Up and Out

Description

I find myself returning to a simple but searching question: am I trying to be right, or am I trying to live in integrity? So often life feels like a contest, where “here I am, here they are,” and the goal is to prove something. Yet when I pause and turn upward, something shifts. “Not my will, but yours.” In that quiet prayer, in conscience, in the Word, I begin to align with God as I am given to see it. And from there, everything changes. Swedenborg teaches that true order begins with love to the Lord and flows outward into love toward the neighbor, and I see how this “up and out” movement reshapes the way we live. I can hold a perspective without making someone else wrong. I can speak hard truths from a peaceful place. Even power, prestige, and possessions lose their grip and become tools for serving rather than ends in themselves. “Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” These are not separate tasks but one living reality. So today I invite us to begin there. Go up first. Be still and listen. Then go out, not to win, but to connect, to build, to support. It sounds simple. It is not easy. But it is the path that leads us into real community, and into the higher angels of our nature.