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Dalton
Roberts |
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This morning I will be speaking on “We are Totipotent and Phototropic” and this Sunday Journal will be a little repetitious to those who come to hear me. So I will dedicate this Journal to one of my favorite college professors who said, “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, then tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em.” “Totipotent” and “phototropic” are two words used in botany to describe certain behaviors of plants but each word is completely applicable to human beings. Each one perfectly describes spiritual processes we all experience in life. “Totipotent” means having everything from the start that will be needed for full unfoldment and maturity. A seed is totipotent. It contains the complete DNA of some plant. A corn kernel contains information about how high and how productive the plant will be. It contains the stalk, the ears, and the tassel. It’s all right there in that tiny seed. We, too, are planted like seeds. Actually two seeds came together and sank their roots down in the fertile soil of a womb. There we are in that tiny seed you cannot see with the naked eye! Think of how much is in that ridiculously tiny seed: a little of your father’s face and a little of your mother’s. Even your blood type! Right there in that tiny seed is all you need. And remember God breathes on each seed, adding the spiritual component. That seed is a miniature prophecy of our unfoldment. It comes as original equipment. As Episcopalian bishop Matthew Fox wrote, it is your “original blessing.” As an aside I must say that his book, Original Blessing, was an incredible blessing and a strong formative influence in my life. It would definitely be in my top ten lifetime books if I developed such a list. “Phototropic” means the inborn tendency to keep turning toward the light. There are tiny cells in a plant that activate in contact with sunlight and bend the plant toward the sun. I saw this so clearly one year when my birds planted some sunflower seeds just outside my bird-watching window. Some of the plants grew to be ten feet tall! In the morning they would be dew-laden and straight. When the sun came up they would start leaning. Some would bend over so far in the direction of the sun that the weight of the sunflower head would take them all the way to the ground. In the same way we sometimes bow so much toward God we actually kneel. It is our soul’s way of turning toward the Light of God’s presence. Politics both blessed and cursed the early church. It blessed it by stopping the killing of Christians. Emperor Nero crucified so many Christians he set them on fire to light up the streets of Rome. Constantine’s conversion stopped that kind of persecution but in forcing the leaders of the early church to agree on a set of doctrines, they unfortunately chose those that would make people feel like miserable sinners doomed to hell and requiring the forgiveness of priests and the rituals of the church to gain salvation. “Original sin” is not a phrase to be found in the Bible but it was a necessary doctrine to make people fall prostrate before the church. Original blessing is nowhere to be found in those early doctrines. It is definitely there in the Genesis account with the Creator pronouncing His work “very good.” But the bishops opted to curse the world with the idea of original sin via the eating of the forbidden fruit. Even some balance between the blessing of the Creator on His creation and the problem of disobedience would have been better than complete scrapping of the clear teaching of original blessing. Thank God, we are totipotent and phototropic whether or not it fit into the purposes of those early politicians and doctrinal dictators. Let us unfold.
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