Hi, how are you today? I’m coming to you from your bookshelf. Do you have a bookshelf in your home? A place where you keep your stories, the tales and reports on life that inspire, uplift, entertain, or improve your life in some way? Books are quite a special human invention.

Helen Keller used to call her books her “book friends.” In many ways each one of them is a friend in that it’s the story, the report, the account written by someone, a person. Each book represents a human being and their experience of the world. And in putting those experiences down into books we get to enjoy them, and share them, and expand our understanding of what it is to be a human being.

One of the books on my bookshelf is my Bible. I bought this Bible when I first went to seminary and had it engraved at a little shop in Berkeley, California. It reads Sage Serene, my first and middle name, the names that have always been mine, even as I have been married and divorced and then remarried.

And this Bible... You probably have one on your shelf, maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But this Bible is an account of many people’s stories. The people of Israel, the story of the early Christians, the story of their relationship to life, their understanding of life, and what life meant in relationship to what they understood of God. For a lot of generations, this was probably the only book on many people’s shelves.

It’s only been in the last, I don’t know, few hundred years that books have become something accessible to all of us, to write our stories and to share them. And now in this generation, not only can we share our stories through books, but we share our stories through videos like this, through Substacks and YouTube channels and so many means. And so in some ways, this account, this record, this compilation of the story of some human beings grappling with the Divine has now just expanded and stories are available now to tell and to receive in exponentially more multitudes.

And at the heart of these stories, no matter what their themes or subject matter, is this grappling that is occurring within each one of us to understand ourselves. To understand our place in the universe, to understand our experience of this material realm, to understand our experience of this inner realm, and then to share those experiences with others.

You may have a whole collection of books on your shelf that don’t feel very Divine to you, and perhaps they wouldn’t be found in the religious or spiritual section in the Barnes and Noble. But at their core, they are a witness. They are witness to a human being’s experience of themselves.

And at the core of our experience of ourselves, I would suggest is an experience of God, of the source of life, the creator, the sustainer, the regenerator of this life experience that we’re all having. And we all have a choice about how we write that story.

We all have a choice about what stories we read, what people we interact with, what questions we ask, what stories excite and enliven us, what stories we perhaps tell on repeat that drain us of our life energy, that create negative feelings, negative loop patterns that go on and on and on. Each one of us plays a role in the telling of the story.

And right now, right now at this point in history, there is an opportunity for us to really take that seriously, to recognize the power that each one of us has to tell our own story. To come to really honor and respect the discernment that we have, the choice that we have about what we take in and most of all about what we put out into the world.

There are a lot of stories playing out right now friends, stories that to some feel Divine and to others feel hellish, stories of separation and enemies, stories of fear and loss, stories of potential collapse. And there are also stories of incredible thriving, of an increased tolerance for diversity and creativity than perhaps we’ve ever seen on the planet before. There are so many ways to tell our stories, so many ways to connect and come to understand ourselves. And if we can stop this false belief that our story is outside of us, that someone has a story that we need so that we can be okay with ourselves. And if we start to really honor the story that is emerging within, I think that’s going to help us. I know it’s going to help me. It’s going to help us find our way through all of these stories, all of this information that is just coming at us from every direction. It’s time to stop the endless seeking outside of ourselves for the answers or the goals or the direction or the ideals or the standards of right and wrong. And it’s really time to start to listen within.

My sense is that’s what formed this biblical text that is on so many of our bookshelves and that for so long was the only book on the shelf. This really is a story about people honoring that inner experience, honoring that they had a relationship to God a responsibility to listen to God and told the tale, shared the experience, and in so do shaped a nation, a people, a nation and a people that then would witness the coming of a man like Jesus, who would honor those stories from the past, but not be limited by them. And tell an entirely new story of an embodied Divine reality here and now in our midst.

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The kingdom of heaven is within. The word of God is being spoken right now in your very heart, in your very soul. And it’s our responsibility to choose how we tell that story. To surrender ourselves to a love of our very own lives, as messy and complicated and hard and painful as they can be. And to be curious about what story is longing to emerge right here and right now. This is the message, I believe, of the new church. This is the message of the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative. And this is the message that we’re seeking to hold during this Creation Series that we’re currently taking part in. To explore some of the inner meaning contained in this story that came from a people. Because not only are the stories everywhere, but they all contain this imprint, this DNA that tells of growth, tells of expansion. that tells of light and movement and life.

We do not create our own lives. We are given them. And once we are given them, we have a responsibility to live them, to honor them and to listen to them.

So my friends, maybe take a look at your bookshelf, see what’s on there. And more than that, consider all the books that you’ve already taken in into your life, all the stories and all of the sensations and experiences and take seriously what longs to be told, what longs to emerge, what light is yours to bring into the world. And I’m so excited for this next stage of our human journey when it won’t just be about stories that are in competition or disagreement or debate. It won’t be this constant story of saviors and victims and perpetrators, but a story of creativity, a story of harmony, a story that takes seriously our incredible diversity and our unity all at the same time.

It’s a powerful moment to be alive, and it’s even more powerful when we really take seriously the invitation to be as we are, and as we are becoming.

Happy Sunday, friends.

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