Spiritual Perspectives
Trust God, Love People
Rev. Denise Schubert

I am happy to be back writing again for a minute.  Due to travel for the next couple of months, I am taking a break from Sunday Night Alive streaming on FaceBook and YouTube but will blog more often!

For a quick update, all is well in my world.  I continue to support the Unity of Naples community, am living in Naples Florida and doing exceeding well physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  I think that the 7th decade of my life is shaping up to be most extraordinary so far. I will be returning to South Africa for the month of March in the spring.  Tanya, the proprieter of Bush Baby Haven where I have spent so many months, is expecting a baby girl next month and I can't wait to meet her. So for those of you who love hearing about and seeing Africa as much as I do, stay turned.

As always, my purpose and intention with this blog is to promote and support practical thoughts and ideas which enhance our spiritual journey and guide us into increased happiness, authenticity and power.  Enjoy this week's offering on the right relationship between us and others and us and God.

I was raised in a family that had no faith tradition whatsoever.  I heard my mother once tell someone we were presbyterian, but I think she was just trying to avoid being embarrassed because our family was not really anything.  My sisters and I did attend Sunday school briefly when I was around 10 – while Mom waited in the car.  This was also to avoid being embarrassed by the fact that her children had no idea who Adam and Eve were, that Noah once saved all the animals of the world and that a human being can survive being swallowed by a whale.

I wasn’t too concerned about religion or spirituality until 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Even then it wasn’t because I was so fond of Kennedy, but my parents were, and their devastation at this event was deeply upsetting to me.  I found myself wandering into a Catholic Church and in truth, it felt kind of holy and good.

I didn’t revisit anything remotely having to do with God until 1995 when my then husband Michael and I were having serious irreconcilable differences.  I had this idea that a little God might help us.  As it turned out, God didn’t help us, but coming to understand how the universe works and my role in the working of it – made a huge difference to me. I proceeded to do a headlong dive into my inner universe and not only improved every area of my entire life but decided to be about the business of spirituality by obtaining a Master Degree in Consciousness studies and becoming an ordained New Thought Minister.

That was over 25 years ago.  I was 44 years young at that time.  I am 72 years young now and I can’t even imagine where I would be or how I would be feeling without my unwavering belief in a something  greater than myself – especially when there is so much unconditional love, regard and support that accompanies my walk of faith.

Today, my topic is “Love People - Trust God” to explore why this is a better life strategy than “Trust People and Love God”. I suppose the bottom line is that in my mind the purpose of life is to be happy, curious, brave, authentic, and full of enthusiasm and zeal. This means living with a kind of autonomy and self-sufficiency with our primary reliance on our capacity to generate all of things from within us.  This is opposed to looking to people and circumstances to always do what makes us happy or fill-in-the-blank. Our naïve expectation that any other person is more interested in us than in themselves leads to a lot of disappointment.  Don’t you agree?  This idea of trusting people should be approached with caution because unlike God, people (especially people who operate 100% identified with their ego or personality) is like trusting a dog to fly. Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. Speaking for myself, it has been my experience that people will not do what you want, when you want, or have their bodies where you want their bodies to be – unless it suits their personal aspirations.

I figure to avoid all of that misplaced trust and inevitable disappointment; it is worthy of contemplating that maybe we have it wrong.  Maybe the idea is not to trust people and love God. Perhaps the real power-play is to trust God and do what God does so well - which is to love people. It has worked so well in my life; I thought a good thing to share.

You might need to think about “God” a bit differently to embrace this great idea.  God is not a man, on a cloud, fervently working to be all and do all for all.  God is more like an ocean.  Water everywhere. And we are more like fish.  Swimming in an ocean of divinity.  Whatever the creator of the cosmos is, it is that in which we live, move, and have our being.  It is surrounding us, pressing in on us, within us – closer to us than our breath.  Most importantly, it is un-changing, eternal, and completely count-on-able.  When you have faith, yes – the size of a mustard seed – you will begin to experience your relationship to this unfathomable energy that is both transcendent and eminent. It is in this relationship that you live and co-create your life.  All of it.  The internal feelings, the external circumstances.  It is through God’s love and laws that you have the capacity to move through your incarnation with effortlessness and joy. That is worth trusting.

And then we find ourselves moving around on a planet with 8 billion others – who may or may not know there is more to life than what the a purely material existence provides for them.  Until a person comes from a place of finding good within themselves, they are not trustworthy (no judgment) so the only logical and practical thing to do is to not trust them.  Perhaps the sane thing to do is to love them in exactly the same way that God loves them.  This is practical.  I know that you know that you have not always been trustworthy.  You have disappointed people, hurt people, betrayed someone.  Right?  And is it not true that God loved you anyway? If you are not sure, the answer is yes, God loves you no matter what!

Try this little switch and see if it doesn’t relieve some of the pressure of making people fit a mold that you think they should fit so that you can feel good about yourself or your life.  Cultivate your connection to the Divine – feel it, commune with it, talk to it, walk with it.  It feels amazing.  And then as you encounter the others in your life just look at them with love in your heart.  This will allow you to be flexible, forgiving, tolerant and detached - enough to not have your happiness invested in something so unreliable. Plus, an incredible side benefit is that when you love someone anyway – they tend to become more lovable people.

Trust the one who caused you to be here.
Love the others who are here with you.

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