The Beloved Community
Rev. John DePalma
“When we come into community, we are recognizing the soul’s call to commune with others in actualizing more of our potential to love and to be in deep service to creation.”
–The Beloved Community, Jim Lockhart
It’s before dawn on the Giza Plateau. Our little band of ministers gathers in meditation between the enormous stone paws of the Great Sphinx. The air is crisp and cool and the full moon casts an eerie hue over the Sphinx’s shoulder.
Suddenly the silence is shattered by the morning call to prayer as it is broadcast across Cairo’s 20 million inhabitants. Chills run up my spine as this soul’s call resonate within our meditation, filling our hearts as it spreads across time and space reflecting the energy that seems to permeate ancients stones and the gods and goddesses of an long forgotten creative energy.
The muezzins call to prayer five times a day, is a summons for participants of a faith to attend group worship. The call is one of the earliest forms of telecommunication to people across great distances. For many of us on this sacred retreat, in our pre-dawn private visits to various temples , it is a ancient call across millennia, transporting and connecting us to the human community unstuck in time, remembering the immense power of a creative process largely forgotten.
Imagine our CSL communities coordinating our prayer five times a day, for the greater good of ourselves and humanity at large. Imagine the collective reminder every few hours of how powerful this creative intelligence, infinite wisdom and unconditional love is everywhere equally present resonating throughout the hearts and minds of each of us.
Our theme this month is Community. How do we not only grow individually, but together? How can we leverage the creative process to recognize its power to create a world that works for all? This is our charge this month, as we recognize how our individual choices influence not only our own experience, but the character and energy of our community. The powerful alchemy of community unfolds when we come into conscious realization that through our spheres of influence we intersect with the greater whole every day . This is our point of power, when we collaborate on the decisions we make about how we want to be in community together, moving beyond limited ideas we’ve harbored in the past.
We are awakening to a greater idea, a more expansive approach honoring diversity, and inclusion, letting that drive our passion and love for our beloved community to success beyond anything we can imagine! We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Rev. John DePalma
Rev John’s personal mission is to help our spiritual centers build diverse, inclusive, healthy, sustainable, and thriving spiritual communities. Why? To awaken humanity to its Spiritual Magnificence and create a world that works for all where no child goes hungry, where no one fears persecution, where no one is unloved and where prosperity and peace prevail.