Fruit Production in Quarantine

Fruit Production in Quarantine

Galatians 6:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

We know without being told that there is a variety of gifts of the Spirit given to all God’s children (I Corinthians 12).  And we’re comfortable with that because we wouldn’t want everyone to be a televangelist, for example.

 But the fruits of the Spirit are available to all—every fruit mentioned in Gal. 6:22-23 can be produced in and through every one of us—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

 Notice that God’s directive in Galatians is not “so get producing, get to work bearing fruit.”  As the Holy Spirit works its magic in us, the nine fruits are naturally produced.

 This time of quarantine certainly prohibits us from being out in the world doing in ways we are accustomed to.  We are even brought face to face with questions of identity without all the activities that usually take up our day planner.  What an opportunity this is for God to get our attention!  Undivided!!

 I’m convinced that what God wants most from us is simply our being and our letting Him produce fruit in and through us.  Quiet time gives the Holy Spirit a chance to plant within us new seeds of joyfulness, kindness, gentleness, and all the other fruit.  Let us allow the Spirit to show us how to be patient and kind to ourselves, peaceful in our inmost being, celebrating the continued goodness of God in our lives.  Then let us ask God for ways to offer that fruit to others.

 Let us invite the Holy Spirit to invade our being with germinations we can’t imagine.  Let us ask God to produce His unique fruit in and through us, that we might be more than ever our true selves.  Let us release our former attempts to manage our orchard.  God always has a better idea.

 May we take a few quiet moments each day to let the Holy Spirit remind us that we are begotten of God and hold within us His essence.  Therefore, seeds of all nine fruits are present in us, ready to sprout in new and mysterious ways.

 I thank God that He is every moment working to make our fruit trees vehicles for His mercy and grace.

 Ann G. O’Dell

Light in Darkness

It is significant that Christmas is celebrated by us at the winter solstice–the point of shortest daylight and longest night.  The nighttime represents our unconscious–the dark, hidden part of us that must birth the new being within us–the Christ into our personality.  This birth comes only after a period of gestation within the unconscious womb.  The long dark winter represents the long gestation period.  The new birth occurs when the darkness is the longest, out of which comes the dawn of a new life.  Only after the longest, darkest period in our lives can this new birth occur.

In the mythological story of the soul–the Christian Nativity narrative–the conception takes place in the spring, the time when nature exhibits her greatest fertility.  Birth takes place in the season when nature manifests no sign of life.  Most vegetation seems dead.  Even light–the source of life–wanes to the point where the days are shortest and the nights are longest.  It seems that light is being swallowed up in darkness, that life is being consumed by death.  But out of this darkness–this womb of winter–comes something new and wonderful–hoped for, longed for, desired above all, yet not dared expected.

Darkness also represents the unawareness of our conscious to the light within us–the abundant life Jesus said he came to give.  Jesus is the physical person who represents the spiritual person of God that wants to be experienced within each of us.  The darkness of our conscious awareness to spiritual matters is such that it does not understand, expect, or even “have a clue” to the inner light that continues to shine in our soul even though we do not see it, do not experience it.  We must finally experience our fill of darkness–become sick and tired–even despairing of looking for some sort of light to warm and illumine us.  We must finally come to the “dark night of the soul” and cry out for light in order for God to be able to make us see and experience the light he placed within us before we were born–the light he begot us with–his own holiness.

Winter is the worst time to have a baby–cold weather, lots of germs and disease going around, little sunshine.  It is difficult for a newborn to get a good start physically.  Winter is the best time for a baby to be born for non-physical reasons: it puts a ray of hope and joy in the midst of our bleak mid-winter–a ray of human light into the short days and long nights of the year’s end.  In the winter of our lives, when the days are short, light has faded from our lives.  We need new light, a new kind of light.

How does birth of a newborn connect with the winter solstice?  Think small.  On the shortest day of the year, in the smallest amount of light, is born the smallest unit of human life.  Solstice and the birth of Christ come together to point us to a celebration, not only of what has happened, is, and will be in terms of the patterns of earth and sun and a special baby born one winter’s night in a cattle stall, but of something that is designed to occur within our individual lives.

Not only do we celebrate the mid-winter’s lengthening of days and the Christ-Child as the “Light of the World.”  We also celebrate the possibility of the coming of a kind of light the kindles a fire within us on the altar of our hearts–a fire that we shall never stop tending because of all that is provides for us: light, warmth, life, joy.

