"Emergence Continues" w/Carlton Pearson

imagine there's no heaven it's easy if you try [Music] above us only sky imagine all the people [Music] living for today imagine there's no countries [Music] it isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion too imagine all the people [Music] you may say i'm a dreamer [Music] but i'm not the only one i hope someday [Music] you'll join us and the world will be as one [Music] imagine no possession [Music] i wonder if you can no need for greedy a brotherhood of men imagine all the [Music] you may say i'm a dreamer but i'm not the only one i hope someday you'll join us [Music] live as one can you imagine live [Music] imagine [Music] do [Music] lives [Music] thank you cynthia for your participation in your wonderful gifts your song your smile your energy glad to have our senior minister home for he's been gone for a few months welcome back to the house sir thank you for your filling in so beautifully barbara while he's been gone musicians we're all we're all homesick and we're all we miss each other and it's always a joy to see to see you thank you for coming today those watching by the internet from around the country in the world always we always welcome you it's sort of a right and a ritual that we have a routine as human beings and it's been interrupted in a lot of ways lately with the pandemic but we're still trying to maintain some sense of sensibilities my dad said one of the last things my dad said when he was before he transitioned he said his common sense is not common anymore uh it's hard to find to make sense out of some of the non-sensibles we've been talking about emergence this month and today we're saying emergence or emergencies continue emergent emergencies and urgencies if you have an urge like to get some water or maybe to relieve yourself of some water i call it panda waterville you can sit here for the next 30 minutes with the urge if i get through in about 15 or 20 minutes if i go too much longer the urge becomes an emergency which means you will get up and walk out before i get through i've had actually the platform when those emergencies arise it's just moving forward moving forth i call that excellence human the excellence the forward thrusts of humans who excel forward it may look like we're confused and there is a lot of confusion on the planet and in our country and in our culture and perhaps in our consciousness but ultimately we move forward i'm not counting sometimes i just count blessings i refuse to count bruisings because bruisings can be depressing but when i really feel overwhelmed i actually do count my bruisings the ones i've already sustained the ones i've already survived because i want to talk about surviving today about outliving and outlasting the virus how can we outlive and outlast our pain we talk a lot about bravery but sometimes it has nothing has less to do with bravery than it does with just enduring why you're scared i have a little bit of an autoimmune disease of some type that causes disfiguration of my fingernails it's been there for about six months i don't know what causes it and so i go to this dermatologist and the first time she said well we'll do this we'll do this we'll do that and then we have to give you an injection right in the cuticle of the nail she said are you going to be okay and she had a couple of students there and i wasn't sure what that was she said this is usually pretty sensitive pretty painful i imagined that it was and i tried to imagine that i could sustain it and so i made a practice several years ago of not looking away when i'm shot with a needle but to look right at the needle and sometimes at the person inserting it into me to make sure that i'm not giving my power away to the fear of being stuck with a needle or stuck with a person or stuck with a situation or stuck in that situation so i looked right at in and i didn't feel that much pain and she had students there and she was astounded that i did not react to the pain well it wasn't that much the first time so i didn't think it was a big deal they thought it was pretty cool and i acted like i endured pain but it wasn't that much endurance because there was that much pain the next time it hurt a little bit and she was a little bit apologetic but i never flinched i looked right at the needle and it went in and it wasn't bravery it was endurance this last time uh it really hurt like hades she took that i watched her stick the needle she says well she says you're the bravest patient i've ever had and i thought i ain't brave i'm scared but i'm i'm going to endure this because i have to have the shot and it really really hurt i mean it went all through my fingers and and i when i hurt that bad hit comes next you know it's like you better get away lady but i i just endured it and i remember thinking sometimes it's not at all about bravery it's about the mindset to endure the pain or to outlast it we can't change situations all the time we can change our response or adjust we're wearing masks as inconvenient or awkward or uncomfortable as they can be because we're adjusting to a situation over which we have no control you wear the mask first to protect supposedly somebody else or protect their image of you to go around tulsa today with with a mass assumes that you are uh you've given in if you don't wear a mask it means you're voting for trump so we shouldn't categorize people that way but we just do they think that's a liberal that's a conservative uh they exp and you expect most people of color to have the mask on i meet a lot of people of color who don't wear the mask i'm the only one in my household who's gotten the vaccine my 91 year old mother refuses it my baby daughter refuses it and she had covert the other day she's just she went through a 10-day quarantine uh my son hasn't taken it he gives shots and tests on his job for for the covet for the pandemic but yet he doesn't feel like it's something he wants to do a lot of people are adjusting to adjustments it's not so much what you feel as what you think about what you feel i've been saying that repeatedly the universe doesn't judge us always by what we feel because we feel afraid we feel limited we feel intimidated we feel threatened we feel free we feel impulse upon we feel invaded we feel uncomfortable uh uncomforted so then the next thing is what do you think about what you feel and what do you think about what you think about what you