Service 060224

Reverend Tina Miggs expresses gratitude for being able to speak to the congregation and reflects on the constant nature of change. She shares a story about a farmer and emphasizes the importance of finding the middle way in life. She discusses the power of consciousness and the need to be self-aware in how we navigate through life. She also talks about the presence of God within each individual and the role of trust and faith in living a fulfilling life. Reverend Tina emphasizes the importance of integrity and growth, acknowledging that perfection is not necessary. She concludes by mentioning a christening ceremony and the teachings of Reverend Michael at Agape. Thank you. Thank you, Meilin. Thank you, Antonio, for choosing that song. Part of me wanted to call Antonio and ask for a specific song before I was going to speak, but there it is for me, right? Speaking to me, trust that voice within. So thank you for that. Well, good morning, everybody. I am Reverend Tina Miggs, and I am grateful and honored to once again be here before you. It has been two months to the day since I've been up here on this stage in this fashion. Not this fashion, but, you know. And so much has happened, right, in two months. So much has happened. So much has transpired. You know, I walked through these doors, DSL-Salt Lauderdale, for the first time in October of 2020. So much has happened since then. So much change. Change is the only constant in life. So how are we with change? How am I with change? You know, interestingly, a few weeks ago I went to lunch with a congregant and a friend, and we had a wonderful connection, a high-vibe conversation. And then, of course, what's going on at DSL did come up. And I shared with this individual this teaching that I had heard, and then, wouldn't you know it, a few hours later, I get this call from Dr. Ford asking, would I give this talk on this day? And of course I said yes. And if anybody knows me, knows me well, I do not shy away from the hard topics, the hard subjects. So yes, I'm going to speak briefly, or totally, to what has been and continues to be going on in this community. But don't you worry for those who are a little uncomfortable in your seat. I was taught very early on in ministerial school that I do not stand up here and talk to you or teach anything without having realized a truth first. I am a good student. I do my work. So I'm going to share with you that story that I shared with my friend. Like any good story, it starts out once upon a time. Once upon a time there was an old farmer who worked his crops for many, many years. And one day, his horse that helped him work that field ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors rallied around. They came to visit, and they said sympathetically, such bad luck. To which the farmer replied, perhaps. The next morning the horse returned, and it brought with it three wild horses. The neighbors again rallied around the farmer, so excited, and exclaimed, what great luck. To which the farmer replied, perhaps. The following day his son tried to tame one of those wild horses, was thrown from the horse, and broke its leg. You know what happened. Here come the neighbors. Here come the talk. And they came to offer such sympathy. Oh, what a misfortune. And you know what the farmer said. Exactly. The day after that accident, the military came to town, and they were drafting for the army. They saw that the son had a broken leg, and they just passed by. The neighbors, excited yet again, rallied around, and said, look how great everything turned out. And the old farmer said, perhaps. So I shared this with my friends, and I knew when I got this call to talk that I was having a greater awareness of what I get to know and believe in my life, my personal life, and in this life that is this community of Seattle. And to know that there's this middle way, right? And that I get to walk this path of a middle way. It's so enticing to get really excited about the highs, right? And it's so seductive to get so deep in my sorrow of how I want something to be different. But you know what? I don't know what is meant to be. You know, Alan Watts was the first person to, quote unquote, that I could find, teach this story in a 1960 talk. And this story is from ancient text, from a Chinese ancient text dating, I don't know, 2000 B.C. And the teaching is that we just don't know that the whole process of nature, this is an integrated process. There's immense complexity to it. We don't know that what is seemingly good or seemingly bad, or what I like or what I don't like, if that is the guide and the direction of my emotional state for the living of this experience. There is a perfect pattern to this thing called life. And so I know this to be true. I know this to be true here and now, through this experience. For those that are visiting for the first time, I don't want to leave you out of this. We're having a vote today for our senior minister. And this isn't even something we can take out of this community that's only happening here, right? This is the microcosm of the macrocosm of which we live in. We're about to have a vote November 5th of this year for our new president. This is our playground. This is the place in which we get to try on that perhaps mentality. Of course, we get to have who we like, who we don't like. We get to have our opinion. But the opinion doesn't guide our emotional state. If I was to put my opinion and that which is being projected to me out there about our candidates of the presidential election, I would go crazy, daily, on the highs and the lows, in my fears and my hopes, right? Just this crazy riding of this wave. But you know the one constant? This wave, right? We've seen the wave before. It goes like this. The constant is that middle line. The middle line. Stand in the middle of it. In the middle of it. We are voting every day. Are you aware of that? We vote every day with our consciousness. What do I pay attention to? What do I give my