Forgive Yourself and Begin Again

Photo courtesy of Blake Lasater 

My hope for today is that everyone will love each other. Whether it's your child, spouse, friends, or strangers, just love them. A rather well-known seer once advised us that it's easy to love those who love you, but to love your enemies, to bless those who persecute you, that is the difficult task. This advice is particularly pertinent today, when it seems almost everyone is determined to make someone an enemy. A dear friend told a story about herself in which she was terse with a loved one over a small act which made no difference in the scheme of life. During these days of high emotions and hateful rhetorical speech, we may become ensnared in the collective turmoil. So let's be aware that we might not be feeling our own emotions, but rather those being sold to us by people who will benefit from our angst and division. Whatever the case may be, let’s just love. It's not easy to understand each other under the best of circumstances, and with great unrest afoot, it can seem almost impossible. But it is not. Sometimes we may falter, but forgive yourself and begin again. We always get a second chance to be kind...

“Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, ‘My brother, choose again.’”
—A Course in Miracles T-31.VIII.3:1-2

“Students are advised by the author to be charitable and kind, not only towards differing forms of religion and medicine, but to those who hold these differing opinions. Let us be faithful in pointing the way through Christ, as we understand it, but let us also be careful always to ‘judge righteous judgment,’ and never to condemn rashly.”
—Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 444:13-19