Today is on or about the Vernal Equinox–that moment in the planet when there is roughly an equal amount of night and day. And it feels like that in my soul right now. As if I am feeling an equal amount of joy and sorrow at the same time–holding them both somehow in the body at the same time and trying to feel them both equally. I am feeling joy because the youth of America have had enough of gun violence, and they are rising up and demanding that something be done NOW about the senseless deaths in our schools and in our streets. I am feeling such sadness because the need is so great to call an end to this madness. Just today we found out that Stephan Clark, a 22 year old Sacramento man, was gunned down by the police in his own backyard holding only a cellphone. I don’t know anything more than that about it yet, but that is enough to make me stop and weep. It is so sad. It is so terrible. And it is part of an ever-growing list of tragedies that I am too sad to recite yet feel too angry not to.
The theme in the Centers for Spiritual Living this week is Listen to the Truth within You. In Can We Talk to God? (1934), our founder Ernest Holmes says this, “But the person who goes deeply into his or her own nature will find that God speaks in a language more subtle than the human language, without a tongue, in that universal language of spiritual emotion which is instinctive in humanity, and in brute, and held in common by all civilization, by all creation, by all people who have lived — the universal language of emotion, sense, feeling, intuition, instinct. Sometimes we call it conscience, sometimes we call it a hunch, sometimes we call it a vision, a dream. It makes no difference what we call it. It is a direct revelation of Omniscience through us. (p. 11.4)”
You see the way that the God reveals to us our divinity is through the language of spiritual emotion. This week’s affirmation is “Today I commit to feeling my feelings all the way through and taking the action they suggest.” The action they suggest to me to attend the March for Our Lives this Saturday, no matter what the weather, and stand side by side with these young people that are leading the way for us.
The closest march to Davis, CA is the March in Sacramento this Saturday, March 24th from 10:00am to 1:30pm starting at Crocker Park (at 3rd and Q Streets in downtown Sacramento) and continuing to the west steps of the State Capitol. I intend to be there. I suggest you listen to your feelings and if you’re feeling like it’s time to call an end to all gun violence in this country and all excuses about why we can’t end it, I suggest you be there too.
And then the next day on Sunday, March 25th, I will be speaking at the Center for Spiritual Living, Davis. I’ll be talking about this theme, and also about Palm Sunday (upon which the 25th falls). One of my mentors Dr. David Alexander reminded me today that “Palm Sunday is about a critical threshold moment when a rebel rousing social justice advocate said enough is enough. Is about the Parkland teens. It is about #BlackLivesMatter. It is about Stephon Clark. Palm Sunday is about what matters in real time.” I hope to see you there.