Living Life on Purpose Lay Speaker Cosette Blackmer October 9, 2005 We all have Divine Purpose! Whether we know it or not, whether we believe it or not, we do. The beautiful thing about this is we don’t even need to know what our Purpose is to fulfill it. Actually, a lot of folks spend a great deal of energy, time and money trying to figure out what their purpose is and the process can be like a puppy chasing his tail. We keep running around in circles getting no where and the object of our desire is right there with us the whole time. I personally didn’t grasp the realization that I have a Divine Purpose until this last year while reading Wayne Dyers’ “The Power of Intention”. Once I realized this concept my brain went “snap, crackle, pop!” It was like a switch went off in my head and a light came on for the first time. Excited, I shared my newfound discovery with a friend. “I just realized that I have Divine Purpose”, I said. “Of course you do!” she replied, “You didn’t know that?” “Well, no.” I replied. Truly dumbfounded she asked “Why not?” Well, I was floored. I had been so excited with this revelation, and now I felt like a foolish child. Was I the only one who didn’t get this concept? I personally don’t think so. Maybe this idea is cliché, but any time I’m reminded that I might lack certain ideas, graces, or knowledge I am immediately transported to my difficult childhood and the long and winding road that marks my personal spiritual growth. I grew up in Southern California during a 10-year drought. I remember reading in school that California had a “Mediterranean” climate. I’m sorry, San Diego isn’t even semi-arid, it’s arid, and would be a desert today if it weren’t for all the people living there pumping water from Colorado State. The last time I flew over San Diego, I could pinpoint my location in the sky by the golf course greens below. Like the drought that brought devastating brush fires to threaten our home so too was my family caught in a drought of spirit. I know that my parents loved me, but expressing it was not their strong suite. My mother suffered with mental illness, and as is so often the case with the mentally ill she self medicated with alcohol. My father is also an alcoholic but has been in recovery for nearly 30 years. He was always an absentee dad, even while he was living in our home. He divorced my mother when I was 12. He mistook my mother’s misery as his fault and thought that if he left that everything would be alright. Recently, I confronted my Dad regarding my personal anger at his leaving. He simply confirmed my right to be angry. Boy, that’s like punching a bowl of Jell-O, He explained to me that he truly thought he had been the cause of my mother’s problems and that life would be better for us all if he left. He really didn’t understand the extent of my Mother’s mental illness till much later. I have forgiven him. Honestly, as a teenager I applauded his ability to escape and counted the days till I was legally emancipated. That day was to come sooner than I expected. My mother demanded that I leave at age 16. I spent several years bouncing back and forth between friend’s homes and living with different members of my family, but I managed to graduate from High School. When I was 21 years old, familiar pressures, lack of full time employment, as well as a sense of patriotic duty pushed me into joining the Army. I left the sun baked shores of the Pacific and wound up stationed in upstate New York where the snow lies on the ground from late October through March. Talk about stirring things up! The Army taught me self-confidence and self worth. There is really nothing like being treated as an absolute equal. I knew what was expected of me and I knew my rank. And after being thrown out of my mother’s house at age 16, I finally had a place to sleep and regular meals. Uncle Sam took care of me for a while. Some of my female peers readily admitted to joining the military to find a husband. Being raised in a Navy town I had little hope of finding a partner in the military. When those boys got off ship they really tore up our town. Fortunately, I didn’t rule the idea out. I met my current husband of 20 years while stationed at Fort Drum. His career as a civilian Air Traffic Controller eventually led us to this area. Getting back to my formative years I must admit they where not completely devoid of spiritual lessons. My parents had some definite feelings regarding spiritual matters. Mostly they felt that I should make up my own mind. I was never taken to church by my parents, but they never objected when I hopped onto the Baptist Church bus with the other neighborhood children. I sampled many faiths with my friends and their families, but nothing really seemed to fit. Fortunately my mother was a voracious reader. She proudly displayed the I Ching, and Kalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” in our living room. These alternative ideas seemed to make sense to me. As an adult, when I reread the short book “The Prophet” again I was actually astounded that this critically slaughtered manuscript was the basis for my personal worldview. My mother did teach me some valuable lessons. One of the most important lessons was to make up my own mind up about a person’s character, although that wasn’t in her intention. She continuously berated my father in front of me trying desperately to convince me that my dad was evil. She told me how horrible he was and that he had beaten her repeatedly. As I remember my father was the one who ended up with stitches when my mother smashed our