What is my Inner Authority

Last week’s email message invited you to consider Howard Thurman’s image of the heart’s inner island, on which an altar stands where nothing is placed without the mark of your inner authority.

This week, the Gospel reading asks you to consider your inner authority.

In his Meditations of the Heart, Howard Thurman writes about “how good it is to center down,” to pause in our daily round of work and life and turn to that inner altar, the place God dwells within us.

Thurman writes, “The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic…while something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment.” In the quiet moment, we “seek a fresh sense of order in our living, …a direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our lives.”

In the quiet moment when I turn toward God, I may be compelled to ask: what am I doing with my life? what motives order my days and my actions?

Jesus tells the parable of the two sons asked by their father to work in his vineyard in order, in part, to demonstrate the common wisdom that “actions speak louder than words.” If I say that I love God, say that I am a Christian, but do not respond to God’s call to live into God’s reign, into a community of love in His Name, then my actions speak rejection. If I do respond to that call, even if I do not proclaim with words what I am doing, then my actions speak acceptance.

In a quiet moment of pause I can ask: what is the authority that rules my life, in my heart, my innermost being? Is it Love, or is it something else? What do my actions show that authority to be?

Faithfully,

Beverly+