Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
What to do?
Reverend Doctor Barbara Holmes is often quoted in Richard Rohr’s daily meditations. Here is something she said at the Conspire conference at his Center for Action and Contemplation in 2021:
“Trust God, trust Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth. Make your intention clear, that yes, you will follow as called, without exception. Just make your intention known to God and wait for the Holy Spirit to lead you into the fulfillment of your vocation.”
She grew up in the regular way, got married, had two children, got divorced, went to law school. After graduation, she knew she still had not found her true direction. Then followed a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Philosophy in Religion. That is a lot of education and time devoted to finding her calling. She spent a fair amount of her life following the rules of marriage and then single motherhood. Her degree in the Law was meant to afford her a career where she could raise her children comfortably.
She has settled into her vocations as an activist, a spiritual teacher, and an author. I became aware of her writing because of the racial justice book club that I belong to. We were looking for a new book to study. The title of her book, “Race and the Cosmos” caught my eye and I ordered it as a possibility. Once I started reading it, I could not put it down. It is not an easy read. Her website says this about it: “At the intersection of ethics, cosmology, and physics, a new view of human life is emerging – a view not neatly divided along lines of race, ethnicity, class or sexual orientation. Human life at cosmic and quantum levels has a unity independent of social categories such as science and religion.”
If I can summarize this in my own brain, we are all made of star dust. We are all energetic beings that share a place in the cosmos, a place where race and status do not matter. But what I read this morning about making an intention clear to the Universe(s) is what I started out to write about. The first quotation is very Unity oriented. Although Dr. Holmes is a United Church of Christ pastor, her outlook could be that of a Unity minister. We believe that by making our intentions clear, we can create our experiences through thoughts held in mind. This is one of the 5 basic principles of Unity.
Looking back on my own life, I have had two vocations: nursing and immigration. Both of them came to me through the influence of two women. One was a director of nursing where I was a nurse assistant in college. The other was an immigration attorney that I met through my experience as a school nurse in Santa Fe. Both led me to think of my life in different terms. Because of the seeds they planted, my life went in totally new directions and I felt, both times, that I had found a niche.
At age 73, I have many more years behind me than ahead of me. My work in nursing, especially in hospice nursing, felt like a calling and not just a job. I guess when I had finished my work as a nurse, the cosmos introduced a new path to follow. Both times I have plunged in and never looked back. Until now, that is. At my age, looking back is a requirement. As one of the 12 Promises of AA says: “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.”