With the anticipation of a new year, I am reminded how I came to “ be” here and how what may seem at first to be just a thought can very likely, if responded to, bring about considerable and often necessary change.
I am deeply grateful and thankful for my sight and feel much gratitude to be living between hills and sea here on the west coast of Wales. Frequently thoughts occur directly from the literal seeing of nature’s splendour, but on two relatively recent and memorable occasions, a decidedly spiritual “seeing” demanded my response.
Having served within a local church for 30 years, I began to recognise, during a morning “ worship”, an unhelpful sense of routine causing my eyes to wander up to the beams and ceiling above under which I felt decidedly “ confined”. It was just at this moment that I felt something compelling me to look beyond… not a voice exactly, but more a gentle coaxing…to step out, step out of this room, to look and see…that there is a “staircase” to climb… I mentally followed the way and found the staircase…going up towards the ceiling above…and no longer the ceiling! No more the limitation from below but liberation from above…the ceiling of confinement becoming the floor of higher understanding.
I took those steps…and I left and no, it wasn’t all obstacle free walking. A loss of “ community” and indeed some friends…yet a sure knowledge that this journey had to be undertaken. What was this “higher” understanding?
The answer came almost two years later as I attended the evening wedding reception of a young couple from the church I had left. The occasion took place in a very large tepee in a field close to my home. There was lots of laughter and chat as you would expect, but I can’t recall anything of that. What I am able to recall however, was that the“ answer” to my question came as I gazed at the structure of the enormous wedding venue seeing the strong poles that held it all together.
It was then I had another image, looking at how the poles went down into the ground into holes. I can’t remember how many there were but suddenly I “saw” the poles representing the many different beliefs and faiths and the denominations within the faiths…each one busying itself in its traditions whatever they may be. Some were looking from their pole and their place which was the right and correct pole and place. Some believed since this was right…that the others at the bottom of the other poles couldn’t be right. After all there WAS only one “right”.
I looked again and saw the poles as they rose from the ground…going higher and further away, but rather than becoming further apart, they were coming closer until together, yes together, at the top they were all bound and secured as one. Without this, the entire structure would collapse.
I saw ONE.
ONE world, a universe of Unity and a place wherein EVERYTHING seen and unseen, formed and unformed, has its being.
Be encouraged: Onwards and upwards towards a place beyond even “interfaith”… to a place that is “Here; right now”!
~ from one of our members – Philip Robin