Minister's Message
We’re Two Digits Now!
A message from Rev. Linda Finley
I remember the joy I felt in turning from nine to ten years old. My age had two digits! I wasn’t a “little kid” anymore. My grandmother would laugh and say “Any day now it will be three!”—but that’s another story!
So the century of two thousand is now moving toward its teen years—that place where we break away from the “kid” stuff and move into creating independence and change. Welcome to 2010. Anything is possible.
As I began contemplating what to choose as a theme for this year (last year was Lean Forward into Your Life. The year before it was A Year of Significant Living), it seemed to be building toward something.
When we live a life of significance, we live with meaning—what we do matters. We become conscious of the impact of our thoughts and words. When we lean into our life, we find ourselves fully engaged and striving toward our good. When I know that what I do makes a difference and has consequences, and I bring all that I am to what I do, I become ready for something great to happen.
I become ready to Answer the Call.
Joseph Campbell spent his life work on mythology—the story of human kind—what we tell ourselves about what things mean. The hero’s journey begins with a Call. You have the choice to answer or not—you have the choice to engage or release. It is in the answering—the engaging, that we begin to choose, as Mark Nepo says so wonderfully “living over hiding, being over thinking, participating over observing, thriving over surviving.”
This year, we will be deciding to respond to that “inner necessity that outweighs all consequences.” We will choose to reveal what is within us that has been awaiting our Yes. It is not simply to do something great, but to live close to Spirit - to share Life’s loving intentions for the world.
Each of us is a voice of Spirit—a cell in the body of the world—ready to play its role in the unfoldment of this thing we call Life. As we move out of 2009 and into 2010, let us Answer the Call and become who we came here to be. Let us follow the advice of Howard Thurman:
Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because, what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Happy New Year,
Rev. Linda