Morning Ponderings

I am still reflecting on the many lectures I attended  at the “Virginia Festival of the Book”.  The very first talk we went to included the author of a book called Two Charlestonians.  It traced the life of two Charleston natives born a mile apart.” Captain Thomas Pinckney and Sergeant Joseph Humphries Barquet.  One was a white rice planter and scion of America’s founding families and the other was a free man of color and a brick mason.  One joined the confederacy in order to maintain his way of life and the other joined the union to bring freedom for those who were enslaved. I found myself thinking about the whole idea of being born  “on the wrong side of history”  -  and in this case it was being born a slaveholder.  The premise of their lives -the lens through which they viewed themselves and the world -  was white supremacy.  It was taken for granted.

At the same time I am now slowly reading  Stepping our of Self Deception  and was stopped in my tracks by these sentences:

Our personal tale with its conflict, pain, drama and momentum is predicated on the single untested and unquestioned belief that “I” exist.  Any student of logic will tell us, if the premise of the story is wrong then everything built upon that premise is incorrect.”

And I wonder about many things. I wonder how  I ––born  100 years after the civil war, after decades of Jim Crow, as  the civil rights laws were enacted -  still am affected by the premise of white supremacy.  I grew up in the north in the fifties and the sixties and certainly lived in white privilege.  Of course, I didn’t understand it or recognize it for years, but that was my reality.

And racism is only part of our story.  I was  born into a culture of rating and ranking and the implicit understanding that some were better than others.  Those who are more important might be  smarter, faster,  prettier, more famous, more powerful,  and have the most money.   We may not live with a caste system like India or the aristocracatic rules of the British monarchy but I wonder how much  of the  unconscious premise of our lives is affected by a sense of worthiness based on external achievement and attributes.   And unconscious is the operative word.

It seems to me that the spiritual work that we are called to  is to discover the premise and to remove the  lenses that distort our understanding of ourselves, others and life itself.   When we say we are followers of Jesus,  we are living in a new premise  – that every person is of equal value, that we are loved as we are and called into a deeper relationship with the God of love. It is a journey of receiving grace so that we can face every part of ourselves and allow God to guide us into wholeness.  It really is a movement away from judgment and division into love and grace.  

So, here are the questions of this morning:

What is the premise that I am operating under

             Is it that I must earn my way

         Is it that I am a victim

         Is it that I am special in a way that others are not

         Is it that I am gifted

         Is it that I am flawed

          Is it that I am called

          Is it that I am insignificant

           Is it that I am world changing

           Is it that I am inadequate

           Is it that I am blessed

           Is it that I am growing

What is the premise of my life?

Here is a wonderful blessing that is appropriate to these musings:

May the God of TRUTH be with you,

enlightinging your heart, clearning your vision,

calling you beyond yourself,

and gently leading you to the truth at the heart of your being.

May fidelity to this TRUTH be your gift to others and the source of your own peace.

May the blessing of TRUTH be with you. 

Amen