feel and then what do you think about that because thoughts are creative they're inventive they're powerful what we think about we ultimately bring about it deals again with the idea of imagining an image you have to be careful what images you allow to rest in your your psyche because images are like magnets they literally draw you toward them if you consider that you will get the virus or that you will give the virus or that you're going to be a victim of the circumstances if you keep thinking that way you actually experience what you fear most you ultimately experience by the same token what you faith most you ultimately experience sometimes you can believe in disaster so strongly and all over the country right now people are whether it's haiti this is the second earthquake that has devastated the country billions of dollars were set apart for them to be aided before which hasn't reached them as a country yet our country looks awkward and clumsy with the way we're handling afghanistan we have fires out west we have storms today i often sit and watch the news late at night and there's all kinds of things happening all over the world and i count my blessings while i'm looking at what could be ultimately bruisings because people are suffering and we're able to get up this morning get dressed get shot and get dressed come to service in a minute we're going to go somewhere and get lunch or go home and relax or watch football or watch tv or ride around town or stop by the grocery store call a friend stop by and see somebody that's we're pretty much things are still fairly regular you have a mass you have sanitation you have the six foot uh uh anti what do you mean uh what social distancing some of you ain't that socially distant you're sitting fairly close today but you ain't afraid of the person sitting next to you you slept with them last night or or you rode in the car with them coming home you're breathing each other's breath we're wearing the mask but it's a security blanket it's a little bit of a uh uh uh possibly a little placebo because we're adjusting psychologically to things we cannot change the objective is to last turn to somebody and say will you last can we outlast the trauma and the drama we are all suffering from from ptsd ecclesiastes 9 1 one of my favorite passages the race is not given to the swift or the battle of the strong but to the one who endures the one who lasts the one who survives the one who hangs tough and hangs turf the one who even doesn't necessarily feel brave but feels strong enough to endure what you cannot change the mask adjusting it because most of us like to lower it just under the nose and in there on airplanes they'll quickly tell you please pull that up above your nose and you want to say won't you pull that over your face but you and that's what a lot of passengers are saying and they're fighting and they're getting violent and they're getting they're they're reacting we all have reactions to actions and responses to life and we have to judge our own consciousness what we feel what we think why we believe what we believe about ourselves how those beliefs actually talk to the quality of our lives i'm in an endurance mode because we don't know how long this lasts we thought things were getting better and then all of a sudden here comes delta i got several calls this week the gentleman across the street from our home committed suicide a week ago but we didn't learn it until eight days after he had shot himself his gardener goes in to try to reach him because they hadn't contacted him finally they go away he goes in and finds him and he rushes out panic causes the association president the president has to go in and see the man he'd already he become terribly discolored and he's been there eight days self-inflicted gunshot wound to his own chest he wasn't unfriendly but he wasn't necessarily friendly lived across the street this big beautiful home one of the largest homes if not the largest in our neighborhood we never saw a light on day or night a little teeny red light around the back curtains were never open we would wave and sometimes he would talk to my brother or somebody visiting but not long conversations no visitors i don't know what he was going through what he had been diagnosed with what they had recently told him that made him feel so depressed or so hopeless so with no anticipation of the future that he actually could kill himself suicide rates have tripled since the pandemic divorce rates have doubled and tripled since the uh the pandemic people going through mental illness and trauma going into it and sinus salems are having asylums and having to getting having to get special therapy mental illness and stress and anxiety post-traumatic stress disorder ptsd we're all dealing with that and we've been dealing with it for a long time in this country we're trying to adjust to various levels of mental illness when our psyche seems unstable and we can't sleep or we can't focus or we can't wrestle off the deadly negative emotions so people are drinking more than normal more people believe in the garden people that don't even believe in the bible believe in the garden of whedon a few of you got it they believe in the scripture that says the the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nation so they get in their herbs and people are trying to adjust and that's normal that's actually healthy it's how you adjust what you use as your adjustments will you last i remember oral roberts said to me one time i went to him to interview him about me going on television this was 40 some years ago and we were struggling with the city of faith and struggling with aspects of the ministry and he had his visions for his future and i remember he said well son you're a prince of a preacher you always knocked the ball out of the park but television has bloodied me i said what do you mean he said i've i've bled over my my national prominence and he got up and walked across the room and he looked out across the campus he said you know they're trying to take this from me at one point he thought all souls was going to take from me he thought the unitarians are going to get it he finally got that settled but he was there dr wolf but he he raised a lot of money around that fear as well to sustain the university but he said they're trying to take this away from he said but if they do they'll have to take an ambulance to the hospital to handle