I feel like I was bombarded with the word "enhancement" yesterday. I heard it on the radio about a million times. Came home to hear it on the T.V. Read it in magazines. Enhance your boobs, penis, face, hair, butt, house, car, sex life..you name it somehow it can be "enhanced."
I love the definition though. To enhance is "To make greater, as in value, beauty, or effectiveness."
I take "mood enhancing drugs" (anti depressants) and I am not sure if I would apply this word to them. I will say they help and I need them yet I feel like those words are best applied to "me" in a way that doesn't come from a pill bottle or a can or jar...or bigger and better faster things. For too many years I was ruled by things external. I was only enhanced if everyone liked me or if life was going well. I was only enhanced by things and the amount of them or so I thought. It really was a great big lie that always brought me around to the futility of it all.
Things are just things. To be "enhanced" to be made greater, as in value, beauty or effectiveness in a way that lasts for me has been over the last 20 years or so allowing my life to begin a journey of being guided by things spiritial. In doing that I can most assuredly say that my "soul" has been enhanced. I'm not coming out on top in better looks...bigger boobs, better house etc etc. I have been enhanced by knowing there is more than just this world. More than meets the eye.
Some would say I may need to increase my medication...but that is O.K...believe whatever "enhances" you and I figure we all get our reward and what I mean by that is it's a law of the universe that you reap what you sow. This is "our" law. The action in "reaping and sowing" is how we treat each other and our neighbor. Everyone is our neighbor. Treat the neighbor bad and impose your ideas and feelings in a negative way. You get what you get. Same in reverse. The divine on the other hand in my world treats us as if reaping and sowing is just part of a reason to love us more. That thought "enhances" me. All my mistakes, my tears and even those things that I consider "good" deeds are really all there in my decision making process and the divine uses all things to enhance my life.
It being the Christmas season the birth of Jesus has always fascinated me. Why come as a baby? Why create a story so unbelievable. The divine coming in a fragile baby and growing up the same way we all do. It makes no sense and yet it makes perfect sense...
I was reading the "birth announcement to the lowly shephards and I find it amusing that the divine would show up to those guys out leading the sheep. I've read many books and the divine has jumped out at me on all those pages but I don't think it has jumped out quite so clearly than in the birth announcement to those shephards. It actually started in the O.T. with glimmers of hope throughout that tangled mess of man's struggling with the divine.
Isiah says it "For to US a child is born, to US a son is given, and the government will be on HIS shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." This little baby is going to pack a punch. It's what Simeon and Anna were wating for. There were many who seemed to "get" that something was going to come and break the chains of being bound to "this" earth for your ehancement. Those shepherds heard it. They heard that the divine was about to touch down on earthly soil and bring something new into this world and into life as we know it. "Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God..everlasting Father....everlasting...Father. I've read a lot of religious books but none that describe the divine in such a way. A small baby who grows up and demonstrates the love of God through his own trials ....I get that...as you live life loved...you begin to understand. The enhancement doesn't come as a free pass, get it quick, fast food kind of thing that we in the Western world are so used to...
Millions of Churches peddle salavation as if it's a one time deal and can be lost. Salvation for this girl is a lifetime of trial and error in which as I mesh into the divine...who I am is and let me repeat WHO I AM IS enahanced by who we are created to be...in whatever state I find myself in it is ENHANCED by knowing that there is a Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God ...Everlasting Father....and he loves us all very much. Knowing this has been my salvation..
Salvation is ongoing...like the energizer bunny or like those old Timex watch commercials that said "takes a licking and keeps on ticking.. " So do I when I am powered by love. Everything in my life the good, the bad and the ugly is "salvaged" by love. It is what enhances me as human being and as fellow sojourner in this world.
Who I am is made better by who the divine is...I am enhanced...I am made greater, more beautiful and more effective by the knowing that the divine is totally enamoured with me. I don't have to like it but it isn't going to change it and in kowing that the final authority is love that came first to me in a story of a fragile human baby...I keep on going..my battery is charged. I am "enhanced..."
The next time you hear one of those commercials or read the worlds promises of enhancement I hope you remember what I say here. This world promises that there is something external that will always "enhance." In the world of the divine the enhancement comes from within and desires to not change ...repeat NOT CHANGE who YOU are....but by loving you just as you are...ENHANCES your life from the inside out. Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace indeed...
