Broken shards and forgiveness with a catchy beat…
And for days, my ear worm has been set on an old, old song from my days as a worship leader in a Unity School Church. I had occasion in conversation to use a phrase that I don’t use very often these days — you are a beloved Child of God. And that set off a firestorm of musical remembrance that has continued for days as every fiber of my being joins in the chorus of “I am the radiant life of God,” written by Georgiana Tree West back in the 1930’s at the beginnings of the Unity movement. If you dare, you can listen to a great performance of it here, but be warned — it is addictive.
There isn’t that much that is really special about the song. It’s theology is basic to the Unity movement, and really, it’s theology is present in most spiritual paths (except possibly if you consider yourself a Calvinist). But like the movement and music of Taize, the song and its message burrow deep into your cellular structure, taking you someplace that a hymn with 5 distinct, well-crafted stanzas of verse simply does not take many people.
And this song certainly did take me back — it took me back to the days when those of us who served as worship leaders would cringe when we saw it on the program for the day, to the days when I first learned what it was like to stand in the front of a sanctuary and raise my voice in song, to the days when I believed and embraced its simple but fundamental message of the love of God. I remembered it all — the joy of laughter and love, and the painful disappointments and anger when the message failed me and forced me to leave once again on my pilgrim’s journey towards God.
I remembered all that, and yet, something happened in a very full-bodied way as my mind played that song in my being — I experienced forgiveness. Somehow, in the incessant replay of that song in my soul, I dropped the walls of anger and fear that I had built around my experiences in the New Thought movement. I released the feelings of rage tied to all my opinions about its failings as a system of believing and living, and, in that moment, I felt just a little closer to my own self and my own sense of wholeness. Because you see, it is all a part of me. And I finally could embrace that.
It is a funny thing, this twisty, winding road we follow as seekers of wholeness. For me, it has caused me to move on from communities that I loved, all because of the call of the journey and the scent of the breeze from the road ahead, like that moment when you catch the smell of the sea long before you see the beautiful blue water. And yet, something small and meaningful, like the sound of a song in my heart, can pull me back in an instant. This time, returning did not hurt, and I remembered the good of those times — the strong women who served as minister in a world that is still dismissive of their gifts; the loving, positive theology that came from the stories of healing that form the beginnings of the Unity movement; the validation of the search for God that has filled my every breath in the years between now and then.
I know that forgiveness is present and that a little bit of healing has occurred when the remembered moment links to a something of the present, making a path between the me then and the me I know now. And that’s what happened for me here. I lived for a moment the process of Isaac Luria’s great commentary on the creation story:
At the beginning of time, God’s presence filled the universe. When God decided to bring this world into being, to make room for creation, He first drew in His breath, contracting Himself. From that contraction darkness was created. And when God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), the light that came into being filled the darkness, and ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light.
In this way God sent forth those ten vessels, like a fleet of ships, each carrying its cargo of light. Had they all arrived intact, the world would have been perfect. But the vessels were too fragile to contain such a powerful, divine light. They broke open, split asunder, and all the holy sparks were scattered like sand, like seeds, like stars. Those sparks fell everywhere, but more fell on the Holy Land than anywhere else.
That is why we were created — to gather the sparks, no matter where they are hidden. God created the world so that the descendants of Jacob could raise up the holy sparks. That is why there have been so many exiles — to release the holy sparks from the servitude of captivity. In this way the Jewish people will sift all the holy sparks from the four corners of the earth.
And when enough holy sparks have been gathered, the broken vessels will be restored, and tikkun olam, the repair of the world, awaited so long, will finally be complete. Therefore it should be the aim of everyone to raise these sparks from wherever they are imprisoned and to elevate them to holiness by the power of their soul. (Howard Schwartz, The Tree of Souls, 122).
There are three important movements in this story — emptying, shattering, and retrieval. It seems to me that those are the movements needed for forgiveness of ourselves or anyone — an emptying of something, some belief that no longer holds truth or power for us; a shattering of the anger or the memory of that anger that happens with the emptying; and then, bit by bit, a retrieval of the pieces of wholeness that make up our soul. We are created to “sift the holy sparks,” to gather the broken shards, and create what wholeness, or shalom, we can, where we are, today.
And so, on the wings of a song (which, by the way, is the name of the hymnal in which “I am the Radiant Life of God” was printed), I gathered a few sparks today, definitely for myself, maybe for the world. A new vessel has been formed of my past and my present, and maybe sent ahead into the world, probably to be broken again. But it is, after all, the hunt for the shards that keeps us going.
You must be logged in to post a comment.