Finding Solace in a Library

 

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]” 
― E.B. White

Love Out Loud!

 

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

The smoke still hangs in the warm spring air in Eureka Springs. An early morning fire in a house partitioned into apartments left five homeless, having to jump out of bed and leave with what they could grab while barely awake. One of my dear friends is among the refugees, and it has brought home to me the plight of anyone who must leave their homes quickly, and then have no place to return. Another long-time friend was taken by ambulance to the hospital this morning, with alarming symptoms and an uncertain prognosis. My heart is with them, and hence with the world in the individual and collective plights. I am reminded to love more inclusively, to reflect and absorb the infinite Love which is All. Love heals lives, because it is life. Everyone we come into contact with throughout our days has a story which involves joy and sadness. We never know what others are going through, but we do know the importance of being kind. So let’s do that, okay? “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” Dalai Lama XIV

“Nothing around you but is part of you. Look on it lovingly, and see the light of Heaven in it. So will you come to understand all that is given you. In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be reinterpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value more than this? For here is your salvation and your freedom. And it must be complete if you would recognize it.” A Course in Miracles T-23.in.6:1-8

Holy Relationships

Deva Premal and Miten

My thoughts turn today toward the holy relationship. We have many relationships in this life and, if you're like me, you prefer to think of all of them as holy! If God is Love, and we express that Love, then isn't every thing we do coming from that Love which is our essence? Unfortunately, this is not true. What we think of as love is often colored with human emotions such as guilt, jealousy, lust, and fear. This is a hard admission for any of us to make. A dear friend has been talking to me recently about a relationship he is ending. I have been thinking back over relationships I could have stayed in to this very day and where that would have led my life in different paths. The thing that keeps coming back time and again is that each and every relationship I have ever had was based in some way or another on the words, "I want". Maybe I wanted to be loved, maybe I wanted to be IN love, maybe I wanted a love affair like the movies and songs tell us is the be-all, end-all. My friend is feeling sad for the loss of this relationship. He liked so many things about this woman, but there were some basic differences which caused their incompatibility. He could have stayed and been contented, but there was something missing: It wasn't a holy relationship. It was based on expectation of change and other material desires. My friend innately knows there is more than settling down with someone because it's easy. And I know he will recognize, within himSelf, what it is he's waiting for.

“My holy brother, I would enter into all your relationships, and step between you and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you, and let me bring reality to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enable you to hurt yourself through them. They were created to create with you. This is the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of madness. Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have excluded me. Let me enter in the Name of God and bring you peace, that you may offer peace to me.” A Course in Miracles T-17.III.10:1-8

Music Opens Perceptions

Performance at Thorncrown Chapel

Music ​opens our ​mind to things we may have forgotten​,​ or​ ​perhaps​ have​ never known. I love to sit with ​a ​symphony orchestra, opening my mind to only the music, until at some point I feel there is nothing else in the world. I recall Wayne Dyer talking about muscle testing using different items. ​Holding an organic banana ​near his heart ​allowed full strength in his son, whereas holding a CD of raucous music left him much weakened. ​We all enjoy music in many forms, and ​on multiple​ levels. Something we would ​like with friends at a party may not compare to the quiet strains of Bach, which take us deeper within ourselves prior to meditation or writing. Find the music which opens you to hearing the messages which  Life, Truth, and Love are offering you. Surround yourself with this river of salvation and see where it takes you!

“Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He was a musician beyond what the world knew.​ ​This was even more strikingly true of Beethoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart. Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing either discord or harmony according as the hand, which sweeps over it, is human or divine.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 213:19-29

Solution is Love

It can be quite depressing to watch the lengths people are willing to go in order to justify evil actions. As long as history has been recorded, we have heard irrational words being used to excuse bad behavior. Politics, religion, bullies seeking importance — well, I’m preaching to the choir here, and so I won’t go on giving examples. Also, the quote attributed to Einstein about only wanting to hear about a problem as an identifier, and then only being interested in solutions — that speaks to my heart. The solution is Love. Anything which is abhorrent to our sensibilities is a product of fear — false evidence appearing real. The guiding force of the universe is Love and this recognition is ours to claim. 