energy to? What keeps me up at night? I am voting. I am choosing in every moment. So I implore you. I ask you. I suggest to you. Become so self-aware as to where am I in all of this? You know, when the opportunity came to talk, of course I asked, because again, I'm a good student, what is the topic I'm supposed to teach on? And the topic was given, the God of all is within you. And so I took it on. And then a week or so down the way, I was given the invitation to change it. But I didn't want to change the topic. Because I trust the idea that was coming through for this talk. Knowing that the God of all is in all of this. It's in me. It's in you. It's in us. It's in we. It's in the experience. It's in every encounter and every relationship. Am I seeing it? Am I knowing it? Am I realizing it? Am I experiencing it? Do I believe it? You know, when Carlos asked me, when did I know that the God of all was within me? And I had to think about that. You know, I think I knew that when I was very, very young. I didn't have the language, right? But I knew it. I just operated from that. But as I got into this teaching, as I grew up in this world and I put on all the weight of the beliefs and the ideas and the judgments and my traumas and my experiences and what I thought to be my reality, and I came to this teaching of new thoughts, the first experience that I had of Ernest Holmes was this book that is our book of the month, This Thing Called You. And as I reread the first chapters over and over and over again these past few weeks, I realized that this book brought me back to the awareness of the God of all is within. It spoke on such a level of a truth that is ever-present, eternally present, and it ignited something within my own being. I read it and my whole being lit up in the knowingness that yes, there is something that is within me, there is something that is within each of us that is constantly guiding and directing our path, and it is perfect. It is perfect. And as I continue to grow in these teachings, I came to the awareness that yes, it's a wonderful place to be in this ability to manifest, right, to use these laws that we know are available to each of us and all of us, and that I have some level of participation and creation and dare I say control over things. But as I'm growing in this spiritual awareness, what I'm realizing is that there's this part of me that gets to let go of control, that I'm not here to control this life. I am here to live this life. To live this life, to have trust and faith in the knowingness that something good is always happening. Whether I call it good or bad on that beautiful wave of life, that polarity, right, the light and the dark, what I like and what I dislike, it's all on the same continuum. Do I want to make myself nauseous going up and down, or do I just want to chill out on that lazy river? I just want to chill out on that lazy river. So I got to ask myself, am I in integrity? Am I in integrity with these teachings? Am I in integrity with my awareness of knowing this truth as my very life? And what came up for me is that I'm choosing to know this truth as opposed to gaining some access, right, some sort of personal gain, having something turn out the way I want to. I trust in love, as Carl mentioned. I trust that there's a loving presence, and that everything I meet in this life, regardless of however I want to label it, any person, place, encounter, it is a loving experience because it's giving me the opportunity to grow, to look, to become self-aware, to realize. You know, to be in integrity isn't what's professed in public. It is what we do in the secret of our own existence, in our own being, in our own lives, when no one can see what we're doing. Am I in integrity? And it doesn't mean perfection. Integrity doesn't mean I'm perfect. I'm not perfect. I'm flawed. I was just as seduced at wanting to take a side, and I know that that didn't benefit me. So I'm not here claiming perfection. I'm claiming I am authentic in my process, and I'm authentic in my ability to grow through this, to process this, to practice this for myself, first and foremost. At Agape, we had christening of beautiful children that would come up. It would be in service on a Sunday, and everybody would be involved in this beautiful christening. The whole family would be asked to come to stage. The beautiful child would be present there. Reverend Michael would acknowledge everybody, and he gave a teaching over and over and over again, and it's so and he gave a teaching over and over and over again, and it so stood out to me, and it's something I practice in my life. And this is the teaching he gave. He used the African proverb that it takes a village to raise a child. We agree with that, right? There's a lot that goes into raising a child, and the support system around us is so important in our ability to do our best in that process, but he flipped it, and he said, that is true, and so is this. It takes a child to raise a village. Now, what does that mean? He put the charge in everybody that was there, not just the family, particularly the family, but I took the charge myself as well, and he said, now while you each are going through your life, I want you to look at everything that you're doing, everything that you're thinking, how you are acting, what you're believing, and I want you to think, if this child could see me now, what am I teaching it? What am I teaching the child? And that is how a child raises the village. That is how a child continues to heal, this loving presence, this blank slate. Our love and dedication for the youth is one in which we want to do no harm, and in order to do no harm to another, we can do no harm to ourselves. So there's this realization then, right, that we are each leaders in our own life. When I was going through practitioner studies, we were asked to find a quote on leadership, and I found a quote by Carl Jung. Many of you might have heard it, and the quote is, a leader is always led, and I framed