Follow the Echoes Back to the Sound

Last updated on: October 4, 2015 at 9:37 pm by Annie Mueller

Follow the Echoes Back to the Sound 2015-10-04T21:37:14-05:00 Annie Mueller

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Humanity is a thing both infinite and rare. Perfect and broken, fractured, lost inside our flaws and unable to see the gem within.

How do we help each other to see it again?

It has to start with seeing something good inside of ourselves, and that is always the most difficult part.

How do I show my children that they are part of God, that they are perfectly made and loved, that they belong to love and goodness and light, when I do not believe it about myself yet?

If I don’t believe it about myself yet, then how can I believe it about someone else? I might try; I do try. But there will always be that fear of not-good-enough, and because I love my children so much I want to save them, I will try to fix them, try to make them good-enough-to-be-saved on the basis of my feeling that I am not good enough and no one else is and we must all work very very hard to become good enough.

But that is all a lie.

We are created, we are formed, we are made, we are designed and evolved, we live and move and have our being in a God who is, who must be, infinite goodness and love.

If God is not this infinite goodness and greatness and love, then He is not God; He is simply a bigger man, a more powerful being, a demon or spirit or imp or giant or half-breed, something to be feared and avoided, perhaps, but not something to be worshiped or pursued.

I believe in God, in a real God of perfect pureness and light and love, because I see evidence of something greater, and better, and more perfect and pure and powerful in love than we are right now. I see the evidence in myself, in others, in moments of heroism and beauty, in nature, in grief, in brokenness, in nobility, in sacrifice, in the tiniest details around us, the connections, the significant things we feel but can’t explain, the unity that we slip into for an instant and then miss, so terribly, when we slip back out into reality.

Swami Vivekananda

The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him – that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
[Source]

That feeling, that experience, tells me that what we slip back into isn’t reality; it’s the illusion of matter, of separation, of imperfection.

Once we let go of the illusion, we’ll see the true reality.

It will be what we long for, or it will be something totally different. I could be wrong about everything. Most likely I am. I don’t want anyone to believe me or follow me, but to listen, to be still for a few moments each day, to think, to stop imbibing the world long enough to hear the echoes beyond it, and then to follow those echoes, pushing ever nearer and nearer to the original sound.

Tonight I talked to the children about this verse in the book of Proverbs which says,

Love covers a multitude of sins.
Prov 10:12

Another translation puts it this way:
love covers over all wrongs.

If we look at the original Hebrew words and pull out their definitions, we get something like this:

Love overwhelms (covers, pardons) transgressions, guilt, punishments, offenses, sin offerings, mistakes, faults.

I told my kids that every day we make mistakes and wrong choices, but those mistakes are not who we are. Those failures do not change us or make us. There is, inside each of us, this perfect, unblemished, gem that is made by God and is part of God, is God-breathed and God-given and God-loved and perfect, pure, whole, good.

And that part of us, hidden inside, sometimes so deep we cannot see it, is who we really are.

The mistakes are just us learning, like babies, how to live out who we are. We get it wrong a lot. And we imagine, we believe, that the “getting it wrong” is what defines us or identifies us. But it’s not.

We were made, identified, valued long before we made a mistake. The mistakes get burned away, even the worst of them (that’s the chaff) but the gold, the pure gem inside which is really us, that remains. That cannot be burned away, because it is infinite, eternal, because it is part of God, and God is all, in all, through all, unending, infinite, eternal, perfect, pure, whole, good, love.

And we have to remember, if we remember anything, that love covers. Love is how we act when we act like who we really are. Love is how we treat other people as they really are. Love is how we find our way to God again. Love is how we put aside the mistakes, how we let go of the failures, how we brush off the indignities done to us and done by us, and let them burn into chaff. Love is what finds us, love is what frees us, love is what saves us, love is what leads us into knowing, truly, who we are.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love does not claim possession,
but gives freedom.

Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain it.

Love’s gift cannot be given,
it waits to be accepted.

[Source]

Love is not threatened by these errors, these faults. Love knows what is infinite and what is temporary. Love knows the difference, and embraces the one and releases the other, and all settles into its rightful place, to be lost or to remain.

I told my kids that I hoped they would remember that, on their worst days when they felt like they’d failed, that those failures are not them. They are perfect parts of God, and as my love for them grows infinitely, every day no matter how many mistakes any of us make, so much more infinite is God’s love for them, which is and always has been and always will be.

We can help each other by showing that same love, no matter what. We can remind each other that the failures are nothing. The mistakes are nothing. The faults are temporary. The errors are minute, fading as soon as they are committed. But the real, the unseen perfection in all of us, the pure gold of the eternal, the unending infinity of love, is not threatened or damaged or undone or made anxious by any of it.

Love remains.

1 Corinthians 13

1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, 5 doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; 6 doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. 8 Love never fails.

[Source]

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