We’ve been talking about the movie The Secret again around my congregation.  Almost everyone has watched it and they think it’s a great reminder of how we create our lives with our thoughts, but that it makes things seem just a little too simple.  I try to remind them that a movie that talks about the real journey of our inner spiritual lives would, well, probably be a really long movie. 

                The thing about the “secret” is faith.  Faith takes practice.  But I can’t imagine life without it.  I see faith as the opposite of hopelessness and I cannot even fathom the idea of no hope.  As human beings we are so wired towards looking at life and asking how we can make it better.  Making it better seems encoded in our DNA; look at how far we have come as human beings in such a short time.  My grandmother was born when cars were rare. In 88 years we’ve come a zillion miles and today I am going to push a button and send this column to someone in another building who will push another button and add it to a printed newspaper.  When you consider all of this, life is amazing.

                What I am trying to say is that faith is the thing within us that creates… that expresses joy and love… that expresses the essence of God in the everyday.  Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed…”  Now, Jesus talked in metaphor all the time, and I kind of doubt he was actually asking us to compare the size of our faith with anything —or with anyone.  It dawns on me that he was talking about the fact that within everything, even something as small as a mustard seed, is everything that it needs to grow and thrive and serve its purpose in the world.  And we are no different.

The “Secret” is recognizing that everything already exists in the mind of God and that as the children of God we are capable of experiencing that Truth.  Ernest Holmes said, “Faith is a mental attitude which is so convinced of its own idea, which so completely accepts it, that any contradiction is unthinkable and impossible.” To me this means that complete faith requires us to let go of any opposing idea or thoughts.  In the movie, most of the characters talk about having more money and more material goods.  That’s great, but it is not what it is all about.  Those people (I’ve met a couple of them) have let go of the idea that there are limits to how they can express themselves in the world.  And yes, they had to expand into that idea; for most of us it does not happen overnight.  But it happens and it is really about the journey.

It happens because we choose to have faith.  Many of us want peace but we aren’t sure how we can affect events in the world.  We do so by changing ourselves.  We will have peace when any contradiction to that idea—when the idea of war— is completely unthinkable.  We will have peace on the day that we all turn our backs when anyone tries to use fear as a weapon, or a justification, or a means to an end.  We will have peace when we create peace in our hearts and in our minds.  I have faith that this is possible.

Barbara Bue serves as interim Minister for the Creative Living Church in Greeley and as the Corporate Chaplain for WePluribus.com