Text Box: Interfaith Celebration Gathering Sunday, September 3, 2000 Interfaith Celebration Gathering Service Service agenda: Opening Prayer Readings Message OPENING PRAYER: Dear Mother, Father, Great Spirit, God, please hear my prayer. Please open my heart that I may feel and experience Your magnificent unconditional love and share it with all I meet. Instill in me an understanding of what true acceptance and love are. Help me fill myself to overflowing with Your love. As water quenches my thirst, let Your love quench the fires in my dry and barren soul. I ask this knowing that all I need do is ask and it is granted. AMEN READINGS: Matthew 7: 1-3 Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the same judgment that you judge, you will be judged, and with the same measure with which you measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the splinter that is in your brother’s eye, and do not feel the beam which is in your own eye? (Jesus) You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. Henry Drummond John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (Jesus) MESSAGE: Unconditional Acceptance The first time in my life that I experienced unconditional love, I didn’t exactly know how to handle it. It was given to me by a little handful of dog—a teacup poodle that I named Mitzi because she had such tiny paws (or mitts). She was silver with a little white patch at her throat. Mitzi and I became acquainted with each other in a strange way. I was a regulatory boards investigator for the State of Virginia at the time. My job required that I travel out of town almost every week. That particular week, I was in Newport News, Virginia, staying at a Quality Inn. I had been at that particular motel frequently before, and had gotten acquainted with the evening desk clerk. When I went into the office to pay my bill that Thursday evening, she and I began chatting about what kind of dogs we would like to have. My preference was for a teacup poodle, hers for a Lhasa Apso. At the end of our conversation, I went back to my motel room for the evening, giving our conversation little more thought. Not quite an hour later, the phone rang, and the motel office clerk with whom I had been chatting told me that one of the waitresses in the restaurant that was part of the motel had taken her break in the motel lobby and stopped by the front desk to chat. She went on to say that this waitress had shared that she needed to get rid of a teacup poodle because her son was allergic to it. She asked if I would like the dog and the grooming equipment for $50. (My angels must have been working overtime on this one!) What could I say but, “Yes!” The next morning, I picked up this little tiny ball of fur who was so tiny that she barely filled up my hand. Thus began my first experience with being loved and accepted no matter what I wore, what I said, what I owned, how I acted, or how this little individual felt. This little bundle of blessing taught me more in the seven short years she lived with me than I had learned in the whole 28 years before I met her. Her love and acceptance were so available at all times that I could not imagine that there could ever be a greater love than Mitzi had for me. Mitzi did not confine her love to me, either. She adored my mother, and my husband. After Mitzi made sure that Chuck was not a threat to us, she welcomed him into our family and loved him dearly, too. (Before she made this decision, however, whenever we tried to kiss, we had dog lips between our lips.) Mitzi was so friendly and loving to everyone she met that I frequently joked that if someone broke into our home, she would show the burglar where everything was out of sheer excitement of having someone else to love in the house. This same unconditional acceptance and love that Mitzi had for us is the love that God has for all of us. I imagine, however, if we had been mean to Mitzi, she might not have loved us with such abandon. But, God loves us even when we are mean, judgmental, temperamental, and just plain rotten to ourselves and others. Loving folks despite their shortcomings and imperfections is quite an undertaking, isn’t it? Accepting them unconditionally is even harder. We fall shy of true acceptance when we judge others, and condemn them for their imperfections. We fail to offer unconditional acceptance when we place our expectations on others, and then judge and condemn them when they fail to live up to them. Instead of judging them, we need to understand that each of us is doing the very best we can do in each moment in time. What exactly is unconditional acceptance, though? Loving and accepting other unconditionally means looking at our friends with love in our hearts and on our lips rather than with criticism. It means accepting that our loved ones and our friends do things differently than we may do them. Loving and accepting others unconditionally begins with being okay about who we are, accepting and loving ourselves. Louise Hay has a wonderful song entitled ‘I Love Myself The Way I Am’ that shows how being okay with who we are extends to loving and accepting other people unconditionally. (From a cassette entitled Loving Yourself by Louise L. Hay and Jai Josephs.) Here are the words: I love myself the way I am. There's nothing I need to change. I'll always be the perfect me. There's nothing to rearrange. I'm beautiful and capable of being the best me I can and I love myself just the way I am. I love you just the way you are. There's nothing you need to do. When I feel the love inside myself, it's easy to love you. Behind your fears, your raging tears, I see your shining star, and I love you just the way you are. I love the world the way it is as I can clearly see that all the things I judge are done by people just like me. So 'til the birth of peace on earth that only love can bring, I'll help it grow by loving everything. I love myself the way I am and still I want to grow. But, change outside can only come when deep inside I know I'm beautiful and capable of being the best me I can. And I love myself just the way I am. I love myself just the way I am. While I was searching for the words to this song, I ran across an anonymously written piece entitled ‘Rules On Being Human.’ Number seven on this wonderful list says all of this in another way. “Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.” When we love and accept ourselves, we can then offer unconditional love and acceptance to others. In so doing, we can then better understand the totally unconditional love and acceptance that God has for us. Once we develop an understanding of this precious gift, we can then open ourselves up to allowing God’s love and acceptance to flow into every cell of our bodies, healing us and nourishing us. May God add a blessing to these humble words. AMEN © 2000 Rev. S. Suzanne Fisher