The Beginnings of the Concept
This
is a poem that I wrote one day when I was upset over the world. Everything except
the last two lines were an emotional outpouring over the conflict that I was facing in that day. I got to the middle of the last verse and was stuck. Then
I heard the last two lines- that was in 1995- and I am still learning what is meant by these lines.
The Wonder Child
The
soul is a wonder child.
It
needs to be able to carry prayers to and from God.
It
needs to be able to sense and feel and wonder and discover,
To
release the wonder of it's potential on Earth.
We
live in a world full of animals.
Full
of greed and lust and self-satisfaction.
Full
of taking and leaving and disappointing.
Devoid
of responsibilities on Earth.
Society
is a great policeman.
Full
of laws, and rules, and internal regulations.
Full
of put downs, push downs, and pull downs.
Devoid
of the wonder of the Earth.
How
do we chain the animal and not the soul?
How
do we allow the wonder to be released without the anger?
We
must learn the discipline of Self-Esteem.
Releasing
the Power of God on the Earth.
Virginia
Satir, in her book, Peoplemaking, stated that 95% of American families were dysfunctional and that dysfunctional families
resulted in people growing up without a valid sense of self-esteem. Without a
valid sense of self-esteem, most of us end up in one of two dead-end programs exemplified by verses two and three. Over the years, I’d prefer to think of verse two as the verse about people who suffer from addictions
and verse three as the verse about people who think that they are better than the people in verse two. As a person in verse 2, I have a lot of trouble with the people in verse 3, especially if they see
and propose a loving God who offers people a choice of repenting or going to hell for all eternity- and most especially if
they see this kind of a God as the kind that they want.
This writing is a gift to the people that I love. It is things that I have written in my life as I struggled to understand the concept of the Discipline
of Self-Esteem. It is full of resources that have helped me in my life. People can take it or leave it.
When Jesus walked the earth, the Bible shows us that there were two groups
of people that he spoke to: the sinners and the Pharisees. To the sinners, he
told them that God loved them and wanted to be united with them and that all they needed to do was repent of their sin, turn
to God, and let God do the rest. He told them in doing this, that they were worthy
of God’s love. He also challenged the Pharisees to see that they were equally
wrong by judging others as sinners, condemning them and by blindly applying the rules and regulations of the faith (which
were easier for certain people to live with than others) without looking for the deeper truth of their own separation from
God. And he told them that unless they could do this and repent, then they were
unworthy of God’s love and condemned.
