The Great Loan

This morning I am reading some words of Rabbi Heschel and Meister Eckhart on life. The Rabbi said,

I am endowed with a will, but the will is not mine, I am endowed with freedom but it is a freedom imposed on the will. Life is something that visits my body, a transcendent loan; I have neither initiated nor conceived its worth and meaning. The essence of what I am is not mine. I am what is not mine... I have not brought my being into being. Nor was I thrown into being. My being is obeying the saying 'Let there be!'

Meister Eckhart said that we should consider everything here as on loan.

That is a lesson that came full force to me when the father of my children passed during the week between Christmas 1976 and New Year's day 1977 when the equipment was turned off. All that he had worked so hard to attain, stayed here. All the Little League games missed to do more work, were nonsense sacrifices. All the moments of his life added up to the consciousness he developed - positive and negative - and that consciousness was all he took. I realized that the body is simply a sort of space suit the soul wears in order to function on earth, and that body is made of Mother Earth and stays here along with the houses, the furniture, the jewels, all "possessions."

So, yes, I totally agree with the Rabbi and the Meister. Life IS a transcendent loan. As with the parable of the talents told by Jesus, what do we do with that loan? That is what counts.

It does not matter what earthly things we accumulate as we walk this earthly path, for they all belong here and stay here. What matters is our development of compassion, forgiveness, kindness, love, caring, generosity and the qualities that belong to the soul. The things here on earth are nice decorations, but they are not transcendent. Maybe that's what Jesus meant when he suggested not to lay up earthly treasures for they do not endure.

Think of all the thousands upon thousands of years that humans have walked earth, of the "treasures" each person held dear. Where are they now? What were they? No one even knows.

I want to develop my spiritual muscles, my soul, I want to be more Christlike in the remaining time I am granted here. I want to leave behind things that matter, not just things. I want to breath the breathe of God's glory into the life here, give resuscitation to this weary place. I want to help people find peace and lay down violence, find compassion and let go of judgement and hate, I want to help open eyes and ears and hearts to what's really going on, to the spiritual reality behind and in and through this earthly exercise.

But how Lord? You place this seed in my heart, now show me the way. Place this seed in millions of hearts. Quicken human awareness. Let his be a time of blowing winds of spiritual awakening. Blow away the fog and shine Your Light into us all so that it can be said that never was there such a time as this.