Tidings

Tidings of great joy

to you

in you

for you are being born into

a wonder

a grace

a being fresh and new

for you

of you

by you

with you

as you

scarce aware of space prepared

are knitting infant clothes

and humming lullabies

and all the while

know nothing

of the miracle

you are become

Ann Glover O’Dell

26 June 2009

A Prayer for Your Spirit

May you experience such peace and comfort as not experienced before;
May you feel such tender embrace from the Father that you look forward to a renewal of the embrace each day;
May you have a larger awareness each day of your own preciousness which is far more than you can think or imagine;
May this time of rest and recuperation become a time of growing awareness of your unique holiness.

(author unknown)

THE ERA OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Many clergy and biblical scholars are busy researching the cultural context of the four Gospels and the source material used. We even have reports, based on serious scholarship, of what Jesus probably did and did not say. Eager readers seem to want to know what is fact and what is fiction in the four accounts of the life of Jesus.

What seems to be ignored is this new era of holiness. Our individual and collective level of conscious awareness has risen to the point where we are ready for something more. Our inner Self yearns for a new manifestation of the Sacred—a personal revelation.

We have moved into the era of the Holy Spirit. An era to complete the other two. An era in which we are not consumed with research into the written word. An era in which the energy and spirit of the universe is available and eager to move in and through us if we but will it. This energy can reveal to us a truth stronger than words, a new reality that cannot be denied, and potential that is eager to be realized.

Let us consciously invite this amazing phenomenon to come to us, abide with us, and use us as instruments of peace, creativity, and joy.

ANGER

Surely God does not intend for us to be angry. Simply because anger overpowers and imprisons the joy that God has planted deep inside us.

Anger seems to be on the increase as God’s children are killing each other everywhere. And increasing in individual amassing of weapons for the purpose of killing.

Anger seems to arise when there is a feeling of loss of power, of control. It can be something as detailed as a TV set not working properly or can be a general feeling of more than hatred toward a group of people—perhaps coming from a fear that they might become more powerful, might try even to kill us.

What God wants is to eliminate the anger in us—one by one—through a personal transformation experience. Elimination of anger is the only means to our living in harmony with each other, whether in marriage, families, communities, nations.

Anger comes from wanting power, no matter how much we already have. Anger may be a sibling of greed—or surely plays into it. No matter how much power we have, we want more. We want people to behave the way we want them to behave. We want events and outcomes to follow our agenda. We want to be in control.

The drive for power does something peculiar to our insides—both physically and psychologically. It causes negative consequences that actually reduces our power and thus increases our anger.

Anger occupies the space where creativity and authentic excitement for life is intended to live.

We would do well to identify our angry spots and ask ourselves if we really do want to be rid of them. If we do, our Inner Wisdom can destroy what is keeping us from experiencing abundant life. It waits for our permission.

13 August 2014
Ann Glover O’Dell

(Note: my personal transformation story, where anger was destroyed in me and hasn’t returned in 30 years, is contained in the book,  Humpty Dumpty Hatched, which is available on this website.)

A Sign for You

Signs, signals, symbols lie around us everywhere—if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. The eyes and ears of the heart—the inner self—was what Jesus was talking about. And God has placed peculiar signs for each of us, readily available. All we need do is listen and look with our spiritual ears and eyes.

Probably we will not experience an angel visitant with celestial chorus accompaniment. But the directions to our sign are all around us, trying to get our attention, trying to make us see how much we want great joy, trying to make us understand that God wants us to have just that.

We, as the shepherds in the story, will find our own Babe, lying in the stable of our heart, waiting for us to wrap it in very special swaddling cloths that only we can provide.

Note:  More on the idea of our Inner Babe can be found in “Cradling the Babe,” under Meditations on this web site.

23 December 2014

What Wants To Be Born

What wants to be born in us?  What is eager to be hatched?  A new, guilt-free, anger-free being.  Our real Self.  Our original personality.

A self is born which, when a mistake is made gives an immediate apology because the complementary feeling is immediate and authentic.  We are immediately sorry for whatever misdeed we have committed.  So the apology is genuine and immediately forthcoming.  And even though the event may linger in memory, the wrenching guilt that used to linger, multiplying our not-OK feelings, lingers no longer.

Some scholars say our preeminent problem is that of shame: being ashamed of who we are–and who we are not, ashamed that we are not enough–in any situation.  We can’t do enough, know enough, have enough, can’t be enough–no matter what.  But guilt is the word we use to talk about our not-OK-ness.  And when the guilt disappears, the shame and despair it covers also disappear.

What wants to be born in you?  The real Self, the original you wants to be born–the human creature, begotten from the union of the inner masculine and feminine parts of the personality.  The union of your rational will with your creative intuition (conscious/unconscious) that produces in you the Nurturing Parent, Capable Adult, and Free Child.  The new self (having moved from childhood to adulthood to godhood) recreates our sense of awe and wonder and delight–the same that God experiences within his good creation, pronounced good from the beginning.  The goodness/godness within us is what we are searching for.  And what is searching for us.

