By: Rev. Gwen Smith
I really do not want to bring up the pandemic, but our reality is that it is still present and we are seeing rising daily numbers in North America and Kenya, in fact worldwide. In fact, in some ways, the 4th wave is looking as it is the worst.
I am more directly affected with the screening job I have with a local company, and it still shocks me and gives me a sense of panic when I have a positive result in our employees. And I now know families who are losing loved ones from it. It is no different for any of us anywhere.
I have had to turn to the chapter in the SOM textbook, chapter 23, for some guidance. I am very sorry if anyone reading this has recently had a dear one transition lately whether the cause is covid or not. This chapter may console you, but I encourage each of us to allow the grief to move through us as it will manifest ailments in our physical lives if the grief gets stuck. Yes, we are immortal, but we must allow ourselves to miss our loved ones. Be in the grief, mourning, move through it. Reach out to others for comfort and prayer, knowing you are never alone.
With pondering this article today, a video that I recently watched of Brene Brown speaking about joy, kept coming to mind. She is a researcher and brilliant. She has become very popular, and I would recommend her books and her videos. What I was pondering was “Where is the joy in what is going on today all over the world?” and in this 4th wave. Brown says that when we experience joy, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop meaning that joy cannot last. She calls it “foreboding joy” and we cannot enjoy it fully or for long. I understand this as the human psyche of the experience of joy. And that is something that I have been experiencing at times. I have had the bubbling up of joy just to have the next moment stomp it. Why? Because I am caught up in the negative, forgetting the Truth.
Our medical systems from all over are grim and to say overburdened is an understatement. Where is Joy? I must remember that joy resides within, always there ready to be recognized. “There is One Life, That Life is God, That Life Is My Life Now” (pg. SOM 292) Ernest Holmes goes onto say “We are not becoming this Life but are now in and of this Life.” “God is”. “I am the spirit of Joy within me”. And so, it is for me to recognize it and unearth it from the outside appearances and be the expression as God. Joy is to be expressed, guiltfree. Peace, Love, Harmony is to be expressed and is needed now more than ever. I understand the foreboding joy and I know it is a human behaviour, that which can be examined and transcended.
This planet, humanity, needs our True selves to show up. “to assert our individuality is to rise above the law of averages into that more highly specialized use of the Law which brings freedom rather that bondage, joy in the place of grief and wholeness instead of sickness. We must first ‘judge not according to appearances’ and then we are impressing the Law with a new idea of ourselves.” (pg. 417, SOM)
And so it is.
Namaste, Rev Gwen