Big thoughts on little ideas of Palm Sunday, ancient Jerusalem, and the moment we stop giving our power away
Hosana — and What It Actually Means
Palm Sunday tells one of the great stories of collective hope — and collective disappointment. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crowds threw palms before him and cried out, “Hosana, hosana!”
Did you know that hosana literally translates to save me — save us?
Here was a people ground down by Roman occupation, carrying centuries of oppression, and suddenly there was this luminous figure arriving like royalty. Of course they wanted him to fix it. Of course they wanted him to vanquish their enemies, clear the field, make it all better.
But Jesus didn’t claim the kind of power they were asking for. He stepped away from worldly kingship because he knew a larger truth. And when the crowd realized he wasn’t going to be their political savior, their hope collapsed.
“Hosana” is the cry of a people who believe their power comes from something outside themselves.
Sound familiar? War. Gas prices. Economic ills. The political chasm that has us sorting people into camps. It’s easy to keep waiting for someone — or something — to fix it. We’ve been practicing that pattern for millennia.
The Trouble with Small Thinking
Here’s what I know about the power of Spirit: it does not discriminate. It gives of Itself freely to all who will drink from Its chalice — to all who will accept the good that comes to them and allow it to move through them.
The only thing that gets in the way is our small thinking.
When we mistake a temporary condition — a diagnosis, a difficult relationship, a financial season — for the whole truth of what’s happening, we stop being open to possibility. We think the thought, then we think it again. We do the thing, then we do it again. Sometimes we end up marrying the same person again. (They change faces, but it’s the same dynamic.) Sometimes we take the same job with the same boss in a different body.
None of that is fate. It’s consciousness. And consciousness can change.
“There is no condition that has more power than the movement of Source through an open mind and an open heart.”
I was in a conversation recently with someone I love, and I caught myself falling right into the collective groove of fear and reaction. I had to stop myself mid-sentence and say: I have to change my thinking. I’m stuck in a current of consciousness that isn’t serving this situation.
And that’s the practice. Not pretending the hard thing isn’t hard. But catching ourselves before we get all the way down that groove — snapping the rubber band, so to speak — and choosing a new thought.
You Signed Up for This
Consider leaning into possibility, courting it, actually making room for it.
Because the invitation is to allow pure imagination to guide us. It’s stepping into the willingness to make room for an idea that isn’t yet visible in the material world.
The trick — and it does take some hutzpah — is to not be seduced by separation. Us and them. Left and right. Mine and yours. Separation is the consciousness behind the “hosana” cry. Oneness is what makes new possibility …. well possible.
I have people I love on every side of every divide, and I believe most of them Have intentions. They just disagree — sometimes loudly, sometimes painfully — about how to get there. But when I start from a place of oneness, something shifts. Not in them, necessarily. In me.
You’ve probably felt this. When you do your inner work, when you shift your thinking, that person who was driving you crazy doesn’t necessarily change — but the eyes you see them with do. The heart you meet them with does.
If someone’s annoying you and you change — did they get nicer? No. You changed. And you cannot help but affect the people around you when you’re willing to do your part.
Here’s the honest truth: if you’re reading these words some part of you has already signed up for this work. You’ve signed up to be a way-shower. A light bearer. Someone who is willing to choos differently, one thought and one relationship and one conversation at a time.
That’s not a small thing. In fact, that’s the whole thing.
What We Are Looking For, We Are Looking With
Ernest Holmes, founder of Centers for Spiritual Living and author wrote:
“We arrive at a consciousness of unity only in such a degree as we see that what we are looking for, we are looking with, and we are looking at.”
Read that again. Slowly.
The thing we are seeking — love, wholeness, freedom, possibility — is not out there waiting to be found. It is the very awareness we are looking with. It is already present. It has always been present.
You are not waiting to be saved. You are already the answer to a prayer.
✦ Affirmation ✦
I am a possibili-tarian.
I release the idea that I need to be ‘saved’ and claim the power that lives within me.
I choose Oneness. I choose possibility.
I am the yes that the Universe is waiting to fulfill.
