Before we begin, watch these videos:
The Impressions - People Get Ready
Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come (Official Lyric Video)
Let’s begin with, what is the change that Sam is referring to in the song? Is he, without knowing it, singing about a world that works for all? Suppose for the sake of conversation that is in fact the change? What does that look like and feel like?
It is easy to simply imagine change without having any concrete substance to connect it to. Before you ever tasted it and even before you ever knew what chocolate was, could you image what it tasted like? Obviously not.
Its like that parable of the fish where two young fish are asked by an older fish, “How’s the water?” and one young fish turns to the other and says, “what the hell is water?”
If there is no basis for understanding water, how could the fish even comprehend what was being asked?
This is why the song carries a haunting sadness. . . it makes some of us ask, “What the hell is change?”
People Get Ready
While many people, no matter their religious affiliation will not admit it, many of us are looking for and or hoping for a savior or at least for someone to save us. That savior could be that next diet that will gift us the body we want or that next book or workshop that will be the magic pill to wealth and prosperity. That spiritual leader or teacher who will inspire us to such a degree that the traumas of our lives are gone for good.
We spend a lot of time getting ready for something or someone to save us.
Pogo
Depending on your age, you may remember the cartoon Pogo. Pogo was a comic strip created by American animator and cartoonist Walter Crawford Kelly Jr., more commonly known as Walt Kelly who began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios and was a contributing artist on such things as Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. One of his most memorable illustrations of Pogo included the line, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Once we know the context and the impact of this statement, we can just as readily, if we are willing to do so, flip the phrase, “We have met the saviors, and they are us!”
If you are an individualized expression, incarnation of God, and as Dr. Holmes said, “Whatever is true of God is true of you,” then you, like Jesus, the Buddha, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Swami Vivekananda, Albert Einstein, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, Dr. Holmes, or any other creative, visionary, leader, teacher, educator, artist… you are as creative, inspiring, powerful, healing, and beneficial to the planet as any possible savior we could name!
So no more getting ready for someone or something outside to fix the planet, to fix our lives, to fix our communities, …. We are the ones we have been waiting for!
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” ~ the rabbinic sage Hillel the Elder
Open Wide the Doors
Where have you and might you currently be thinking and or living in a meager manner? We sometimes refer to this as playing small. Without judgement, since that keeps the doors closed, the invitation is to consider what it means to open the doors of possibility. If I were to ask you how many ways you can say water, you might immediately mention a few: Agua, Mizu, Wasser, and Shui. But that is not a complete list. How many different languages are there and within each language there is a word for water and a way to express water as in drinking water, river, lake, ocean, rain, etc.
The point, infinite possibilities exist once we open the doors of our consciousness.
“ . . . if you could realize the tremendous power of attraction that holds everything in its place, it is yours, this gift. It is the divine birthright of every living soul, but we limit ourselves by thought of limitation. Now, we must open up the doors of our consciousness and expand and expand and expand, and no longer think in terms of the backyard lot but in the terms of the infinite nature, in the terms of the universe.” ~Dr. Holmes, Love and Law (2001; teachings 1918-1920):(p. 15.3)
Blessings and joyous celebration as the doors fly open, never to be closed again!
Rev. Ray
Excelsior!