05/16/2026
Do you remember this gorgeous excerpt Carl Shields delivered during the May 4th service? Kudos to Carl for a stunning, heart-on-sleeve text that is dripping with sincerity and beauty...
Spiritual Growth
What does this mean? Who am I? Where am I going? Is this right or wrong for my higher self, the part of me I know it when I feel it, that I am doing the right thing for the right reason. And always, always, I have learned, always err on the side of kindness and love.
A severe trauma or loss can trigger a reevaluation of the meaning of life. It did for me. Many many times. I’d have most of my gay friends die, in the 80’s and 90’s, from the AIDS epidemic. How do you make sense of so much loss, so quickly in your life? What does it all mean for who you choose to become, or is this predetermined? When these tragedies strike, I know for me I have to fully embrace the pain, and figure out how to come out the other side a better person. . I remember more than once hearing in my lifetime, “Most people are about as happy in life as they make up their minds to be.” I think there is a lot of homespun wisdom in this. Haven’t we all seen or lived circumstances where the exact same thing happens to people, and their reactions are totally opposite? Can that be decided by “how happy I make up my mind to be?” One person falls into a depression and anxious period. Another person takes the same experience and it transforms him or her into someone stronger, more certain of their place and purpose in this world, and accepting what has happened without letting that derail becoming a better and more genuine self.
I just returned from a month in Siem Reap, Cambodia, where the country is 97% Buddhist. It helped clarify for me elements of my own spiritual journey. A lapsed Baptist at age 13, I knew I was gay and didn’t fit in, and was repulsed by any mention of a vindictive, vengeful God. It didn’t sit right with me, so I refused to be baptized, refused to continue going to church. My undergraduate degree at Uconn was philosophy of religion. Thinking back, I believe this was in part due to my struggles with the coming out process. How could all those evil things and bigoted comments I’d heard my whole life be true of me? So I studied Buddhism, became a Nichiren Soshu Buddhist for a few years, and then decided chanting was not going to be my journey. But I firmly believed, and do to this day, that holding onto the concept of being a bodhisattva, a person aspiring to a higher consciousness or enlightened state of being, was the most noble way to live.
I rejected all organized religions, and did not give up my faith in a higher power of some sort in my life. I had had too many experiences to doubt I was being cared for and sometimes directed to a better self. When I saw these moments, they were most often painful. Coming out, having many friends die of AIDS, su***de, depression, poverty. All impacted me and I had to scour my soul to find what made me a part of something good in this messy, hate filled world I often found around me. In the 80’s I discovered yoga and daily meditation, and for 7 or 8 years this put me in a wonderful, calm, peaceful place, during a time when the chaos swirled around me. I moved on, and took a job with the State, and learned what true chaos and politics was all about. I was scapegoated, hurt terribly by some people I had deeply trusted. How to turn this around, and come out a stronger, happier person? I can’t say for sure, fully. But I do know that I allowed myself to fully experience the pain, the rejection, the hurt, until I knew it was not who I was at my core. I could not allow myself to remain in the quagmire, so what action plan could I take?
Over and over again in my lifetime, I have had these traumatic, painful losses, as well as exciting, unbelievable gifts of love and kindness. Each has been an opportunity to grow, spiritually. Let myself fully feel the impact of what was going on. Deny nothing. And at the same time, begin thinking about how to reframe whatever the experience was to make me a fuller person. It sometimes hurt like hell to get through it. It sometimes was a joy. Either one, and self reflection, examining the issue, and thinking, “How will this make me a better me, closer to the cosmic values I subscribe to. Those values, to me, are spiritual ones. Benevolence, giving more than receiving in this world, kindness rather than apathy or silence, and finding ways to bring more love into the world. I felt I had been given so so much.
I think every person gets to experience many familiar joys and traumas, and to decide what to do with those experiences,. Will the experience diminish you, knock you off course, minimize what makes you the unique, special soul you are? Or will you use the experience, joyful, intense, or traumatic, to help you transcend the details, and enhance your sense of spiritual development in this world? Will you feel more bitter, depressed, subjugated? Or will you devise an action plan for yourself to insure your growing in empathy, forgiveness, kindness?
