No recap for yesterday, just the full text
July 7, 2013
My sister, Diane, died unexpectedly last Tuesday morning. She was kind;
she was generous; she was accepting, and she was
present when you spoke with her. You felt like you were the only one in
her world.
There is an old story about a king. He had a
beautiful ring and he had three sons. Each son wanted the ring. When the king
died, he left three rings for his sons with a note. The note said, "My
dear sons, one of these rings is real and two are fake. The way you will know
who has the real ring is that the son with the real ring will always be kind
and generous to all people." Each of the three spent the rest of their
lives proving they had the real ring.
My sister Diane must have had one of those rings
because she was kind and generous.
Diane was not religious. She didn’t go to
church. She didn’t engage in conversations
about spirit. In fact, I’m not sure I
ever heard her utter the word, God, yet she lived a life of what would be
described as, “the Christian ethic.”
People were attracted to Diane because of the
way she lived.
It is the same with religion. We can go
throughout the community and talk a good game about Unity, but that doesn't
change anyone… and talking a good game certainly doesn't change us. What
changes us is when we live it-- when we become
our spiritual path. Then others - Kids grand-kids… anyone else - look at us and they see there is something in us they
would like to have.
Living an attractive life begins with a positive
lifestyle, with a
positive
mind, with positive thoughts. There is not one person here this morning who
would not say they are a positive thinker. Every person here believes they are
positive. But are you positive all the time? Are you filled with a faith, a
zeal, and an experience of God which gives you the extra power to know God is
with you every second of every day?
I’m not saying that we never have
negative feelings or as I am having the week, feelings of sadness and
loss. At the same time I’m having those
feelings I am aware of the indelible Presence of God. In my sadness there is a
positivity that is staunchly present.
There is a humorous story told about
being positive. It involves two men named Sam and Jed.
Sam and Jed determined they could
become wealthy by hunting wolves.
So, they started out, because in their
part of the country a live wolf was worth a $5,000 bounty. They went out and
searched for wolves day and night. After a few weeks they still hadn’t seen one
wolf.
Then one night they fell asleep and
when Sam woke up he noticed they were surrounded by about 50 snarling wolves
with flaming eyes and bared teeth.
Sam gently nudged his friend and
excitedly says, "Jed, wake up! We're rich!"
That is a funny story, but it is the
type of positive attitude I want us to have; even when things don't look good
to every one of your five senses. To know that with God, somehow, someway, that
everything is alright, or that this (whatever it is) is going to turn out to be
a positive. I would like you to have such faith in God that you know; that you
know; that you know with God this situation is going to turn around for your
betterment. That you are going to use
every situation in your life, the good times, and the bad, to be grateful to
God. You are going to have an awareness that God is with you so much that only
good can come out of this situation even if it appears in the beginning that
only bad can come out of it.
For instance, there is a story of Ole
Evinrude. Evinrude wanted to take ice cream to his girl friend to propose to
her. So in a very romantic way, he got some ice cream and he asked her to join
him on the shore and they got into his rowboat with the gallon of ice cream.
They were going to row over to an island in Oconomowoc Lake, a small lake
outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he would serve her ice cream, maybe sing a
little bit and then propose. By the time he got to the island the ice cream was
all melted. The problem was that it was all melted over the bottom of the boat
and all over the girl.
It is hard to be romantic when you
have sticky, homemade ice cream melted all over you. Needless to say, it did
not go well; in fact, he never married the girl. But what he did do that day
was vowed that he would spend however long it took to make things better. Ole Evinrude invented the outboard motor, perhaps, so that sometime later on someone could make it to the island with
frozen ice cream.
When your ice cream is melted and when
you feel sticky, how is God going to turn it around? You have to take it into
prayer and you have to ask and wait to be Divinely inspired. You may have to
have courage to act on things that other human beings haven't acted upon
before, or the courage to act in a way that those around you aren’t.
When you do, everything is going to turn out
alright, or maybe even better than alright; your whole life could change as it
did for Ole Evinrude.
On display at the French Academy
of Sciences is a shoemaker's awl. It looks like an ordinary shoemaker's awl,
but behind the little awl are both tragedy and victory. It fell one day (early
1800’s) from the shoemaker's table and it put out one eye and damaged the other
eye of the shoemaker’s nine year old son, a tragedy. Within weeks the child was
blind in both eyes and had to attend a special school for the sightless. At
that time, the blind read by using large carved wooden blocks which were clumsy
and awkward to handle. When the
shoemaker's son grew up, he devised a new reading system with punched dots on
paper. To do this he used the same shoemaker's awl that had blinded him. The
man's name was Louis Braille. He used the tragedy with God's help to flip it
around into victory. That is the power of God. That is the power we each have.
And I have faith that each of Diane’s
kids and grand-kids (and another sister, Judy) will be able to flip the loss and
pain they feel into a “victory;” that the darkness the feel becomes a bright
light for them because they let themselves grieve instead of stuffing their
feelings; because they take a positive
memory-path and that they come to remember a life well lived by their
mother, grandmother, sister.
Positive thinking is more than just
blind faith. The power of positive thinking is awesome. When you make your human mind available for
the positive God thought, you are less susceptible to depression, depression
that sometimes robs the human being of power. You are less susceptible to
physical ills. You have a proven power that you can achieve more in your life.
I heard that one of Diane’s grand kids stated he
was her favorite. Another objected that
she was her favorite. A few more joined
in saying that they thought grandma liked them best. My sister Diane was always
loving, present, and optimistic with her grand kids and I believe that’s why
each of them though they were her favorite.
I’d like to conclude by reading a story that
came to my email inbox just yesterday:
“I had a
very special teacher in high school many years ago whose husband died suddenly
of a heart attack. About a week after his death, she shared some of her insight
with a classroom of students.
As the late afternoon sunlight came streaming in through the
classroom windows and the class was nearly over, she moved a few things aside
on the edge of her desk and sat down there. With a gentle look of reflection on
her face, she paused and said, "Before class is over, I would like to
share with all of you a thought that is unrelated to class, but which I feel is
very important."
Each of us is put here on earth to learn, share, love,
appreciate and give of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic
experience will end. It can end at any moment. Perhaps knowing this is God's
way of telling us that we must make the most out of every single day."
Her eyes beginning to water, but she went on, "So I would
like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school, or on
your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It doesn't have to be something
you see… it could be a scent-perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of
someone's house, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the
morning light catches one autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground.
Please look for these things, and cherish them. For,
although it may sound trite to some, these things are "the stuff" of
life. The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often
take for granted. We must make it important to notice them, for at any
time..."
The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books
and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I noticed more things on my
way home from school than I had that whole semester.
Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember
what an impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those
things that sometimes we all overlook.
Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour
today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home
tonight to get a double-dip ice cream cone. For as we get older, it is not the
things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn't do.”
This is how I will remember my sister
Diane.
She was kind. She was generous. She
took the time to be present and positive with every little thing with her
grandchildren… and she was always willing to stop for ice cream, to laugh, or
to look at a butterfly.
She always loved me and for that I am
grateful.
After all, I
was her favorite. :)
