What is Your True Nature?
Shalom.
Grace and Peace to you from the Great Spirit, and from Jesus Christ. May the late summer breezes warm your hearts and cool your stresses. May God’s work through the Holy Spirit lift your soul into peals, cascades even, of laughter. Especially, at ourselves. Laugh!
How about that old story? A frog and a scorpion encountered one another at the river’s edge. Very carefully they approached one another. They learned that each wanted something important from the other.
They both wanted to cross the river to the other side. The scorpion needed transportation, which the frog could provide. The frog needed protection, which the scorpion could provide. They cut a deal. The scorpion would not harm the frog and would protect it while the frog would carry the scorpion across. Halfway there, in the middle of the river, the scorpion struck the frog with a mortal sting! Dumbfounded, as the frog began to drown – taking into death the scorpion with him – he cried out, “Why, in the world, would you do such a thing!?” The scorpion replied (think of a Darth Vader rasping voice), “Because it is my nature!”
Arguably, the key question in everyone’s life is this: what is my true nature? The faith correlative question is this: what is God’s true nature?
Ours is the faith that we are born as an expression – every single one of us – of God’s true nature. Our loves are an unfolding, an ongoing journey, of our unique expression of that holy nature. We are born to express – each in our distinctive way – the holy through our loves.
The church in community in which, by mutual encouragement, we learn to experience and share the Holy. Christ is a living “presence” which reveals and generates that holiness.
What is holiness? The trusting expressions of loving, healing and joyous spirit. This is our nature we believe through Christ, to love, to heal and to enjoy.
Does this nature include a stinger? Oh, yes! But the stinger is used – not for destruction, but for loving protection. Or as a paddle to help cross the river.
Shalom,
Cooper
