Great and Small
Deep down here inside my pocket there’s a little piece of paper
I take it out and read it when I’m feeling out of shaper
To keep my fears at bay,
It says you are great
Deep down in my other pocket there’s another piece of paper
I take it out and read it when I’m getting into shaper
When I’m walking tall,
It says you are small
It says you are small
Dust to dust we shall return
The whole wide world was made for us to learn
That we are great and small
We are tiny and tall
Remember through it all
We are great and small.
These are lyrics from a song written by the Butterfly Fish Band. A good friend sent them to me recently after we shared how we can get lost in what other people think of us. To put my safety and serenity in the hands (or heads) of another is bound for disaster. But lately, I feel the winds of change coming on. God is transforming this painful way of coping with powerlessness right before my very eyes. Every morning, I have been getting down on my knees and asking Love to transform my need to be liked and even more, to be understood. And I am changing. All I have to do is be humble enough to ask, and the change happens, particularly in ways that I didn't expect or that make me uncomfortable and vulnerable.
I recently heard Robin Meyers, author of the controversial book Saving Jesus from the Church, speak in Colorado Springs. I appreciated and agreed with much of what he said, but I thought to myself, I would probably be better served by sitting and listening to someone who I don't find myself nodding my head after every sentence. But he shared something that I hadn't thought of and it was about our magnificence. All that I do in my work with Soma, at its very core, is about recovering the magnificence that lives within us. Yes, some of us need to go through quite a bit of darkness to get there, but the darkness doesn't hold a candle to the flame that burns within us. So, Mr. Meyers asked the question, why is it that whenever we make a mistake, fail, flub up our lives, do we say, well I am only human? Yes, as human beings we can do things that are small, of course. We all know we can. But do you ever say when someone says, wow, that was a great speech, or you are a wonderful mother or you make a great chocolate chip cookie, do you say, thank you...I am only human? Do we equate our magnificence with being human? If we are not human when we shine, what the heck are we?
To be human means to be great and small. I am only human when I give a dirty look to the lady cutting me off in the grocery line. And I am only human when I win an award or write a great paper. When we let the magnificence of our humanity shine, we reclaim our birthright. The light is meant to shine in us. We are here soul and body. It is in honoring the small, and the great, that we become whole.
Lovely to catch the other side of the significance of being human. I might leave out the word "only," however!
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Good one!!! I don't mean to imply that this is a good one and other things you have written are not good. I mean that it is a good one for me. We discussed it and we will try to use it. Thanks kiddo.
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Jenny very well expressed . . . much food for thought and meditation. Thank you for putting yourself out there.
Sheilah
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Dearest Jenny,
There are things that may be hard for
you to achieve without a struggle, but being liked and then on a deeeper level being loved comes naturally to those of us who are lucky enough to know you.
Understanding you may be more challenging for most people because in so many ways you are the same--human-but in so many ways you are on a higher plane than most. That is one of your gifts to the world. You came to teach that which most people don't even know exists. You are not some guru who is out in the stratosphere. You are human and what you have to say comes across in a way that other humans are curious, but they won't "get it" right away. They may never get it in the full meaning that you presented it because they are not ready. They have not done all of the work that you have. That's why we humans need you. You get the big and little picture. You honor the small and the great with the same respect. But one of your gifts is to make people think and open themselves to something new, so new in fact that it may take them quite a while to process what you are sharing. Try not to connect the fact that if people don't appear to understand you, it isn't because they don't like you. Or in reality, maybe your personalities don't mesh, and neither one of you likes the other.
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