it because you can't carry this in the flesh i said sir we'll never let him take it from you we're going to be okay the universe is going to last your minutes is going to sustain i was trying to minister to my mentor and remember he said well there's one thing they can share by oral roberts and i said what is that sir he said he lasted and then he whirled around and looked at me and said will you and i got over my knees and said yes i think i will sir i thought he was going to lay hands suddenly on me and knock me across the room will you he said that with such conviction it intimidated me will you last when he died his ministry was debt-free he was 91 years old it kicked his son out his daughter wasn't as welcome there everything was different he was surrounded by people he didn't know but when he left the universe it was 50 million dollars in debt and when he died it was debt-free but he was he still wasn't happy he had adjusted i said sir we basically gave the university we sold it for 70 million dollars there's been a lot of the people have paid a lot more than that of course he said i know but my i was in debt son and my son couldn't carry it i had to do something i had to make the adjustment i'm not happy but i lasted i wanted the ministry to last all souls has been here all these years 100 years and we've lasted the church has been through a lot we've had a lot of bruising so have you individually each one of you think of what you've been through if i was to let you tell your story the pain the pathos the agony the distress the family issues the marital satisfactions nobody can hurt you like somebody you love many of you have been in and out of the hospital i've had various diagnosis about illness you've endured illness you've endured arguments you've endured uh mistreatment you've endured rejections you've endured low self image and depression and sleeplessness and anxiety you are a trooper you are tough you're strong you're stronger than you realize count your bruisings with your blessings and see which has lasted turn to somebody and say i'm still here and say i think you are too i am here yeah i'm telling myself i don't know what the future holds but i'll be there i plan to be there calls all this week more than normal of people i know who've died i've coveted had it only three days or a week men women a prayer group back in florida the leader died and their brother jesse's jesse williams who worked for us and has now transitioned his father's in in hospital today and i've had some people in their 40s and 50s that have actually gotten sick and and passed on within three or four days it's very depressing to keep hearing this news when you get my age which is 68 you're losing a lot of people anyway parents and grandparents and godparents are mostly all gone a lot of your siblings a lot of the people of your age category are dealing with growing age getting old can be very inconvenient and i'm not even that old i'm only 68 and you know 68 is not old especially if you old you know you know 68 ain't that old i'm but i've lasted to turn to somebody against i've lasted. she knew it she said it and knows it in many ways life as a whole is a viral or itself a virus i call it a sexually transmitted dis ease or disease that's incurable life is incurable it's only treatable and it's terminal because we all go through the transition we call death so how do we treat this incurable dis-ease this virus that we call life that everybody you know is a victim to or is affected by we're all here because we suffer from a sexually transmitted disease that we inherited from our parents and it's called life they were intimate whether they were married or not and here you are in the distress or this ease the tension the stress of trying to survive we we develop behavioral modifications coping mechanisms trying to manage the pain and the pathos of just existing as a human being and remaining sober or sane or both or at least one of them how do we handle our own insanity or feelings of depression we're the ministers we're the counselors we're the teachers we're trained to help people but dentists get cavities cardiologists have heart attacks oncologists die of cancer would you be hesitant to go to a dentist who wears dentures that doesn't mean he's a bad dentist it's just he didn't take care of his teeth for taking care of yours a lot of people experiencing fire men's house catch on fire police officers get in trouble lawmakers become law breakers we all know that so we struggle in a culture that keeps shifting and our objective is to learn to adjust you learn to you endure by learning how to adjust tweak shift as we often say shift happens roll with the punches don't just go with the flow grow with the flow especially when the flow becomes a flood the tension that we're experiencing just in relationships with people today i've never seen such polarity in our country uh you know and everybody's really stuck where they are i have family members i cannot talk about the vaccination with they literally go off not in my house because you don't get to go off in my house but you you can go over yours but i have you can talk to them on the phone and there's just this wild reaction to everything the country is not sure about 911 not sure about the oklahoma bombing not sure about how and who killed president kennedy not sure about weapons of mass destruction they doubt the news they doubt the scientists they don't just doubt the science they doubt the scientists people don't even trust their doctors anymore the number one virus i think in our country today is distrust and suspicion we live and die and we live until we die and then most of us think we get to live again when somebody asks you how are you doing you've heard me say before they're asked to ask you how are you dying how are you dying today oh i'm dying pretty good you might say i ain't dying so good today let me put my mask on doing and dying living are all the same thing we're all going through this constant process of change and interaction and interfacing not just combating but confronting life as it is and adjusting to it turn to somebody one more time and say i'm surviving come on say it don't you ain't even sure we've been profoundly conflicted and disunited culturally uh and almost continentally since the 2016 election in ways we probably haven't been since the civil war and leading up to it as a man of color the wrestling with this