Legacy of Love Series Part 1 with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:00] The following talk was given at Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado. Please visit our website at MileHiChurch.org I'm so looking forward to sharing a message that begins a series and the truth is that we had a whole group of people

[00:00:16] visioning about this series quite a while ago because this is an annual series that we do called Adventure and Prosperity and we came up with a series title Legacy of Love Through the Visioning process and through Reverend Josh and myself talking and came up with this great plan

[00:00:32] and then everything changed. And it became a time to really evaluate is this series and the whole premise of it still relevant. And as we reflected on it and as I reflected on it, when I began to realize that this whole series is about Legacy

[00:00:48] building a legacy and looking at the meaning of our life and it seems to me that when life gets really dramatic and when the things that we know, the structures that we know exist fall apart or things changed dramatically or life changes dramatically

[00:01:07] as it has right now many of us find ourselves in a more reflective place and that reflective place sometimes includes a very important question what am I doing with this life that I have? What is the meaning of this life? What am I contributing to this life?

[00:01:26] What is the predominant way that I am making a difference in the world because I think that we all in the depth of our being hope that when it's all complete when we're at the end of our life we will be able to look back

[00:01:43] and say, I did make a difference. I have a lot of life mattered. My being here contributed to humanity in some way shape or form and so it seems like with the changes that we're going through with so many of what we would call normal structures falling away

[00:02:02] so many things that we do and we're about falling away it's a great chance to visit that and so we're going to do that for this whole month of May in different ways looking at the ways that different aspects of our life

[00:02:15] help us to build legacy, to build a life that matters. When I contemplate these questions, I often ask myself to take a test and I've shared this test here on the mile-high stage before with those of you who have been with us

[00:02:28] here at Mile High Church and I'd like to share it again. It's a test that asks us to compare a couple things. For example, it invites me to ponder things like, okay, who won the Super Bowl this past year?

[00:02:43] Who won the best Oscar for the best actor or actress, best director? Who won the Nobel Peace Prize recently? Who has won the Miss America contest or whatever those contests are about beauty and accomplishment and all of these things are wonderful aspects

[00:03:07] of our life but when I think about them, depending on my interest I may or may not actually remember who the winners of those contests were. Contrast that to questions like this, who's believed in me even when I had a hard time believing in myself?

[00:03:29] A name's immediately arise. Face is immediately arise. My mother, my wonderful husband, Roger Teal and Erica Teal, Reverend Josh Reeves, the people that I work with and hang out with. The names just flow through my being easy, quick, faces of clarity. Who has believed in me?

[00:03:51] I like this question. Even when I am imperfect and sometimes behave badly, same cast of characters rise forth, believing in me. Who do I know would be there for me no matter what? Same names, same beings, rise forth easily and effortlessly.

[00:04:13] And who supports me in living my best and being my best? When I ask myself these questions, I think the reason that these names and faces come so quickly is because the heart is the seat of where the legacy of living is built from.

[00:04:34] The heart that is the core of the love within us, that is the essence of us. When I look back and imagine myself at the end of my life looking back, what I hope will be there when I get to my last day on this planet Earth

[00:04:51] is that I will be able to feel satisfied that I know that the people in my life knew that they were seen and they were loved. It won't matter what awards I've won, it won't matter as much the things that I've accomplished.

[00:05:10] They'll matter some, but ultimately I think that moment of stepping out of this world into the next will be filled with the greatest amount of satisfaction that I can say that I came here and I loved well and people knew it.

[00:05:26] And I gave my gifts and I showed up and I did my very best. And as I've walked with people through that journey, as I've been with people in their last moments and been with them

[00:05:40] for maybe the last meeting I would have with them before they crossed over, I've noticed over these many years of ministry that none of them are obsessed about that I make enough money, that I do enough, that I work hard enough,

[00:05:53] that I work enough hours, that it's all about the heart at that moment, the softening of the heart and the awareness of who I am at a deeper level. And so we then have a chance now as we are being more reflective to consider the possibility

[00:06:13] that we could create a life of deep profound legacy. Now when I looked up Legacy in the Dictionary, I found a number of different meanings, some are more technical than others, but basically Legacy is a gift of a request that's handed down

[00:06:33] in doubt or conveyed from one person to another. It is something decendable one comes into possession of that legacy because it's transmitted inherited or received from a predecessor. And I think today that I'd like to explore with us in the beginning of this series

[00:06:53] two distinct ways that we find ourselves focused on our legacy, our legacy of life. Now often we ministers here at Mile High Church will lean into acronyms to support us as we share the talking points and the teaching points of our message

[00:07:11] because we've been mentored so well by Dr. Roger, and because we're very creative and I will say I don't have an acronym today. And so I created my two talking points and they are best probably remembered and embodied if one does them with a French accent.

[00:07:31] So I may become the minister who uses accents from my talking points. I would be my legacy of talking points contribution to Mile High Church. So one must talk is the one is French today to understand my talking points.

