Welcome to Spirit Expressing with Rev. Ed Townley

This is hard to admit – even from a distance of many years – but I had a really hard time learning to ride a bike when I was a kid. My paternal grandfather bought me one much too big for my – what? – six-year-old legs? (The rationale, of course, was that I would grow into it.) And my father, who was constantly engaged in a subtle but powerful competitive energy with his father, was determined to prove that his son could handle it. The negative energies are clearer now, in retrospect; but even then, I could sense that I was something of a pawn in a battle over approval, obedience and self-worth between two angry and self-righteous adult males.

So the bike-riding-learning lessons became agony. My father was impatient and demanding. The pressure was intense, and I felt totally inadequate to the task. I felt so high above the ground, and my feet could just barely stay on the pedals at the bottom of each cycle. My father would yell, and I would try not to cry. Then my mother would take my side and my parents would yell at each other for a while, and I would slink off to read a book or walk in the woods, pretending I was in a magic land secretly designed just for me.

After a while my father gave up in disgust. For some time I worked hard at trying to be sure that no one found out I couldn’t ride a bike. And then one day, alone in the yard and bored, I took the bike out of the garage, got on and rode off. No problem. It was hard, from my new perspective on the seat of the bike, to even remember what all the fuss had been about.

This wasn’t an isolated drama, of course. It defines a pattern I can recognize over and over again in my life – freezing up out of fear and anxiety, expending a lot of energy trying to hide my perceived inadequacies, and finally surrendering the fear enough to Just Do It.

All of which leads me to my first-ever blog. Blogging has been calling and tempting me for some time, but at some deep level I’ve been sure it would require dimensions of knowledge and secret codes that were not available to me. After all, I still feel a tiny shiver of fear every time I turn on my computer, sure that the arrogant machine has nothing but scorn for my feeble attempts to master its mysteries – or at least co-exist with them comfortably. (OMG, my computer has become my father!)

Over the past few years a number of people have tried to reassure me, and to guide me into the wonderful world of blogging. I was always too busy, too focused elsewhere, too something to pay attention, overcome my fear of inadequacy and learn the ropes.

What’s motivating me now, to be honest, is simply the fact that I have a lot I want to say! For a number of years speaking at Sunday services in Oregon, Chicago and Dallas – often doing two different talks each week – was my primary outlet. Teaching classes, writing website messages – even writing books and scripts – have all been satisfying. On my good days I can – and do – believe that my spiritual perceptions of this challenging human adventure we’re sharing have resonated with others and provided some measure of clarity and guidance.

And yet the spiritual pressures are lovingly but firmly intensifying today, everywhere we look in the world. We need to remember who we are, and what we agreed to accomplish in entering into this illusion of duality. We need to share resources and join forces and start putting universal spiritual principles into practice every day, every moment. A weekly timeout won’t do it anymore. Even a daily, meditative timeout is misguided, because we don’t need to take time out. We need to be fully spiritual in the throes of our human challenges, and we need to be fully human as we claim our spiritual powers.

I need to blog. I want to discuss – well – everything. I want to examine all of life from an awareness of the Hero’s Journey process we find described in the entirety of the Bible, and in our most beloved stories and legends, and in the Harry Potter books and the Star Wars movies and popular television shows and video games. (I don’t actually know anything at all about video games, but I’m willing to learn.)

We need to join forces, to combine our awakened sensibilities – and so we have created the internet to help fulfill that need. We need to see every part of life – politics, the economy, relationships, health, work – as the opportunities for positive spiritual choice they are intended to be. We need to sing and share and tell stories. We need to laugh at how silly we can be in our insistence on being powerless victims. We need to cry together at how much more painful and challenging this human being thing can become than we ever expected when we started out.

I know there’s a lot already out there – many blogs, many sites – and I look forward to discovering them and sharing them. And I know that my own combination of formative forces – from the universal principles of Unity through the Twelve Steps of recovery to a deep passion for the creative process as it expresses through our stories and our artists – can provide a useful perspective for analyzing our challenges, and for putting into practice the principles that will help us make sense of it all.

So welcome to Spirit Expressing: The Blog. I hope you’ll explore the entire Spirit Expressing website to hear our Monday evening messages, join our activities, go deeper with us into spiritual resources and share your own perceptions. And I hope you’ll find this blog to be an eccentric, sometimes irritating, sometimes entertaining travel guide to this great journey we share.