Fully Human, Fully Spiritual with Richard Burdick

By Rev. Richard Burdick

Humanity is screaming for some semblance of healing—healing of the world, the nation, the government, the environment, and racial and gender inequities. This cry to mitigate our suffering finds its home in a desperate and more personal need to heal our families, our bodies, and our emotional wounds, sometimes decades old. The scream is valid and necessary, yet I believe misguided in its approach. It certainly can feel, at times, as if we are shouting our pleas into the wind, but is that a reflection of deaf ears or faulty conclusions?

To affect the changes so necessary to our future, we must reunite with a greater truth beneath the surface of the effects. Deep in the inner sanctum of our very existence, individually and collectively, dwells an ancient unity where nothing has ever been broken. It may have been forgotten, but it is as vibrant and intact as it has been since the beginning of time. It is the place of causal reality, sometimes known as the root, source, and nucleus of all creation. Sometimes it is known as the quantum field and, many times, it is known by the name God. Labels are less important than our awareness of its presence and power to heal. Today, I will call it perfection and wholeness. It is a holy chalice of consciousness that holds the answers we seek. When our calls for restoration spring from anger and fear, the healing balm we seek forever eludes us and we remain in an eternal state of howling victimhood. When they are founded within this vessel, the remedies for the ills of human existence are poured out.

Awareness of this ancient oneness transcends our infirmities and unites us with the power behind the screams, the essence underneath the human dream. When our cries arise from Divine source, they are less a call for help and more a proclamation of truth.

Our protests then eliminate stories that require victims, villains, and heroes. These unnecessary and illusory archetypes are made from a cloth of duality. Until we recognize everything and everyone from a deeper awareness of oneness, our screams for healing counter any possibility of long-lasting effect. Can our cries source themselves from compassion and oneness for everyone? Can they originate from a space of love, not judgment and hate? It is only then that we will vibrate at the deeper level of wholeness from which we are created. Our healing will come as each of us commits to drinking more deeply and often from this ancient chalice of eternal truth.

Rev. Richard Burdick is the Senior Minister at Unity North Atlanta. As a minister, teacher, and musician he is passionate about community building, interfaith cooperation, and trans-denominational spirituality. More info about Richard and Unity North at www.unitynorth.org