television set over his head. By the way, the 3rd television she destroyed that year. My dad was the one with multiple bruises and black eyes. I do recall that he hit her once. But still, I couldn’t be convinced that he was a bad guy. Besides, I was 12; I naturally idolized my dad and needed his support. My father is a gem in my life today and one of the kindest people I know. So, now I refrain from listening to gossip regarding a person’s character, and avoid making snap judgments about others based on first impressions. This attitude has served me well. From my dad I learned that the glass was half full. To always make the best of things. He is the “give 110% into everything you do” kind of man. Another lesson I took to heart was that thoughts manifest. My father always said, “You are what you think, and the spoken word makes it more so.” I strongly believe this to be true. It’s funny how things pan out, but a serious back injury that occurred when I was 15 eventually forced me to give up the career in food service that I had started in the Army and return to college. Ah, college campuses, the hotbed of new ideas. I soon discovered feminist theology, the Goddess, and Paganism. I felt like I had finally found my home. These ideas actually fit into my own personal worldview, and suddenly I wasn’t alone. Practicing an earth-based religion helped me to understand that everything is Sacred. Each person is Sacred. Every animal, each flower, tree, and the earth itself is sacred. Every breath, every heartbeat, everything is Sacred. The Goddess revealed to me that we are all connected. We are connected as in a great web of Spirit. The Goddess also blessed me with the ability to accept joy in my life. Maybe I was called to the feminine face of Spirit because my own mother expressed distain for me. Maybe it is simply time for humankind to remember the feminine aspect of Spirit to be greater than a virginal vessel of simple compassion. Finding the Goddess personally empowered me. She gave me a voice. An even greater voice than wearing a uniform that identified me as a soldier and an equal did. Practicing sacred ritual allowed me too grow outward in ever expanding circles swirling in a sea of ancient and new ideas. Tragedy causes great change in ones life. In November 1998 my husband was struck with cancer. He was 38. We were very lucky. We caught the Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in its earliest stages. He is in complete remission from the cancer. The following fall I finally faced a hysterectomy that we had been putting off to see if we could become natural parents. The very next November my mother died. Let me tell you, I’ve been a little skittish about Thanksgiving and the whole holiday season ever since. I found the best way to cope with all of these changes was to adopt a philosophy of living in the moment! Be here now! And ultimately find joy in the moment. I determined that life is unpredictable. Each breath, however sacred may be our last. But rather than let that idea depress me, I chose to find the beauty in each moment. Or as I often say “I am fond of making lemonade”. This frame of reference works well. It allows me to be OK right where I am, and also allows others to be OK right where they are. I find that this concept of being on your own path fits right in with Unitarian Universalist ideals and is one reason why this congregation feels so welcoming to me. Still, as many of us feel growing up in this western culture, I thought of myself as a temporary being. I understood that I was a physical being occasionally having spiritual moments, rather than a spiritual being having a human experience. It is a very common concept in our society. We separate ourselves from spirit. We are physical beings who are born, live our lives separately from one another, and then we die. But because our young require many years to be self-sufficient we have adopted an organized society that protects our young. Ultimately we need to get along with one another to successfully survive and have developed elaborate social systems, but we are no longer consider ourselves connected to nature, spirit or God. Even with my earth based celebrations I still adopted this philosophy Then I read Dr Dwyer’s work. He explains how we can align ourselves with the aspects he calls intention or God. When we align ourselves with beauty, love, gratitude, abundance and kindness we begin to understand that we are on purpose. We are all beautiful souls connected and whole and are truly one with the Devine. Both my father and my husband had a problem with the word “Divine”. I imagine many of you do too. After all, is not the word Devine reserved for prophets like the Buddha and Jesus? If I use the term Divine am I not sliding down a slippery slope to join my own mother? If we are indeed all connected to the earth, to each other, and to Devine Spirit itself, as our 7th principle states, we are Divine, foibles and all. I choose to walk the walk myself. Sure, I’m not perfect, but I do endeavor to align myself with Spirit. I chose to walk in beauty and joy. I chose to be kind and am grateful for all of the blessings in my life. I live abundantly. I don’t just hope to someday be prosperous and have enough. I know I have enough and try to pay it forward with my time, with my heart and yes, with my pocketbook. I choose to live my life on purpose. Maybe the thought that I have Divine Purpose doesn’t necessarily make it so, but if choosing to believe that I do shines a light in my soul and encourages me to be a more generous person, then so be it!