Sermon 02.13.11

Written by Jestor Ams-fe

Sunday, 13 February 2011
\"Boys are often wiser and closer to nature than men are. Each sport has certain rules. Boys do not praise a comrade who breaks the rules, and cheats his way to victory. The fact is, the object of the game is not a prize, or the glory of being proclaimed victor. The true object of the game is the development of strength, skill, hardihood, the joy of endeavor and of comradeship. To break the rules of the game, therefore, is to sacrifice something of that which the boys seek in their sports.\" - The Coming People, by Charles F. Dole

It's not fair!!

I hear this all the time... Those of you with children still hear this as well, those of you that know, or are around children probably hear it less, those of you seldom around kids have probably heard other adults exclaim this....

And it isn't...

Life, is life... It is, what it is.... Why do we grow up thinking life is supposed to be fair? It's what we are taught... Moms, sitters, caretakers of the young, look over us and our play companions, making sure everyone plays fair...

Then we grow up, and enter the real world... Oh man!!

We get in trouble for talking in class... \"They talked to me first!!\", you shout... \"Ah-ha,\" says the teacher, \"But it was you who I caught...\"... Well, dang... That's not fair...

We begin dating, he/she leaves us for our best friend.... Dang, that's not fair either...

\"If life is not fair, then I'll have to take what I want... Take what I think is deserved by me\", you think.... \"Grab the bull by the horns\", \"Lookout for number one..\", and, \"The one to die with the most toys, wins...\"

We lose the positivity of game playing, the pure enjoyment of the game, as coaches and our parents push us to win... We see the \"winners\" breaking the rules and think, \"Well, everyone else is doing it...\" To succeed, be the winner, be... number one... That must be the point.... Right?

Then, the moment we start to think like that, we begin to lose... And the more we cheat, in any form, the more it goes against our nature.... Angry, we become...

\"Why does all this bad stuff keep happening to me?\". \"What did I do to deserve this?\"

Honestly, this was me, at one time... \"I'm a good guy,\" I thought, \"What cosmic force did I piss off? What god did I anger?\"

As I have come to find out, \"I\" was the cosmic force I had made angry... I am the Force, as much as everything else around me.... And I was unhappy with the decisions I was making and the way with which I had been living my life....

I was not a bad guy, I just was not as good a guy as I could have been... To myself and those around me... I had questions, goals, ambitions, that I needed to face... Not to mention the excessive screw ups for which I needed to amend...

The points, which I picked out of my lessons, when coming up through the program, were many faceted... Like anything, the things that jumped out at me, while similar to everyone else's, but applied toward my path, I found more personal...

Once I started \"playing fairly\", it seemed the universe started playing \"fairly\"'as well.... Or was I not fighting the true nature of a man any longer?

One of the points I learned was that we are here to help one another....

I knew that as a child, but the attachment (ut-oh) that I placed upon me getting my share of fairness, threw my natural balance out of whack....

I think the balance is tricky... To not give too much, and not take too much, for neither is healthy.... But finding the balance...

But then, the most prominent point is, it's the journey not the destination....

Not to win, but to play.....