Our God is Love, Our Race is Human, Our Religion is Oneness
As a child I loved recess on the playground. What fun to run and whoop and holler outdoors! What wasn’t so fun was when we played kickball. The team captains picked who they wanted to be on their teams. I was usually one of the last ones chosen. That was actually an astute move on the part of the captains (they wanted to win), as while a wiz in the classroom, not so much on the kickball field! A small thing as the world goes, yet for years I carried with me the shame and embarrassment of that sense of rejection.
I think most people have felt rejected at some time in some circumstance. The severity and impact of those experiences can vary all the way from relatively minor in the outer sense to outright violence and harm. No matter how we see the degree of impact, any feeling of rejection deserves love, care, and healing. Rejection is an open door to learn to love ourselves more fully. We get to move our understanding of identity to a much deeper level. We begin to realize what it means to be an expression of God, to carry within and with us the essence of God’s very nature. Feeling that power and strength shows us the world through a different lens. Rejection starts to look like what it really is–the fears of another person projected upon us. Rejection really is not about us. What freedom lives in that truth!
This matters. It matters first and foremost because to live fully, we need to feel God’s love flowing into us, circulating through us, and expressing out into the world. The wound of rejection can keep us blocking that flow. Second this matters because there’s a lot of rejection and divisiveness going around lately. A lot of fear is being projected onto other people. This is hurtful. Those projected fears tell people they are not OK, that they are not enough, that they do not belong.
As we let God’s love heal our own rejection wound, we find the power within us to shine love and clarity to others. We see their worthiness. From our wholeness comes the spiritual muscle to radiate and broadcast the message loud and clear–you are OK, you are enough, you do belong. Outer differences are causes for celebration–God’s creativity in action. Our inner spirit makes us One. The ancient Sufi mystic Rumi put it best, “Lamps are different, but light is the same.” We all belong.
In the Love and Light of the Christ,
Rev. Anna
