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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. I hope persons of varied faith paths will find inspiration here. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
Interspiritual Teacher, Author, and Chaplain
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
SPIRITUAL QUOTES
Success, popularity, or the agreement of others does not determine the value of your choices. Rather, that you make a choice in faithfulness to your true self and its divine calling in this life, that is a blessing worthy in itself. That choose, and come hell or high water, you can live and die with dignity and peace.
*Brian Kenneth Wilcox
Bring into play the almighty power within you, so that on the stage of life you can fulfill your high destined role.
*Paramahansa Yogananda
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
Today, I posted another writing on a special site I created several months ago. The site is small and getting few responses or participation. I have thought about shutting it down. Today, with the post, I thought of what I am learning. That is, positive choices, even if not popular or getting much support from others, is like planting a seed that will come to fruition sometime. So, with peace, I posted again. Gladly, the response or popularity of our calling, our destiny, and our decisions to be faithful, is not reliant on popularity or support. Indeed, often what seems a failure in the moment, if a fulfilling of our calling, and we choose to be faithful to it, is bound to lead to hoped for success, sooner or later. And this is so if the success arises in a form other than what we anticipated. So, keep making choices faithful to your True Self and divine destiny.
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One of my all-time favorite movie scenes is from "Dead Poet’s Society" (1989). Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams, is a new teacher at an exclusive eastern prep school. On the first day of school, Mr. Keating takes his class into the hallway to look at pictures of past, now deceased graduates. He calls on a Mr. Pitts to read a poem - "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time." The poem begins with "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." Mr. Keating says that the writer is trying to explain that they must "seize the day." When he asks the boys why the poet wrote that, one replies, "Because he's in a hurry." Mr. Keating says no, it is, "Because we are food for worms, Lads! Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die."
The teacher calls the boys over to the cases of photographs. He asks them to take a look at those who graduated before them. "They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see, gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But, if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Lean in. Listen. Do you hear it?" Then Mr. Keating says in an eerie grave-like voice, "Carpe Diem! Seize the day, boys! Make your lives extraordinary!"
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Let us be careful not to create a tin robot image of spiritual men and women, seeing them as destined, apart from his or her choices, to live an extraordinary life. For example, as an interspiritual Christian, I need a Jesus who faced the same choices I face. The Gospel means nothing to me, unless the events of my life can be encouraged by my Friend having made difficult choices of loyalty and love – and was not just fated to make them due to some inward godness.
Jesus shaped a life and character from many big and small choices, and these led to heroism and human integrity, even as he stood apart from the predominant values of culture and colleagues in ministry. Jesus, like us, was faced with the opportunity to live an extraordinary life. He seized the opportunity. How about you?
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I am not interested in virtue as a means to store up merit for an afterlife of payback time. Like, if I am a “good boy” I will get a reward from the “santa clause god.” No, I am not interested in some weak surrender of myself, abdicating choices to some predestined destiny, here or later. I prefer the rough and tumble of life, where all others live and, like I do, have to make many choices to shape a soul – his or her soul. And do not give me a character, rather, honor my dignity to form my character from the choices I make.
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We are faced with the choices that no one else, or God, can or will make for us. Our choices decide whether our bodies will die with our having lived an ordinary or extraordinary life.
I am not implying that we can live an extraordinary life apart from Grace. Indeed, we need Divine partnership to enable us to actualize our potentials to live noble, dignified, and courageous lives. Through prayer and meditation, we can open to receive Divine enablement to live a life beyond what we could do by mere intent and effort.
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In the New York Times, Barnaby J. Feder reported that in 1994 the Quaker Oats Company, after posting robust financial profits for years, bought the Snapple drinks company. In late 1994 Snapple had been the leader in beverage like fruit drinks and iced teas. Still, Quaker Oats purchase of it proved disastrous.
Quaker, in 1994, paid 1.7 billion dollars to buy Snapple. In a few years, Snapple was worth only 300 million dollars – a 1.4 billion dollar loss. In early 1997 Quaker Oats had a net loss from Snapple of 1.1 billion dollars.
In April 1997 the chairperson and chief executive of Quaker resigned. He had promoted the buying of the Snapple company.
The above story speaks on a large level of the potential consequences of choices. One choice can drain a successful business, costing billions of dollars. Yet, this same fact applies with us each. Choices we make either add or detract from our lives. There are no neutral choices.
Therefore, let us encourage one another in making our choices. And often we need to seek assistance from someone else, wiser in this process of discernment. And always we need to rely on the inner power of the Divine to partner with our intent and consent to be faithful to carry out decisions in good-heartedness, respect, and love for God, others, and ourselves. With the power and guidance Grace gives us, we can fulfill, in the words of Paramahansa Yogananda, our high destined role. Amen.
© OneLife Ministries. Jan 30, 2010.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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