whole idea of of of victim consciousness is something i have to deal with all the time we're constantly confronting racists and racisms and they keep repeating themselves with this whole commemoration of the the massacre and the silence in tulsa and sometimes the attitudes that we people of color you may not experience if you're not of color of people that are bold with their arrogance and bold with the racism a friend of mine was on one of the lakes here in a beautiful yacht an african-american beautiful yacht and a man pointed his yacht him and my friend said well sir i don't want any trouble he said oh yeah the white man said i want trouble an older man with a raggedy boat wasn't as pretty as the black man's vote boat just had this attitude who would tell it for me to drive down to the city of tulsa and somebody look at me because of the car i'm in or where i live or come to my house i've never had this before my 50 years of living here of a person coming to my house to do some work when they find out it's me or a man of color they don't know that's carlton pearson doesn't mean anything to them they just won't do the work i've had people reject my house five times on five different occasions for five different reasons and that never happened before they'll bring the car right up to me just look at me like how dare you and i've that's i'm adjusting to what that means when it's all over at the end of the day how do i feel about me i don't hate the person i hate the situation that brings that about i hate the consciousness that brings that there are some unpardonable sins there are no unpardonable sinners some sins are not to be pardoned some things when i say sins against humanity crimes are not to be pardoned they're never to be forgivable the people who inflict those are the perpetrators of course we adjust but we got to have a certain attitude about certain things we will not tolerate culturally we will not tolerate being dishonored or disrespected or disregarded because of our gender or our race or our sexuality or our height uh whether we were a mass or not we're a mass whether we have friends who've had the vaccine or those who are suffering with the virus we have to stop this horrible judgment of one another take a good long look at ourselves and at our soul and manage our own business privately and powerfully don't give your power away to fear i got to close and don't give your power away to the circumstances i'm a survivor intentionally i'm going to survive this on purpose with purpose i watched aretha franklin's movie and they talked about being demonized yesterday with jennifer hudson um and uh i i spent time with the wreath aretha felt vexed and tormented i did radio sort of music haul with her i did the constitutional i went to detroit several times she was wrestling with feeling demonized many people feel that's what pandemonium means pandemonium demon is the middle term there it is being demonized not demon-possessed just vexed and tormented and agonizing and and having the anxiety of mind and sleeplessness and restlessness the insomniac spirit working all day suspicious about everything have whenever we ever live in a day when we be concerned for our loved ones to leave and concern for them to come home we don't want them to leave and get a disease or come home and bring one and we love them there's a lot of people you love right now that you don't even trust there are people you love and adore but you're suspicious of them they're people you love and you're connected to but you profoundly disagree with their attitude about something and you've never felt that awkwardness so severely as you do now so you can't change their attitude you must adjust yours say i will survive this relationship even if i'm hated or disliked wrap your arms around yourself like this i hardly got to anything that i wrote but i've said what it was feeling i just write stuff just to see if it comes out on me i wondered who would be here today i wonder what caliber of person would come what you would need for coming and what you'll need next week and what you needed last week and how this service would impact or imprint your life every time you come that's what we're thinking about from the music and the drum beat to the greeters to our sound engineers we want this to be a time when you are encouraged enhanced and embraced and embraced like this when i say hug yourself love yourself say i got this i can make i'll survive it i release you to peace of mind better sleep less anxiety we pronounce it on you we pray for the stability of your mind of your psyche of your soul of your self-worth i encourage you to rid yourself of victim consciousness you're not a victim of circumstances you're a victor over them count your bruises you've already been through so much you sustained some amazing pain and you lost it we used to sing that song if it had not been for the lord on my side what would i do where would i be you've lasted because you deliberately intended to we send you forth in just a couple of minutes with an enduring spirit the race is not given to the swift but the battle to the strong but those who last we encourage you we empower you we embrace you last endure the best is yet to come it'll get worse between now and the next several months there'll possibly be guns in the street violence people are freaking out hold your peace hold to your peace don't react if that means you have to turn the television off for a few days and not watch the news to keep your sanity then do it we'll remind you when you get here on sunday what the news was last week we'll try to capitulate it in the way but we embrace you in love and strength and positive reinforcement in spirit that is holy god bless you god bless you thank you for joining us for 100 years all souls in tulsa has been a beacon of this free faith we offer our services and programs freely online for all those who are interested you can help us to do this by making a one-time gift today or a recurring pledge we really appreciate you joining us and being a part of helping us make all souls in tulsa what it is thank you [Music] do [Music] so so do [Music] this morning [Music] and talking with my mind [Applause] [Music] [Music] hallelujah know [Music] you

Channel: All Souls Unitarian

Views: 712

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: ZdkiovxSMX0

Length: 36min 5sec (2165 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021