it, and I put it in my office, and I would look at it every day. A leader is always led, and I had a very romantic idea of what that means, and I know that to be true for every leader, that there are always led, but what is doing the leading? Is it the ego? Is it personality? Is it trauma? Is it love? Is it truth? Is it beauty? So now what I know to be true is the spiritual leader is always led by turning within. The biggest service I can, we can, do for each other is to turn within to the God of all that is within us. The God of all is within you. The God of all is within you. The God of all love is within you. The God of all power, of all beauty, of all perfection, it is within you. The God of all wisdom, all grace, all wholeness, it is within you. There are so many qualities, values, expressions of the true nature of who and what you are. We are made in by the nature of God itself, the nature of God itself, and there's always something that is pressing within our own being. I know I am not the only one. I see myself in each and every one of you that we are seeking. We are searching. It may look back in the day that we were searching, and it may look back in the day that we are seeking, and it may look back I see myself in each and every one of you that we are seeking. We are searching. It may look back in the day that we went to the bookstore trying to find that perfect book, that truth that spoke to our soul, the guidance that we were looking for. Now it may look like we're just scrolling through our own social media, searching on YouTube. The truth is there. The truth is eternal. The truth is ever-present. The truth has a frequency. It has a feeling. It has a tone and a vibration, and sometimes we feel it before we understand it, but when we are in harmonic resonance with it, it can do nothing but reveal itself to us. So I have a couple of pictures I just wanted to show. I love nature. Here's just an image, right? This idea that as above, so below. Here's a greater picture of the roots. There are deep roots that are within us. This energy of truth, it lives within us. It expresses outwardly, and it grounds us in this foundation. There is a foundation of truth in which we have been birthed from, that we come from. You know, with our practitioner class, after the first year, I gave them a gift, and it was trees, a little hanging doodah thing of trees, and I said, our roots run deep. Yes, that is our science of mind, our truth, our teaching. They run deep, but it's just not this science of mind teaching. It is the truth, the eternal truth that is ever-present in our life, that has been here before science of mind even was birthed. It was birthed from this. It is the foundation, this truth that has birthed all of the beautiful fruits. The seed has been planted in each of us and all of us. We are the magnificent expression of these glorious trees. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We take what has come before us into our hearts, into our mind. And from that space, from that building of the foundation, rooting ourself in this truth, we cannot be blown over by any changing wind. We cannot be blown over by any changing wind, any changing tide, any changing experience. It is here for us to deepen, to go deep into the truth of who and what I am, the truth of who and what we are, and what beautiful things have come forward out of those that have studied these traditional teachings, these eternal, everlasting truths, even the foundations of those artists that have studied the classics, classical music, classically trained, and then coming forth and becoming a Lady Gaga, being Alicia Keys, a new expression out of the deepening into what is the way in which it works, having an understanding. How about an artist like a Salvador Dali that learned all of the techniques of painting just to develop his own style? And that's it. That's where new thought lives. We get to have a new thought. We get to express it in a way that is relevant. And you know what? It is relevant. It has relevance. Because no matter the age, the same thing that is pressing on me is pressing on everybody, everywhere, regardless of their age. It is pressing on the innermost parts of their being, and it is calling them forth to have an understanding of what this life is all about. And we are here to be a community that supports all of us in the understanding of this truth. That is what I know to be true for us and for this community. This community has a purpose. There is change that has been going on for many years, and what I know is that there is a breakthrough that is seeking to happen. That we are at the point of evolution. We cannot evolve without change. And each and every one of you are an integral part to that. You're yes. You're yes to yourself. You're yes to the truth. You're yes to the God of all that is within. You're yielding to it. You're listening from it. You're stepping out because of it. So I'll leave you with this quote that would not leave me from this book. It's from chapter 4. It's the first quote, and it says, the universe is one vast system. All the laws of nature conspire to benefit humankind, but these laws automatically protect the integrity of nature. It is as though nature said, all right, little one, the game is yours. Play it as you see fit. I'm going to serve you, but don't fool yourself. I am going to reflect right back to you with exactness what you really are. If you don't like what is happening, I'm not going to be disturbed. You are the arbiter of your fate. You are the captain of your soul. I have given you all. I have implanted freedom, individuality, and self-choice within you. Finally, through experience, you will learn the better and the wisest way. We vote every day, my friends. There is a better, there is a wiser way to give our energy, one that is life-affirming, one that energizes each of us and all of us. It is a wonderful thing that we are here now, present and available to this God of all within us, and so it is.