Endurance, serenity, acceptance (homily)

Endurance. Mother turned 90-something yesterday. If that isn't endurance, I don't know what is.

I've heard people say that nothing in this life endures. Everything is fleeting. Nonsense.

I can tell you something right now... something that seemingly has nothing to do with God or Ascended Masters... that lasts unchanging. 2-plus-2. It equals 4 today. It equaled 4 when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It will equal 4 after the world ceases to exist. It equals 4 for Catholics and Moslems, and Pagans. As long as you stay in Base-10, 2-plus-2 will always and everywhere equal 4. And no, it isn't cheating to use this as an example. It is 4 on this planet and on the furthest planet in the universe.

What it tells me is that the things which don't endure are those things we know through our senses. The things that last forever are the things we cannot touch or smell or see or hear, but we know about 2-plus-2.

You would never say you "have faith that 2-plus-2 equals 4." That's silly. It isn't faith, it is knowledge. It is gnostic. And it is very matter-of-fact.

Things that endure aren't always spooky and mysterious. I think most of them would make us go: Well, duh. Just like 2-plus-2, the most profound things are hidden in plain sight!

When I think of endurance, I think of sticking to something that I don't want to be stuck to. A marathon runner endures, but she wants to be running so that doesn't count.

The philosopher Alan Watts talked about driving around in circles through the downtown area of a large city. Imagine if you had to do that for several hours. By the third or fourth time through the same intersection, I would be through with the exercise. By the tenth time, I would start thinking about taking hostages. But that looping is exactly what a bus driver does, and the driver does it for 8-hours a day and 5-days a week... seemingly without the kind of psychological wear and tear that I would have doing the same motions.

I saw an interview with the actress Lauren Becall a few years ago. The interviewer asked: What profession would you least enjoy? Without thinking, she said Toll Booth Attendant. Lauren Becall would not be able to endure the Dallas North Tollway.

The difference, I think, is attitude. If you are a bus driver, you don't go crazy having to drive by the same stupid billboard a zillion times in a single day. If you are not a bus driver, more than a few laps would cause ripples in your nervous system.

It is an important lesson. We can take the same facts... and it is torture for one person but all-in-a-days-work for another person. The same events are completely different for different people.

The difference, I think, is attitude. And the kind of attitude I'm talking about is acceptance. Here's a rule-of-thumb: serenity is directly proportional to acceptance. When you have a high level of acceptance, you have a high level of serenity.

When you think someone should be doing something and they don't, your acceptance is low and so is your serenity. And people never behave like you think they should. When you judge someone you put that person into a little cubicle, and when they try to jump out of the cubicle (as they always will), your serenity dips. When someone is out of focus with your World View, you get upset... whether it is at home or on the freeway or at work. If you can look at me and say that I am exactly the person that I'm supposed to be, then both your acceptance and your serenity are high.

When acceptance and serenity are high, endurance is a piece of cake. Acceptance is the key to all this stuff. The key works when we let go absolutely... when we let other be who they are. If you only let go 90-percent, it doesn't work. We all have to let go, and none of us does it... not all the time.

We long for things that are missing, like the winter sun longs to see the smile of a summer flower. Nothing but time will bring back the flower.

We long for things to be like we think they should be, and we want to stand strong until they are. But eventually something as supple as water will wear down the biggest stone that gets in its way in a river-bed. Strong doesn't work. The water accepts the stone and goes around it, but the water endures. And eventually the stone is just a pile of gravel.

Acceptance makes endurance possible. The way acceptance works is to let go... to let go of judgments... to let go of trying to make everything conform to our personal world view... to Let Go and Let God.

I want to close with the words of Father Mychal Judge, the Franciscan who died on 9/11 as he was giving Last Rites to a fireman--