We Will Meet You In The Field

“I AM divine. My nature is one with divine nature or GOD.
I am able to boldly express the highest spiritual principles in the middle of everyday situations.
I am courageously responsive. I am fearlessly self-reflective and self-corrective.
I am intentional in large and small aims. I valiantly champion the goodness within myself and within each person I encounter. I hold myself accountable for thoughts, words, and actions that are in integrity with my Divine Identity. I dare to ignore the way things are and what cannot be done, bringing about the seemingly impossible. I suspend belief in the limitations that seem inherent in human existence to stretch beyond my known capacity. I disregard appearances to hold a vision of what can be so steadily that it must manifest. I overlook history, deriving my sense of direction instead from the source of life, love, and wisdom. I am not crushed by the weight of my commitments; rather, I passionately fulfill my sense of purpose. I uphold the world, all beings, and all intentions in the light of magnificent possibilities. I lift up rather than tear down. I believe in the inherent goodness of all people.

With divine audacity, I AM the light of the world, shining brightly. In my presence, others remember their Divine Identity. In my presence, others heal the illusion of separation. In my presence, others stand tall and behave humanely; they snap back from self-pity and self-derision to claim their spiritual capacities. In my presence, others sense, and act from, their essential goodness. In my presence, others come home to themselves, to the Self that is not their personality but their Divine Identity…

Divine audacity is not reserved for life-or-death situations or singularly religious matters.
Divine audacity is relevant in the nitty gritty situations we face every day.
Divine audacity is displayed by your open-hearted relative who dares to remain connected with you, reminding you of your inherent value when everyone else in your family has shunned you.
Divine audacity is displayed by the merciful parent of a murdered child who courageously asks for leniency in punishment of the offender.
Divine audacity is displayed by someone who wholeheartedly disagrees with another's point of view but champions the other's right to her viewpoint and seeks to understand.
Divine audacity is displayed by the aspiring musician who, knowing she stands little chance but that she must make music, auditions along with hundreds of contenders for twelve slots in the orchestra.
Divine audacity is uncommon valor in the midst of common human circumstances. The petite mother who lifts a 4,000-pound automobile to rescue her child pinned underneath it later exclaims, “I don't know where the strength came from, but it was the only way to save my child.”

Divine audacity is fearless overcoming of only-human tendencies in order to do, or say, the right thing: that which unifies, harmonizes, strengthens, or uplifts. With divine audacity, you dare to be the light of the world…”

~ Linda Martella-Whitsette, Divine Audacity: Dare to Be the Light of the World

“Raised in an Italian Catholic home in the ’60s, I viewed my early life from within the boundaries of my culture and religion. My curiosity about the wider world grew as I did. Hungrily, I studied “other” religions and disciplines such as Buddhism and yoga that were becoming popular in the United States by the time I graduated from high school. As my horizons expanded, so did my sense that there are infinite honorable ways to live. I imagined myself living in a community of diverse people where I could learn how to make chapatis, an Indian flatbread, one evening and sit shiva, the Jewish mourning tradition, the next. Reveling in inclusivity, I could not have known that within a few years I would marry a man with dark brown skin. By 1979, my husband of African and Native American descent and I had birthed a multicultural family. At the time, anti-miscegenation laws, ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, had yet to be repealed in several states and would not be written out of U.S. law until Alabama’s repeal in 2000, when my children would be graduating from high school.

My father renounced me when I got married. I was wrong, he believed, to marry outside my race. My father’s position made no sense to me, as I knew all people are of one race — the human race. My sorrow ran deep, especially when each of my children was born without the embraces of my first family. I could not imagine then, and cannot imagine today, how love between two people could be seen as wrong. Love between two people is right and good… I cherish my country’s values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people. In the United States of America, we are each free to be and to believe what we will. We are free to practice accordingly in our homes and religious centers. We are not required to agree with others about the way they are living, but we are required to respect them, to serve them in our restaurants, and to provide them the rights and privileges we claim for ourselves. These requirements usher us toward Rumi’s promised field of unity.

Because I have visited the field, and because love between people is right and good, my spiritual community is planning ahead in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s favorable ruling on the matter of same-sex marriage. Assuming that same-sex couples, denied legal rights and privileges of marriage in the past, will be free to marry, we will marry you. We will celebrate with you. Those who disagree? We will respect you. We will meet you in the field.”

~ Linda Martella-Whitsett, author of “Divine Audacity: Dare to be the Light of the World,” is senior minister at Unity Church of San Antonio, which performs same-sex weddings.