Forming the Future Is a Journey

By Frances Lorenz

My thesis is that there is a direct relationship between our life journeys and Spirit. In the process of living our lives and evolving spiritually, we move through many dimensions of being. This inner journeying reflects in the world. “Forming the Future” implies an individual action that shapes the future. It contains the idea that an individual is not powerless to shape his or her own destiny. When I think of Forming the Future, I feel happy, and in saying those words, the mark is raised of all that is possible to achieve. As a mantra it is a postulate in my consciousness for the magic that happens when spirit, soul, and body are in complete alignment. It is a remembrance of an experience of total surrender to something greater than myself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796077995

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Frances Lorenz.

ISBN:      Hardcover     978-1-7960-7769-8

                 Softcover      978-1-7960-7770-4

                 eBook             978-1-7960-7799-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/12/2019

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

783696

Contents

Preface and Introduction

Part I

The Past as Prologue

Chapter 1    The Hero’s Journey: Forming the Future

Chapter 2    The Heroine Is Called

Chapter 3    Forming the Future with Ernest Holmes, Creation Spirituality Mystic

Chapter 4    Worldviews and Creation Spirituality

Chapter 5    The Deep Democracy of the Iroquois

Chapter 6    Community Partnerships

Chapter 7    Crisis and Opportunity

Part II

The Project Itself

Chapter 8    Chosen to Form the Future

Chapter 9    Sitting for an Idea

Chapter 10    Listening to Dissent

Chapter 11    Passing the Bonds

Chapter 12    Passionate Communication

Chapter 13    Reinventing Education

Part III

The Spiritual Underpinnings

Chapter 14    Powerful Intentions

Chapter 15    Visioning

Chapter 16    Open at the Top

Chapter 17    The Creative Process

Part IV

Applications to the Future

Chapter 18    Spiritual Democracy and Education

Chapter 19    Nudges from the Infinite

Resources

Appendix A

Stage 1: Get Started

Step 1

Who Else Should Be Involved?

Achieving Consensus

Appendix B

Appendix C

References

Preface and Introduction

Forming the Future Is a Journey

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Somewhere in the mist of prehistory, our ancient ancestors created rituals around the bones of deceased tribe members and told stories about great battles and triumphs, and then—with ceremony, flowers, and other provisions—sent those persons forward into the mystery of the afterlife. They found solace in those stories we call myths, which are as old as the human race and alive in the foundational accounts of the life of Jesus and the tale of Buddha’s enlightenment.

Myths, from the Greek mythos, meaning word spoken with authority, show us what is important in the inner life. We each have a personal mythology that tells how life got to be the way it is for us.

Most myths can be condensed to a quest for the identification of the existential call, viewing it as a conflict of opposites and then finding a resolution that creates happiness. Just as the intellect solves problems in the physical world, myths are structured so that the mind can find meaning in and make sense of the world. Forming the Future is the name of a collective process I created to transform public education. It is also both my personal myth and revelation. It is the story of journeying through many dimensions of being and spiritual systems over a lifetime.

My thesis is that there is a direct relationship between our life journeys and Spirit. In the process of living our lives and evolving spiritually, we move through many dimensions of being. This inner journeying reflects in the world. Forming the Future implies an individual action that shapes the future. It contains the idea that an individual is not powerless to shape his or her own destiny. When I think of Forming the Future, I feel happy, and in saying those words, the mark is raised for all that is possible to achieve. As a mantra, it is a postulate in my consciousness for the magic that happens when spirit, soul, and body are in complete alignment. It is a remembrance of an experience of total surrender to something greater than myself.

Someone once commented that in leading many selfless projects over the years, everyone else had seemed to get a reward, but I had left myself out of the good that was available. Somehow I was not benefiting from what I was creating for others. I had to examine this. Was this true?

Later, a friend asked me, Why don’t you form your own future? While it might seem odd, I have to say that my future has always formed me. There has been a spiritual calling and protection for my life that guided me to every job, to every experience. I have always been called into my work, from my first job in Head Start, offered by a friend in Del Valle, into my position of special assistant to the superintendent of schools in Austin, Texas. There I directed the multimillion-dollar Forming the Future program, which resulted in the restructuring of the school system, the passage of a $210-million bond issue, and the involvement of over twenty thousand people. Later, I was called by Al Mustin to my job as church administrator at the Church of Today, a Unity Church modeled after Jack Boland’s church in Warren, Michigan, which initiated my path toward the ministry.

Given the way my life has unfolded, I know Spirit is forming my future. If my work is not satisfying, if I am no longer supposed to be there, I will be called to my next adventure. I have learned that in those few cases when I thought I myself was forming my future, Spirit had something else in mind. As a result, my life is very rich and fulfilling. I really do not want for anything. I would like to have a little more money for study and travel and remodeling the house, but beyond that I am happy watching people discover the God within themselves. That brings me deep joy.

In May of 1981, I was reading about the history of the Austin public schools and learned of an event held in Pease Park to celebrate the first year of its formation as a school district: parents, teachers, and administrators gathered together for a picnic in the park. What a great way to celebrate the centennial of Austin I.S.D. As I explored the idea further, it became apparent that Pease Park was too small to hold such a gathering. I was aware of school improvement projects, the reaction of parents to recent desegregation orders, and the need to unify the community toward a common good, what some call spiritual democracy. An idea began to take shape. Why not find a way to bring together parents, teachers, and community leaders to work collaboratively in creating significant improvements in their schools, not only of facilities, but of the curriculum too? Little did I realize at the onset that I would be the one chosen to bring this project of spiritual democracy to fruition. The name Forming the Future was the invention of the new superintendent, and when he selected me to execute the project, neither of us suspected that it would have a life of its own.