[00:07:44] I won't talk with a French accent to the whole talk. So I took the word Legacy and I broke it down. So the first one that we get to look at is Legacy. Let go see. Notice that the word in the middle of that is ego.

[00:07:59] And we have had many definitions of ego over the years. What this talking point is about is the challenge that we fall into many times of making an attempt to build our legacy on the structures and forms that are outside of us.

[00:08:17] Some people have defined ego as edging God out. There's an acronym for us. Or the ego can be defined often as the part of us that distinguishes itself as separate from other people.

[00:08:31] Now this in and of itself I don't think is a horrible thing for us to do. Because part of the joy of coming into this planet and onto this Earth experience is to experience the distinctiveness of what it is like to be me.

[00:08:46] The unique being that I am, my unique DNA, my unique personality, my unique gifts and talents, my unique relationships, and the universe we believe that at the heart of the universe is what we call unity and diversity. And so our diversity and

[00:09:03] the ways that were different or the ways that were distinctive from other beings, they're not all bad, not all bad at all. However, when it comes to building a life, the greatest challenge with legacy is the temptation to have

[00:09:22] that aspect of our life be the sole contributor, the sole measure and temperature gauge of how well am I doing at building a legacy that I want to build. And we know that we're doing this if we're spending way too much

[00:09:40] time doing doing. If we're overdoing, if we're forcing the forms of life to be such that people see them and we get acknowledged from them. If we are obsessing about making sure people notice us or notice what we've done or

[00:09:59] notice what we've accomplished and that we get a huge amount of our own sense of self from the acknowledgement of others. And again, while acknowledgement from others is not a bad thing, it's a great thing. It is not the thing that truly

[00:10:16] builds legacy. I'm aware that in this life it's very unlikely that I'm going to leave this life having solved the cancer, cured cancer. It's very unlikely that I'm going to leave this life as much as I would like to solving the

[00:10:32] ecological problems of our planet and making sure that we have clean air and clean water for future generations. It's very unlikely that that anyone's going to name a school or a college after me. All of that is great stuff.

[00:10:46] Wonderful legacy, yet is not truly that that deep in sense of satisfaction and connection. There's something deeper that's called for. It's all of the fun that we get to do and be and the things we get to do in life and something deeper

[00:11:10] and it requires of us to surrender and become willing to let go of our constant attempts to force the world and force things in our conversation earlier. It was like as a mother recognizing, I can't force my child to become something that the greatest

[00:11:28] joy is to allow and to see the unfolding energy of my child. I've been watching shows and reading biographies recently, most notably of Judy Garland and Natalie Wood. And hearing the stories of their mothers and not that their mothers were bad mothers or horrible mothers

[00:11:48] is just that their mothers were very clear that they were pushing their children towards a certain life and that push became so controlling that there was a disconnect that occurred. And so it's important for us to realize as we mother ourselves and as we mother our children

[00:12:06] and as we mother and be the creative divine force of our own life that we surrender to some degree and allow a deepening sense of the truth of who we are to emerge. There's some really

[00:12:21] beautiful lyrics from Melissa Atheridge that I love in one of her songs and she says, mothers tell your children, be quick you must be strong, life is full of wonder, love is never wrong.

[00:12:36] Remember what they taught you how much of it was fear, refused to hand it down the legacy stops here. What if today for each one of us the legacy of building our life

[00:12:52] solely on the world of form and on how controlling we are and how much we're doing ended and we could create more balance, what would it take? And so my second point with this,

[00:13:05] the point that I think is really at the heart of beginning to build a legacy of love in our life is another word that we may say with a French accent, L'essol-l'essie, L'essol-l'essie.

[00:13:19] It is a surrender into that divine feminine that soulful place within us that is the truth of who we are, that is the true sense of what seeks expression through us and that a life that thrives

[00:13:35] in every way is a life that finds its balance in this legacy and so-l'essol-l'essie that there's balance in that dance of unity and diversity. And there's an ability to sense the depth and we stop the legacy of overdoing and overthinking and overclaiming and instead find ourselves

[00:14:00] in a place of deep surrender because here's the truth about that. Legacy, as I said earlier, had to do it has to do with inheriting. Here's something that we believe that we've inherited and indeed great teachers throughout the ages have taught us this. Jesus taught this. Our founder

[00:14:19] Ertus Holmes taught this. We teach this. Your inheritance, my inheritance, is that of the divine. The divine I am as us and that when we go into that deep soulful place within us

[00:14:38] and we have the audacity to claim those words I am what begins to emerge from us is a deeper sense of the desires of our heart and the gifts that we've come here to give. And it

[00:14:52] takes sometimes great courage and a great breaking away from the world of form to claim those gifts, to really deepen into those gifts, to have the spiritual courage to stand in the truth of who we are.

