"Being inexperience has no power of walking in experience."
--Reuben Ellis
My brothers always say things that linger. They are all liscensed ministers with experiences in the "real" world as executives and entrepreneurs. Sunday during his sermon Reuben spoke these words and I jotted them down. As I pondered his words throughout the week it became increasingly clear that walking in inexperience creates experience. Is there another way of getting there?
But this is the power of inexperience: the ability to create experience through our experiences. Inexperience becomes experience through our experiences. In other words, being experience is our experiences created first by inexperience. Walk in your inexperience; it is the movement that matters.
So, worry not about being inexperience. Move!
6 comments:
You know, the thing that so many people don't acknowledge is that at some point in our lives, all of us were inexperienced!! That, in itself, should give us compassion and patience for those who have no experience. Great post, Judith, and sounds like it was a wonderful sermon by your brother! Blessings!
Marion - As I see it is not about rushing though inexprience but moving through it or in spite of it. The journey is important here that leads to experience. Your point about our unacknowledged inexperience is true. The amazing thing too is that this place of inexpreience is not a negative place and if we are smart we experience it often as we try new things regularly. This way we are always moving beyond our present state.
Thanks for your comment. It was indeed a great sermon. I was on my feet in agreement more than not, writing as I stood. In our church agreement is made verbally with standing and lots of hand waving. In our church the preachers powerfully speak instead of preach. There is a difference in the black church. There is also a lot of laughter. My brothers are pretty funny, having the Richard Pryor gene without the bad language, of course. :-) But they're great story tellers as Pryor was.
I had to laugh, Judith, before I made myself cry. We used to go to a small town Assembly of God church and most of the members were older folks and treated us as family members. When young, fervent evangelists would come through, the old folks would be waving their hands, amen-ing at the tops of their voices, jumping pews(!) and dancing in the aisles. This girl has done more than one happy dance around the church in praise & celebration. Oh, it was such a wonderful, special, innocent time in my spiritual life and I wouldn't trade it for a billion dollars! Sadly, after we moved away from that town, we never found another church with the same spirit. Unfortunately, we attended a church that ended up breaking our spirits and almost caused me to lose my faith, but not quite. I did lose my faith in organized religion, though. Long, sad story...
But I have fond memories of that time...of God speaking to me in dreams and visions and seeing healings and miracles and, well, it was a special time in my life. I do go on!!! Blessings, Judith. I'm really happy to know you!!
Marion - I understand well your experience as it was indeed mine growing up. Although, our family never ran around the church or did what some of the others did. My mother was a bit refine in that regard and we followed in her footsteps. She was not big on outward displays of anything. BUT there was plenty going on all around us. Believe me!
While we still sing, stand, clap, and do the whole call and response thing, it is a far cry from what we expreinced in our youth. Our current church is also non-denominational. The church that my great grandfather founded in Detroit was a Pentecostal church and later pastored by my uncle had some 10,0000 members.
My other great grandfather, by the way, founded one of the largest Pentecostal organizations in the world and had a church in Indiana with over 1500 members, half of which were white, in Indiana, the home of the KKK. When he passed in 1931 his procession was the cover of the local newspaper. He was a pastor, noted theologian, publisher, author, composer, cartoonist and world traveller. For the time, pehaps in any time, this was commendable indeed, especially for a black man.
I remember well the memories that you wrote of and the UPC and Assemblies of God came out of the organization that my great grandfather founded. But these white brethern no longer desired to be led by a black man and this caused a great riff. To this day there is not the integration that began back when my great grandfather began in ministry. But there remains hope that more fellowship between all people of faith will take place.
"Now abides faith, hope and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love."
You have all that you need, Marion.
Thanks for your memories.
Judith,
Inexperience is a marvelous thing. It can be unbiased, innovative, energetic, and many other things. Inexperience can be a performance, productivity, and profitability multiplier when we acknowledge it's valus and embrace it's potential.
Dave - I love the ideal of inexperience as potential.
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