As I revisited the project I will share in this book, I learned that Forming the Future was an allegory for my personal journey, my work in the community, and my spiritual revelation in the process. Hildegard of Bingen describes this work as a person becoming a flowering orchard: [The Person] that does good work is indeed this orchard bearing good fruit … Whatever humanity does with its deeds in the right or left hand permeates the universe (Fox, ed. 1983, 33).

Often our call in life presents itself metaphorically in symbols and repetitions, like motifs in symphonies. The metaphor of trees presents itself repeatedly in my spiritual formation: the tree of my childhood fantasy; the Kabbalah tree of life; the ceiba tree of the ancient Maya that grows down through nine dimensions and upward through thirteen; the Great Tree of Peace of our country’s native ancestors, the Iroquois, that inspired unity and communication among six nations; the Celtic communion with trees, the deep roots of suffering; the roots of New Thought as a philosophy, a faith, a way of life that extends back thousands of years. All these trees create the flowering orchard Hildegard of Bingen envisioned and I aspire to become.

I was called into ministry in 1989. I attended Religious Science seminary and have served as a minister since 1994. Over the last twenty-five years, I have studied Creation Spirituality, integrating it into my own mystical tradition of Religious Science. About the time I initiated Forming the Future, I read Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. I knew I was one of those faces on a sacred journey of learning about how I was rooted in God. For the first time I realized I was the heroine of my own life. This has evolved to an understanding that I am the heroine of God’s life and that the Divine Feminine expresses through me.

My own spiritual journey places me clearly in the last third of my life, and I know that the choices I make now are important ones. Thomas Merton’s advice that before doing anything we should consult our death makes sense today. The question I ask myself is Does this project resonate so deeply within me that I want to expend a large part of what remains of my life’s energy in dedication to it? It seems there is less time available to experiment, but all the same I want to experience joy in living life to the full. Today I can say without a doubt that God is, and I can also say that I am. I know that God works in, through, and as me. That realization alone gives me deep fulfillment.

Most humans experience four distinct phases in the development of consciousness. At first, we feel a sense of victimhood, that we have been abandoned by or separated from God. Then seeking a way out of suffering, we learn some spiritual principles and tools, and develop enough self-confidence to work on the mastery of the material structures of life as Abraham Maslow describes in his hierarchy of needs: physiological: food, water, sleep, shelter, sex, homeostasis. Then we move to safety, love, self-esteem, and self-actualization where we experience fulfillment and happiness. In his later years, Maslow found another level he called transcendence. He equated this with the desire to reach the infinite. Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos (Abraham Maslow, Farther Reaches of Human Nature, New York 1971, p. 269).

By mastering the stable structures in the physical realm, we are then able to embody a fuller understanding of universal principles on the cosmic level. We learn to surrender and let the divine move through us and then in its most mystical phase ultimately as us.

It is in this servant consciousness that the mystical life is lived—after years of persistence, study, service, and meditation. Slowly, there is less reactivity, more forgiveness, and—ultimately—conscious oneness with the divine. It is a gentle knowingness that is graceful and in the flow. Recently, a friend came to mind in my meditation. She had gone to ministerial school in the early seventies, but when the school discovered she was African American, they would not let her live in the dormitory. She had left, with two other black students, deeply wounded by the experience. In my meditation, I saw her healed and returning to her original career choice. I had a clear revelation of her life. Later, she called me and said that she realized the only thing that mattered to her was living for God. She wanted to go dedicate her life to spiritual work. More and more, it is not mythos but revelation that is showing up in my life.

The awareness of God moving through us and as us is best gained in the silence and the pleroma or fullness of Spirit that is accessed in silence. In this book, I present how Spirit formed my future. There is a direct relationship between our life journeys and the development of consciousness. How do we speed up this growth? How do we awaken to our life’s purpose? All the tools of spiritual practice—study of sacred texts, sermons, music, dance, chanting, ritual, meditation, and retreats—contribute to an enhanced awareness. As we live life more fully, we become more aware of many levels of consciousness, and with the expansion of consciousness, we discern that all things work together to create our future.

Consciousness converts possibility into actuality, which creates what we see manifested in our lives. Because my individuality is part of the whole, I, too, have causal potency that shows up in my creativity and acts of free will. When individuals take action in the world, they act with causal power. A greater future is only enhanced by union of the self with nondual consciousness.

When I was very young, I knew my purpose had something to do with communication and leadership. Sometimes side roads would attract me for one reason or another, but they did not work out because they did not lead to my soul’s purpose. Today when opportunities do not come to fruition, I am grateful. I realize that Spirit is forming my future again. By adopting a position of nonresistance to whatever happens, I form my future and cocreate with Spirit.

Forming the Future placed me on a very large stage. I had to speak to audiences of hundreds of people about the future of the Austin public schools. But I had no inkling I was destined to become a minister until, after one of my speeches, an elementary school principal said, Girl, you are a preacher! In Forming the Future, I sent messages out to thousands of people with media appearances and large group presentations. The revelations I received about visionary leadership, faith, the magic of working with Spirit, using a beginner’s mind, visioning, cocreation, detachment, trust, engagement, and choosing carefully are some of the topics developed in this book that emerged in developing the future as I saw it formed.

Just as I have used spiritual principles to inform my development of Forming the Future, I have applied these spiritual principles and archetypal patterns I derived from this project to my life. I hope my journey will inspire you to make a difference in your life. I hope you will believe it is possible to form the future of anything you care about. Most importantly, to become the change you wish to see in the world, forming the future of your own soul is essential. It is my pleasure to share my conviction that spiritual practice and democracy are essential components of the path to transcendence. It’s