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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. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. 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 MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Scripture
15 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!
16 “Blind guides! What sorrow awaits you! For you say that it means nothing to swear ‘by God’s Temple,’ but that it is binding to swear ‘by the gold in the Temple.’”
*Matthew 23, NLT
Quote
Like bad critics focused on the infractions of a constructed aesthetic theory, Spiritually Correct people focus on “rules,” not beauty or content.
*Julia Cameron. Some People Say … God Is No Laughing Matter. “Spiritually Correct.”
Spiritual Teaching
What if freedom spiritually is not mainly about being correct? What if a focus on being correct is actually a hindrance to freedom – a sign of a subtle spiritual bondage? What if faithfulness to God is more about beauty than about rules? If these things are true, much religion in our culture is a means of subtle or blatant slavery, not a means to freedom. And Jesus faced this in his culture, and he denounced religious leadership for being blind guides and disciplining converts in the same culture of religious enslavement.
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Persons like to speak and sing of freedom. We even seem enamored with speaking about fighting for our freedom. But are we truly free? If not totally free, how do we grow in freedom?
To begin with, we need to realize the energies arrayed against our freedom. These energies are within and outside us. Henri J. M. Nouwen speaks of these outer energies:
True freedom is the freedom of the children of God. To reach that freedom requires a lifelong discipline since so much in our world militates against it. The political, economic, social, and even religious powers surrounding us all want to keep us in bondage so that we will obey their commands and be dependent on their rewards.
*Bread for the Journey.
An example of this is the financial messages bombarding us. Recently, on a trip home, I enjoyed television with my dad. I do not have television, so I am not exposed to the advertising over it. After several days of periodic viewing, I noticed – and got intolerant of – the continual financial spin of commercials. I felt thankful that I was not exposed to that daily. I realized, also, that advertisers aim at creating financial insecurity within us, as a manipulative measure to – ironically – get us to give more of our money.
What happens when enough of this message is absorbed into us? We find we have created a whole society shaped by fear pertaining to money. Yes, financial challenges are real, and I do not mean to belittle that. What I am saying is that as children of God, we are not to participate in the creation of an ironical form of bondage to money and its opposite as a social consciousness – such is toxic and opposite the optimism of faith. I truly believe we tend to create what we are shaped by, and if we are shaped by an insecurity in financial matters, we will find the problem pervasive. Beyond that, we will find ourselves slaves to those politicians, preachers and evangelists, and financial institutions that make money off our financial insecurity.
A well-meaning religious policy is occurring in a major mainline church group in Florida. Now, in efforts to transform the group – though their approach is not really about transformation, for transformation pertains to movement to a new level of being, and they are not talking that language - , hierarchy are requiring weekly reports of goals. A friend of mine spoke of how invasive the practice is to her. She goes to church, and what does she get? She gets a report card, and she has been told she is to fill it out and put it in the offering plate. The reports have such things as time given to Christian service that last week.
Whatever happened to the Jesus teaching not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing in such matters? Others seeing our service and our reporting it is not essential or needful in Christian discipleship, and filling out a report card about it on Sunday morning has nothing to do with the freedom of a child of God, and may have a lot to do with the subtle bondage to ideals and aspirations that can occur in any religious group. I go to worship to worship, not to report to the pastor and church hierarchy about whether or not I have met their standards of discipleship. Anyway, the pastor is to have assigned someone to collect this data and send it via email to the church headquarters of the state. This is computed to grade the faithfulness of churches. Such measures, if seen to be needed by religious hierarchy, evidence a problem that is not at all addressed by discipleship report cards on Sunday morning.
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But the spiritual truth that leads to freedom is the truth that we belong not to the world but to God, whose beloved children we are. By living lives in which we keep returning to that truth in word and deed, we will gradually grow into our true freedom.
Nouwen reminds us, as above, that true freedom is something we grow in by consciously living with a spiritual awareness and through certain choices daily. In returning to the truth of our freedom in Christ, we guard ourselves better against all the subtle forms of inward and outward enslavement. And this shows us, also, that freedom is much more than a sentimental feeling or an affirmative nationalistic avowal. Freedom is both a present reality and something we daily move toward with an awareness to what is within us and outside us.
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The awareness within is a natural, soft openness to what is happening in us. Through meditation we grow in this awareness. We can see states arise and fall. If we are not aware of these, they easily trap us. If aware of them, we can notice them arise and see them recede. Take anger. In spiritual awareness, we watch the anger, and watch it dissolve. Even though we may have angry sensations to arise, we can let them dissipate. This same applies to all inner emotions – the temporary feelings do not become lasting states, not when we are wakeful spiritually.
Responding
1.In your words, define the word “freedom”? What is the relationship between spirituality and freedom?
2.Do you believe a person can be free apart from faith in and living for a spiritual Reality larger than himself, or herself? Explain.
3.Are you growing in freedom? Share ways you see that the Spirit has been teaching you about the true nature of freedom in your life.
4.Note one form of worldly bondage you see in the following arenas of life: entertainment, social, economic, political, religious.
5.Give at least five qualities you see in persons who live the freedom of being a child of God.
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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, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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