Our Buddhist brethren consider the lotus tower to be the icon of their God. It toots in the decay of reality and truth and life. It then grows through the water of living life and blossoms in the sunlight with the experience of divine truth and love. The lotus flower blossom, when open, is stunning. The colors are so bright one might think it plastic. This one, in a pond near a favorite pottery studio in Thailand caught my attention for hours one day.
Being open in the way this flower is open is not easy. It takes daily mindfulness to be open to what is around you. New ideas, new ways of being, new forms of the old ones to which we are so resolutely attached are advanced spirituality and many of us fall short of the willingness to go so deep into spiritual transformation. Jesus used the flower as a metaphor for letting go of the worry and fretting which so invades our peace and fuels our fears.
Were we to let go of all the thoughts in our heads which march around like little Prussian generals with no clothes, we would find a peace with which the world would look different and in which we would be different. Sometimes I think this letting go comes with age and indeed it does for me. And yet I know people who are young and yet have mastered this kind of inner freedom and light and some older people who remain smokey with their unexamined thoughts clouding the colors of life.
Are you sure? This is a great question for today. Are you so sure?
I wonder if the greatest threat to the church is not too many leaving or too many skipping church for hikes or too many with-holding their pledging opt too many are letting excellence slip. I wonder if the greatest threat to the church is that too many are too sure of too much.
