When most people hear the word Fiat, they probably think of the Italian automobile. But fiat is an English word of Latin origin that refers to a creative, authoritative command. Its meaning makes me think of Captain Picard’s order on Star Trek: Make it so.
The 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass used the word in this statement:
I do not despair of this country … The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force.
It was 1852, eighteen years before the Civil War and fourteen years after he escaped from slavery. The slave population was growing rapidly. And yet Douglass expressed his faith in the United States of America.
No doubt, Douglass was aware of the Latin Vulgate Bible’s rendition of the emergence of light on the first day of Creation, fiat lux. Centuries later, William Tyndale would translate those words as Let there be light.
Frederick Douglass was living in America during her infancy. It was only seventy-six years since the American Declaration of Independence had been written and signed in 1776:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Thomas Jefferson, who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was a slaveholder, as were one-third of the signers of the document. And still, Douglass did not despair of this country. He had profound faith in the fiat of the Almighty, which people were awakening to.
We can speak of America’s faults, yet there was a promise—a dream of what humanity could be that was awakened in the hearts and minds of the colonists. That promise has yet to be fulfilled. Yet the power of it is at work underneath the surface of our culture, even today.
The Founding Fathers saw the failures of religion and politics in Europe. The pilgrims who came to America wanted freedom from religious constraints, and the colonists at the time of the American Revolution sought freedom from political tyranny. They had great faith in the Creator, and not so much in organized religion. They wanted to protect individual faith from the control of institutional religion, especially religion associated with politics.
While the focus of their work was to create democracy in America, they were aware of the global implications of what they were doing. They circulated the Declaration of Independence in Europe, where it was translated into many languages.
Years later, in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln would reflect on the global significance of the United States’ experiment in democracy this way:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
The Gettysburg Address, 1863
In his recent book The Air We Breathe: How We Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality, Glen Scrivener makes these comments regarding what Jesus of Nazareth introduced to the world two thousand years ago:
Compassion describes the life of Christ, and it’s meant to describe the life of the Christian. But these were incredibly strange ideas to Roman ears. We might be familiar with the idea that God loves the world (whether or not we believe in God or his love), but the historian, Larry Hurtado calls the notion, “utterly strange, even ridiculous”…in the Roman era. We take for granted the idea of a “love ethic,” but historians “simply do not know of any other Roman-era religious group in which love played this important role in discourse or behavioral training.”
The Founding Fathers didn’t necessarily see America as the fulfillment of Jesus’ teaching of love for God and for others. And yet they sought to establish a country and a form of government that allowed people to fulfill what had yet to be fulfilled through Christianity. They sought to create a nation in which the values of compassion and equality that were born out of Jesus’ love ethic could thrive. In that sense, they envisioned a fulfillment of the message that Jesus had brought.
This is how the Christmas angel declared the promise of what Jesus was bringing to the whole world:
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
Luke 2:10
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14
These words echo the promise given to Abraham, the founding patriarch of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam:
…in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Genesis 12:3
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
Genesis 22:18
Abraham lived in a primitive world, yet here was this promise. Abraham awakened to this reality within himself and present in all people, but often dormant. A person may be asleep to it. But anyone’s somnolence doesn’t change this reality. It just keeps it from being fulfilled through them.
Just as with the promise of America, and the promise of Jesus’ message, this great promise has yet to be fulfilled. But the promise didn’t go anywhere. The fiat of the Almighty has not yet spent its force. It still rolls like thunder in the heart and soul of humankind. No ignorance, no slumber, and no lie can stop it.
The Bible tells of this original promise being invested in humanity:
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7
As long as that breath is present in us, the promise of who we are as the human race continues. While this promise has yet to be fully realized, we can fulfill it together. We can allow the evolutionary urge that holds the potential of our being to emerge and express itself.
That urge calls us to co-create, as human beings, with the Creator—to bring light into the world. We’re here to illuminate the heavens of human experience with what is true. In a world flooded with lies and half-truths, we have the opportunity to know and share real knowledge of who we are individually and together. We can realize Creation’s wisdom and pattern in our life journey, shared with others.
How do we attain such knowledge? Through grace. Perhaps it is not a word commonly used among Emissaries of Divine Light. What does it mean? It is oneness with the Creator, becoming a co-creator amidst all the ignorance of the world and the creative challenges we face.
At Sunrise Ranch, we just held a one-day program, Primal Spirituality 7: Grace. Grace is being immovable in the face of change. Knowing grace allows us to bring the ordering power of love into every situation, whether near or far, personal or global. We’re here to embody the power of creation, to hold the vibration of grace and knowledge. Our programs aim to help people activate their capacities, aligning themselves with the divine impulse of Creation. Fiat lux. Let there be light.
As Emissaries of Divine Light, we bring the wholehearted expression of light to the world. Our industriousness doesn’t create this light—it shines forth from a source deep within us. So our work is divinely inspired activity that reminds the world of the promise that is breathed into us every day. We illuminate the ordering power of love that we share as awake human beings.
The words that follow are my expression of the light of love I feel for anyone who walks this path of awakened awareness. And so they are written to you, and to all such people. Feel free to own these words as your own if they speak for you too.
I am grateful to walk this life with you. We are bound by the greatest of purpose, the ultimate mission, and the highest love.
Thank you for your service, for the light you bring into the world, for your creativity, compassion, illumination, steadfastness, initiative, endurance, tenacity, and devotion.
Thank you for your revelation of divine character, your openness, responsiveness, and for the spirit of the Most High that moves through you.
Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for standing up and not standing down, for living out the chapters of the Book of Life that are waiting to be fulfilled. Thank you for contributing to our collective destiny, our collective greatness, born of the Most High.
We surround all hearts with enlightened love. Let there be light.
So may it be, and so it is now, deeply known by each of us as we awaken to it, lifted to the Most High.
Aum-en