Text Box: Interfaith Celebration Gathering Sunday, October 1, 2000 Interfaith Celebration Gathering Service Service agenda: Opening Prayer Readings Message OPENING PRAYER: Dear Mother, Father, Great Spirit, God, please hear my prayer. I bow my head and entreat You to bear with me as I learn to reconnect with You so that I can quench the powerful thirst I feel for Your guidance in my life. I ask this knowing that all I need do is ask and it is granted. AMEN READINGS: John 6:35 I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Proverbs 17:1 Better is dry bread, and quietness with it, than a house full of feasting with strife. MESSAGE: Quenching the Spirit I am sitting here drinking deeply from the wonderful, cold, well water our new house has to offer. As I quench the powerful thirst I had built up while painting our kitchen, I am thinking about the many ways we can slake the spiritual thirst that eventually rises to the surface of our being in this earthly life. It is a rare person who manages to go through his or her whole life without connecting with a deep need to know God more personally. Some of us seek God in churches, sometimes wandering from religion to religion to find God. Even within some churches, there are many who do not have a personal relationship with God. A Messianic Jewish congregation’s spiritual leader once told me that it was highly improper to call God by the name “God”. He said that was being too personal with our Creator. While I respect his need to worship and connect with God in his way, I prefer to have a personal connection with God. So, how do we connect with God? Remember when you were a little child, and you were told to put your palms together over your heart to pray? Well, it seems there is a wonderful reason for getting into this position. This is called the Saint Position because many saints are depicted in paintings in this pose. It seems that this posture stimulates the heart. It also neutralizes the physical body’s magnetic charge, which makes connecting with Higher Consciousness easier. What do you need in order to feel spiritually refreshed? For me, reconnecting with God is the best way I can quench my spiritual thirst. I don’t know about you, but I find it ever so easy to become disconnected in my everyday life, especially when I focus on earthly things to the exclusion of spiritual matters. There is never any lack of earthly things to claim my attention, either. There’s an old joke that says, “My To-Do List is so long, I cannot die for at least the next one hundred years.” Well, my To-Do List is similar—how about yours? Many of the books I have been reading lately have contained suggestions on how we can reconnect with God. Here is a sampling of them: Take a nature break. Go for a walk in the woods, paying attention to what is there rather than solving problems or letting your mind be somewhere else. Go outside and get a handful of dirt. Run it through your fingers. If there is water around, make a mud pie. Reconnecting with the soil is supposed to be a powerful way to feel grounded (no pun intended). Go outside and sit next to a flower. Inspect every facet of the flower. Watch as insects are drawn to the flower for sustenance. (We are drawn to God for spiritual sustenance.) Sit quietly with both feet flat on the floor, hands in your lap. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, letting the air flow in your nostrils, and down your chest to where it inflates your belly. Exhale through your mouth, allowing yourself to sound an ‘Om’ sound. Let the ‘Om’ begin in your vocal cords, travel up the back of your throat, and resonate off the bridge of your nose. Do this until you are tired of doing it, focusing on the ‘Om’ each time. Enjoy the peace that follows when you cease doing the ‘Om.’ You can even take the above exercise one step farther by using a deep relaxation method. First focus on your feet and ankles. Tense them and then relax them, telling yourself to just let them be. If you can, time the tensing with your inhale, and the relaxing with your exhale. Move up to each section of your body, tensing and then relaxing. When you get to your face, be sure to scrunch it up in a grimace before relaxing it. When you have tensed and relaxed all body parts, it is now time to quiet the mind. Wrap each thought that appears in a fluffy, white cloud, and release it to float around the room while you relax. Know that you can reclaim these thoughts whenever you want to reclaim them. This is very similar to the yogic position of Savaasana, except you are sitting instead of lying on the floor. When your mind is quiet, invite God in and see what happens. Here’s hoping one of these methods helps you quench your spiritual thirst by helping you reconnect with God! May God add a blessing to these humble words. AMEN © 2000 Rev. S. Suzanne Fisher