The new Child is born–not childish, immature in its ways, but a new child-likeness–an innocence that lives in the world but believes the good will prevail.  That celebrates the good in everyone/everything.  That looks for the redemptive in every situation.  That is able to celebrate wonder and awe and the comic–everywhere.  That experiences joy, laughter, the expectation of every day holding the same excitement and newness that Christmas Day did for us as children.

Dream scholars suggest that when that happens we will dream of a wedding uniting a king and queen.  I say a dream of a dear child is what tells us either that ours has been born or is calling us to allow it to be born.

Our story begets its own fairy tale happy ending.  But ours is not a fantasy.  Ours is a ‘until death do us part’ union, which keeps us grounded in the inner life no matter what happens in the outer.

Haven House Came Calling

That same summer the director of a new residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction came to my church committee with a request. Would we participate with some others in providing an encouraging Sunday message for the residents of his facility? I was delighted with the opportunity.

My family would be satisfied that I had somewhere to tell my story where they would not feel embarrassed. And I would have a monthly opportunity to interact with people who wanted a new beginning. I was eager to see if they would respond positively to my ideas and my story.

And they did. For 32 years they have continued as I have been taking meditations to Haven House and telling my story as well.

My first message was entitled “Good Grief!” (summary follows)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 says “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Job 17:7 says “My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow.”

II Corinthians 7:9-10 says “. . . I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief… For godly grief produced a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. . . .”

Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, wept over his inability to win Jerusalem to the kingdom of God, and grieved over his own impending death. More than anything, the grief of Jesus points to our own basic need to grieve over ourselves. I invite you to consider using this time in your life to do some proper grieving over yourself—some Good Grief.

Grief may be the most important emotion in our lives. It certainly damages us if we do not pay attention to it.  Stages of grief can include anger, guilt, remorse, and feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and despair. Often we get stuck in the guilt. Guilt which produces tapes that keep playing over and over, telling what we did and didn’t do that we are ashamed of.

And the loneliness. And the despair. I urge you to allow yourselves to go beyond the guilt and loneliness to let your grief go even deeper than you have let it go until now. Our natural reaction to negative emotions is to try to ignore them or push them down or run away from them. You have already acknowledged that your response has been to try to escape.

My experience convinces me that the only way we can get through with our grief is to turn and face it—to actually give it permission to let it take whatever expression it chooses to take, whatever form it needs to take to work itself out in us and heal us. A written dialogue with what it eating away at us is what is needed to learn that something deep inside can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Grief is an emotion that cannot be denied if it ever is to disappear. The sadness must be permitted, experienced to the fullest. We must shed all the tears that have been bottled up inside of us in order for all the guilt to be washed away and joy emerge.

Someone has defined laughter as the soul’s most perfect prayer. After our painful, paralyzing time of mourning, authentic laughter will return and with it a special kind of joy. Look at what happened to Jesus as a result of his tears. He was able to raise Lazarus from the dead. In his death the old body died and a new personality was born. Not only the Jerusalem he wept over but people all over the world have followed him as disciples. The same kind of amazing power will happen in our own lives.

I urge you to get on with your grief work.

Why Me?

Marveling at the sheer absurdity that such a miracle could/would happen to me, I began to ask, “Why me? Why has this happened to me?” And immediately and consistently the answer came, always the same.

“Why not you? Why not everyone!? “

I realized that of course the same transformation is intended for everyone. Like the bedraggled Grizabella in “Cats!”, I needed it at the moment perhaps more than anyone I know. I was sure, however, anyone and everyone who needed and wanted what had come to me could have the same thing.

I wanted to shout my story from the rooftops, tell everyone I knew about my miraculous experience. My family accused me of deciding everyone needed an experience like mine. They weren’t far wrong. I became more and more certain that everyone who wanted the freedom and joy that had come to me could have it through a catharsis similar to mine.

With few exceptions, my friends wanted to label the sickness I’d be through a rough virus. Some, when I mentioned miracle, seemed surprised to the point of being fearful, perhaps that I was going to harass them with some born-again story. I wish they had let me.

Several of my closest friends easily recognized that I had experienced something life-changing. And said so. They could hear it beyond my words, feel it in my voice, and sense it in the calmness I exhibited.

My mother suggested I begin writing the experience. So in the summer of 1982, I began making notes and constructing an outline. I jotted down quotes from the hilarious incidents that immediately began to prove—as if I needed further proof—that something absolutely extraordinary has occurred deep in my psyche and was being felt throughout my personality.