Gratitude For Books and People Who Read Them

Today I would like to express gratitude for my bookclub. In the past two-plus decades, we have read more than 200 books, and many (if not most) of those books I would not have picked up had it not been for the suggestions of these Novel Women. We met today for our “retreat”, which we do at the end of the year to choose books for the next year. We also take care of a few business matters pertaining to the Little Red Bookshelf, which we have placed at a local food bank. This fabulous project supplies new books for children to read, keep, and perhaps cherish. This group of women have been such a blessing to each other. In times of trials and the sharing of joyful events, we are there for each other. Today we passed phones around the dining table with the newest photos of grandchildren, as we all marveled at their beauty. Through the years, our friendships have grown and encompassed us all in loving care. Thank you, dearest friends, for the good books, the good times, and all the beauty which has come from knowing you.

“Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful. Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom. Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought...”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 248:3-11

“In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to make your brothers seem different. Without the values from the past, you would see them all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be when you perceive only the present.”
A Course in Miracles T-15.V.8:2-5

Similar Beginnings; Different Outcomes

Two men, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Actor Will Smith, have had a number of similar experiences in their lives, with differing results. Both of these men were raised attending Catholic schools, both had violent father-figures in their lives, and both had ah-ha moments with regard to racism. Judge Thomas was going to Holy Cross seminary when Martin Luther King was killed. While hearing the comments made by his all-white classmates, he walked away from his family’s dream of his becoming the first black priest in Savannah. While in school, Will Smith realized that he could never be good enough, no matter how hard he tried. But he had his eye-opening moment while bagging ice in his family’s ice-making business. He was listening to the radio and hearing the top 100 songs of the year. He was lamenting the fact that he wasn’t in the top 100 when the #1 song came on and it was his! Everything changed for him in that moment. He said it was “the joy in being right about me”. While Will Smith was realizing how playful the universe is and how happy he was being a part of it, Clarence Thomas was plotting ways to get even with people who had treated him badly. Without delving into their lives more thoroughly, I dare say one of these men was able to process childhood trauma and one was not. May we all learn to work through fear and return to Love.

“Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious — as Life eternally is — can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 495:15-2

“Would you not go through fear to love? For such the journey seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. For your completion lies in truth, and nowhere else. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the call for help that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He loves you, wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love is wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And God has never forgotten what makes Him whole. In your completion lie the memory of His Wholeness and His gratitude to you for His completion. In His link with you lie both His inability to forget and your ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all the Love of God, Who forgot you not.”

A Course in Miracles T-16.IV.11:1-14

Through the Illusion, to Reality

Stereogram from Magic Eye book

Over three decades ago, I was at a yard sale when a book title jumped out at me: You’ll See It When You Believe It. This book was written by an author I had never heard of at the time, but whom I now think of as my good friend, Wayne Dyer. I took the book home and when I began reading it I said right out loud, This is Christian Science! Upon researching this author, I found out he was teaching the principles of A Course in Miracles. I can still feel the excitement of finding another teaching which was a fraternal twin of the Mary Baker Eddy writings which had been with me forever. While reading a work of fiction recently, I was reminded of stereograms, or Magic Eye pictures. Remember them? They are seemingly random colors and shapes, which when looked at with a “relaxed” eye, you can see through the mishmash of nothingness to a 3-D picture of something else. And, of course, I thought of Dr. Dyer’s book title and how true it is in our day-to-day existence. In the above stereogram eye-puzzler, once you see the picture, you can often train your eye to look around and see other hidden objects. Ah, seeing through the illusion to the reality!

“You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being. Mortal mind is constantly producing on mortal body the results of false opinions; and it will continue to do so, until mortal error is deprived of its imaginary powers by Truth, which sweeps away the gossamer web of mortal illusion.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 403:12-20

“Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself: Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.”
A Course in Miracles W-134.17:1-5

Your Heart’s Knowledge

Art from Katrin Welz-Stein

Self-Knowledge - by Khalil Gibra

“Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. 

But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge. 

You would know in words that which you have always know in thought. 

You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams. 

And it is well you should. 

The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea; 

And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes. 

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure; 

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. 

For self is a sea boundless and measureless. 

Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’

Say not, ‘I have found the path of the soul.’ Say rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’

For the soul walks upon all paths. 

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. 

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.” 

Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet

“If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force. Man has ‘sought out many inventions,’ but he has not yet found it true that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 196:1-4

“God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one you give up the other. The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose to leave Him He gave you a Voice to speak for Him because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice.” 

A Course in Miracles T-5.II.5:1-7

Ideas Reflected

Photo by Mawuena Davis

Humanity is so wondrous that we tend to glory in its magnificence. Some of the things humans do are so hideous we are repelled and saddened by the horror. Is one of these statements more true than the other? Both of them mirror the reflection of human ideas and can be classified as erroneous thought. So where does this leave us? "There is nothing good nor bad, ‘tis only thinking makes it so." (Shakespeare) By our giving up of insane expectations, foolish judgments, and other preconceived values, we are able to see the world as an unfolding of spiritual ideas. What this unfoldment of Truth consists of, we can't predict. What we do know is that this is our true Being, apart from any thought of good and bad, right and wrong. As difficult as it seems to let go of all these notions, the more we watch the unfoldment of these spiritual ideas, the more we are willing to let go of the contrived and untrue. And the noticing of this allows us to know the difference.

“All things I think I see reflect ideas. This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.”

A Course in Miracles W-325.1:1-6

“The creative Principle--Life, Truth, and Love--is God. The universe reflects God. There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity, and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 502:24-32

Reinterpretation of the World

Photo courtesy of Blake Lasater 

It’s difficult to keep from falling into the pit of horrible things. We hear about them at every turn: on the news and social media platforms, from our friends and family, in the reading material we choose. Of course, there are many events we cannot condone by our silence, but every thought can be translated in our own mind into its spiritual truth. But that’s a subject for another day. The negativity we are being taught to accept as reality could be shown by a banana peel. We see this fruit waste and think it’s ugly, wishing it could be out of sight in a landfill so we don’t have to think about it. Or we can think about it as a remembrance of the good fruit we ate, smiling while imagining it composting back into good soil which will create more beauty and food. This way of thought may seem simplistic, but if we contemplate how we perceive objects, we might find there are productive ways which bring us peace and joy — and then there are those ways which do not. Is your mind hijacked for negativity, or have you programmed it for good? We have a choice!

“This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten; the good and the bad, the false and the true. For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge.” 

A Course in Miracles T-11.VIII.1:1-9

“The destruction of the claims of mortal mind through Science, by which man can escape from sin and mortality, blesses the whole human family. As in the beginning, however, this liberation does not scientifically show itself in a knowledge of both good and evil, for the latter is unreal.

“On the other hand, Mind-science is wholly separate from any half-way impertinent knowledge, because Mind-science is of God and demonstrates the divine Principle, working out the purposes of good only. The maximum of good is the infinite God and His idea, the All-in-all. Evil is a suppositional lie.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 103:6-17

Newness of Life

Photo courtesy of Blake Lasater 

A dear friend has been trying to leave this realm of Life for the past few days. Somehow, this has become entwined with my feelings about the devolving events in this country. Thanksgiving Day has brought to light, once again, the horrendous acts of our ancestors. Some feel we shouldn’t acknowledge them because they make us feel bad. What if instead of feeling bad, it caused us to celebrate that those days are over and now that we know better, we’ll do better? This is where my friend’s demise intersects with my feelings about our country. Her husband has been rock solid during the years of her illness, and now that the end has come, he’s remembering the good times and being grateful for the years of happiness they had together. When the bad times come into his thoughts, he doesn’t deny them, nor wish they hadn’t happened, but acknowledges them and is happy for the good times and her release from pain. Life is Good, even when it doesn’t seem that way. And to acknowledge all the events and look at what we’ve learned, how we’ve grown, how we’ll be different now, that is what it’s all about. It’s all a flowing river of energy, and whether it is positive or negative is our choice. Happy Holidays everyone!

“Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine ‘powers that be.’ Such is the true Science of being. Any other theory of Life, or God, is delusive and mythological.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 429:6-11

“You rest within the peace of God today, and call upon your brothers from your rest to draw them to their rest, along with you. You will be faithful to your trust today, forgetting no one, bringing everyone into the boundless circle of your peace, the holy sanctuary where you rest. Open the temple doors and let them come from far across the world, and near as well; your distant brothers and your closest friends; bid them all enter here and rest with you.”
A Course in Miracles W-109.8:1-3