connected to my own true instruments when I can take regular time with silence and solitude and also with soil, plants, animals and all more-than-human sentience — sky, water, light, and rock.
Deep study requires much physical stillness and much physical movement for me.
I think and feel with my body and the spaces right around me. I also think, feel, and see through mystical visions that are difficult to call physical or spiritual.
Most of the media (both the technologies and the techniques) we connect with provides a simulacrum of sentience and sense.
Our hearts and minds are thinned out and hollowed out and made into phantom hungry ghosts even as we are fed within this context.
I do not see an escape, but feel that we are moving through this liminal time of monsters and monstrosity — to a great degree, we are ourselves the monsters now.
But we are fugitive in form and being.
We are being made new.
We are most certainly not in charge of the process.
Be like the bird.
Be like the flower.
Be like the seed.
Murmurations, clouds, mists over water or forest, small vulnerable creatures — these tell us who we are and are the most important wayfinding and orienting beings in our lives.
These are our instruments. And we are — in some mysterious way — gifts to them as well.
I do not comprehend this. I know it with my body….
I go outside and turn in a circle and my body feels this…..
Thank you, Gary Hoover, for the extra light on nature and more-than-human beings.
What arises for me from reading Rev. Cameron’s reflection is this:
What I call "Sacred Listening" asks us to become trustworthy to ourselves, to be silent enough to hear the inner guidance speaking.
To listen beneath the fear, noise, outrage, and certainty that stems from that which cannoot be trusted: our own reactivity.
And remain in relationship with the quieter instrument panel within.
There is an inner integrity that knows when something is true, even before we can fully explain it or even understand it. It is the place where inner and outer meet as one.
This points to the deeper rudder of the soul.
The practice is learning to listen there.
And then having the courage to live from what we hear.
our own reactivity— quieter in nstrument
Hi, Barbara -- not sure I understand what you were saying...please say a bit more
So sorry for that strange reply, Amba. I was traveling and somehow push the Send button too quickly. My intention was to thank you for your wisdom about sacred listening and your observation that, like Cameron's example of the instrument panel, we too each may discern how to move forward through those quiet practices of listening for our innate integrity and then to act with courage when that voice points us toward Truth. Thank you for your invitation to say more about that. The Commons is such a gift~!!!!! Barb
Dear Rev. Cameron, VFR direct. Depart the fix of lies and disillusion. Pray for inly sight to discern the truth in what is being offered. Accept or reject. I've been doing a lot of both these last 2 decades or so. Thank you for your daily reflections.
Horizon, hijacked...
social disorientation.
Humanity, lost?
...
Truth-telling, crucial...
grounded focus, real true north.
Caring acts, vital.
...
Insist on we-world...
refuse denial, drama.
Through all, together.