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Doorways
of Support and Inspiration: Are We Really Trying?
Marianne Williamson Excerpt
from The Gift of Change (Harper Collins) Everyone I know wants
the world to change. All of us want to be part of the solution. We find the
thought of the complete revolution of human values a very attractive idea.
Everyone’s all ready to sign up. Let’s go! But wait. You start to
hear a few little complaints. “Can we do this when The West Wing isn’t on?”
“Could I sign up for a slot between two and four on Saturday, when the kids are
at soccer?” “Couldn’t we meet in a nicer place?” We’re the only generation in the
history of the world that wants to reinvent society over white wine and brie. Only in They did have love in
their hearts, however. And so do you and I. I asked a friend what I
should speak about at a talk I was to give in his bookshop, and he said, “Speak
about the challenges of living a spiritual life today—I mean, we all try so
hard!” And I thought to myself, “No, we don’t!” For whatever reason,
however, we keep telling ourselves we do. We’re all revisionists these days,
and we’re not content to just revise our past—we even revise the present. We
seem to have a magical belief that if we describe ourselves a certain way, then
it must be true. We talk about how hard
it is to live a spiritual life when we’re not even meditating regularly or
making the deepest effort to forgive those who have hurt us. Perhaps we have
spent so many years in the classroom that “student mode” has become a habit. It’s time to graduate.
Enough of us know spiritual principles now; we’ve read the same books and
listened to the same tapes. It’s time to become the principles now, to embody
them and demonstrate them in our daily lives. Until we do, we will not really
learn them at the deepest level. They will not inform our souls or transform
the world. And if that’s the case,
we will go down in history as the generation that knew what we needed to know
yet didn’t do what we needed to do. I can’t imagine how it would feel, to die
with that realization. We’ve subscribed to a
kind of ivory tower notion of spiritual education: keep it abstract and
intellectual and safe. Yet the spoils of history usually go to those willing to
get dirt underneath their fingernails. I heard a woman talking
recently about her frustration with politics: “We’ve tried so hard, and nothing
ever seems to change!” I thought she must be joking. “Uh, no, we haven’t.
How many of us even vote?” I asked her. “And if we do, what does that mean—we
go to the voting booth every two or four years? Where do we get off thinking
that we’ve tried so hard?” Are we thinking we made some supreme and noble effort
to change the world, and it didn’t work?! We’ve been so trained by
thirty-minute sitcoms that if we don’t get what we want in half an hour, it’s
like, uh-oh, we tried but failed. Too bad. It’s over. Next. Mother Teresa made a
supreme and noble effort. Martin Luther King Jr. made a supreme and noble
effort. Susan B. Anthony made a supreme and noble effort. We have not made a
supreme and noble effort. In fact, most of us make very little effort to change the world. But then we feel frustrated
when we see that it’s not changing! Usually,
when people say, “We’ve tried so hard!” they’re not really talking about
themselves. It’s more like,
“Well, there are other people I know who have!” It’s laughable when you think about
it. Perhaps we don’t realize the big secret in our midst—which isn’t how little
power we have to change things, but rather how much power we have that we
aren’t using! We’re like birds who were never
informed, or have forgotten, we have wings. But a great remembering
is reverberating among us, and whatever we’ve done or haven’t done, succeeded
at or failed at;whatever time we’ve used well or time we’ve wasted; we are
here, we are available, we are present to the moment and up to the challenge. All we need remember is
this: if God has given us a job to do, He will provide for us the means by
which to accomplish it.* All awe have to do is ask Him what He wants
us to do and then be willing to do it. Excerpt from Marianne
Williamson’s book The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New
Life ( © 2004 Marianne
Williamson. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of
the author. Marianne Williamson is
an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer. She has published nine books,
four of which - including the mega bestseller A Return to Love and Everyday
Grace - have been #1 New York |
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