[00:15:07] As I watch our culture evolve, I will say that I have gathered great inspiration from our LGBTQ community to watch them struggle for many years and begin to experience a greater sense of themselves and to be willing to become open and to dance forward sometimes into coming out

[00:15:29] in situations that could be dangerous for them or in relationships where there could be a loss of love, a transgendered person choosing to follow their souls desire towards what seems right for them. Great courage and sometimes I think the culture around being who have walked this walk is

[00:15:51] struggling because we all have our own coming out to do. We all have our own authentic self that is seeking expression through us and we have to find the same kind of courage to stand up and

[00:16:05] allow that divine inheritance within us to show up, to show up and so it takes reflection. It takes meditation. It takes quiet. It takes an inner listening. It takes a willingness to go into

[00:16:20] the stillness and the silence of our beingness and hear that call of life that urges us forth into our magnificence. I'm getting ready to teach a workshop starting this week with the wonderful

[00:16:35] work of Brennae Brown who I think is a great teacher of authenticity and we're going to starting Tuesday night explore her book Rising Strong. But one of the things I love about Brennae's

[00:16:46] work is she really teaches people through this work to find those inner values that mean the most, to find those values that are true, true for each one of us and talks to us about there's usually

[00:17:00] one or two, there's not ten, there's one or two and that to me has been some of the graceed greatest soul work of my life. To find that inner value that means the most for me,

[00:17:13] it is love as I said earlier and what it then demands and sometimes the reason we can be skeptical about that is that we know a lot of people and companies and business who say they live

[00:17:23] at this level of high values and then they're not authentic about it or they do things or they behave in ways or they say things that are not in alignment with their values and indeed that can and does happen

[00:17:36] to all of us at times. But the thing that begins to happen is that with the deep recognition of our soul a sea comes a clarity about my values, I value love and therefore if I had a conversation

[00:17:53] or a moment in my life where I can say I was not in alignment with love. I know my work to continue to build the legacy of the life I seek to build, I have to go back and clean it up,

[00:18:09] deal with it, figure it out, pray about it, do something because my value of love constantly pushes me forward in this world of form, in my laigo sea and in my la solace. And so I invite us to begin

[00:18:26] to do this work, to begin to open up this week. Next week as we come together we're going to really dig into okay once I've gotten some clarity and some of us may have it now and some of us may not

[00:18:40] but this week is a week to deepen into that clarity once I've got this clarity. What are some of the best tools for me to really show up as me and how do I do that in a way that feels safe

[00:18:52] and authentic and powerful for me, in a way that really serves me. And before I pray I'd like to close we have a slide of a great quote from Brenne Brown. She says at the end of the day at the end of the week

[00:19:06] at the end of my life I want to be able to say that I contributed more than I criticized. I want to say that too. And so we can say that as we lean into and call forth the legacy

[00:19:21] of our life. Let's pray together. I invite us to go within and to step into this deep and space, these questions and possibilities, this energy that swirls around and through us and as us,

[00:19:36] it is the divine, the divine dance of life that is calling each one of us into our greatness, into our gifts, into singing the song of our own beingness, powerfully and joyfully. In the standing powerfully and lovingly in the truth of who we are,

[00:19:56] in walking forward in our life in ways that take courage, that take inner connectedness, that take a deep listening. And so what I declare and accept from this place of

[00:20:13] connectivity that I know is the truth of each one of us is that this week brings forth for each of us, a greater understanding of this, a greater wisdom that just rises forth and begins to have its way.

[00:20:25] Some of us will do this and find this by a deeper conscious reflection. Some of us will be moving through our life and suddenly we'll feel the bubbling up of that great remembrance of a deeper truth

[00:20:39] of who we are and what we're here to be. But we allow ourselves to feel the alignment and the movement and the call of this series and of this community to each one of us in being

[00:20:53] and living a great legacy of love. As the late great Dr. Wayne Dyer would remind us all the time, we choose not to die with our music still in us. And so we allow this week, the music of our own

[00:21:07] soul, the music of our own life begin to play. Loudly, clearly, joyfully, we hear that song. We begin to dance to that song and move to the beat of our own soul, to the beat of our own heart,

[00:21:23] the beat of our greatness. It is safe. We can do this, we can reflect upon this and we continue this journey together in love and light. I'm so grateful. I am so grateful because we can see

[00:21:37] how so many beings in life, so many examples of people who stood up and said yes to their calling, to their gifts, to their talents, to their soul and we ride on the energy of those truths

[00:21:52] and those lights and feel our own soul in alignment. And in great gratitude for this prayer, I simply say thank you. I release this now into the action of that law that makes it so

[00:22:06] and allow it to be and allow it to move forward into creation in love and light we let it be and so it is. Amen. Thank you for listening to the Mylhycheurge podcast. This podcast

[00:22:20] is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you. If you'd like to make a donation, please visit us at Mylhycheurge.org. Have a fabulous day.