“This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 96:12-20

“It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an ‘enemy,’an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are. 

If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source, for it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.”

 A Course in Miracles W-170.3-4

We Are All Sculptors

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

The first thought we have in the morning shapes the way our day develops. I’ve visited this topic more than once in past writings. Having spent years training myself to stay away from worry and busy-ness, it’s disheartening to find myself waking up in the morning to wandering thoughts. For a few weeks, I've been having vivid dreams and I wake up thinking about what they mean. I've forgotten to bring thought to Spirit, instead allowing a wandering brain to slog through a maze of odd events featuring people, animals, and places which are well-known to me. This seems to be affecting the way I think about things all day long. It doesn't matter how much I try to push and pull my thoughts in other directions, they insist on making judgments, comparisons, and searching for hidden meanings. And so I’m going to return to training tools I’ve used in the past, insisting that my brain repeat well-loved verses from Mary Baker Eddy, pondering their meaning, and taking a stand for Good even before I get out of bed.

“The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your lifework, and adopt into your experience the angular outline and deformity of matter models. To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 248:12-29

Abolishment of War

“The man of imagination, maintaining the absolutely neutral position of Principle, with no pro-this or anti-that, is the one who will discover steps and techniques for communication leading to the abolishment of war.” 

We Are the World We Walk Through (or Christian Science, Re-explored) by Margaret Laird 

“The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.” A Course in Miracles - T-23.I.1:1-9

The Body Cannot Contain You

 

Grotto spring - Eureka Springs AR

Photo credit: Aaron Springston 

What do you think of when you hear the words, "There is no death"? You may think of someone living on in your idea of heaven, continuing in much the same way as we knew them. We find it comforting to think we will see them again, continuing our lives as before they left us. I, personally, think of the change we call death as a grand adventure. Who knows for sure what this change will bring? Some even have an idea that the afterlife is whatever you think it is: if you believe in a traditional heaven and hell, so it is; if you see everything as eternal energy, so be it. You probably have some ideas and intuitive feelings about this, too. I’ve been examining these concepts lately, and I'm comfortable with what I’m feeling.

“When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life.” A Course in Miracles - The Lessons of Love

“If the belief in death were obliterated, and the understanding obtained that there is no death, this would be a ‘tree of life,’ known by its fruits. Man should renew his energies and endeavors, and see the folly of hypocrisy, while also learning the necessity of working out his own salvation.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 426:12-16

The Solace of Music

 In times of trouble, people turn to music for solace. You may have seen the video of a little girl singing "Let It Go"in the Ukraine. It was wonderfully moving when Yo Yo Ma played Ukraine's national anthem at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Then there is the man who moved a piano into a German train station to welcome refugees. There's a video of a woman joining him in "We Are The Champions" as she is fleeing her country. Music expresses joy, sorrow, elation, or horror. We use music to celebrate or console. We all have individual needs for soul soothing these days. Reach out and embrace the music which provides you solace and joy...

"Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 213:24

Peace on Earth

 Peace on Earth - by Renie Britenbucher

I read a letter from Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein, wherein he wrote to him asking if there was a way to free humankind from the threat of war. Mr. Freud has quite a bit to say about this subject, but one phrase which brought pause is, “...the lust for aggression and destruction”. I had never thought of it that way, and it caused me to take notice. Part of his conclusion is as follows: “The upshot of these observations, as bearing on the subject in hand, is that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity's aggressive tendencies. In some happy corners of the earth, they say, where nature brings forth abundantly whatever man desires, there flourish races whose lives go gently by, unknowing of aggression or constraint. This I can hardly credit; I would like further details about these happy folk.” In our world, we see famine and harsh conditions in many places. I question whether this is the way creation is supposed to evolve. I’m pretty sure when we follow the laws of nature, life as we know it would become Life as we wish it were! Namaste ...

"Heaven: Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality, bliss, the atmosphere of Soul." Mary Baker Eddy, Science & Health, Page 587

Rainy Nights

Eureka Springs, AR - photo credit: Richard Quick 

 RAINY NIGHTS -- BY IRENE THOMPSON

I like the town on rainy nights

When everything is wet –

When all the town has magic lights

And streets of shining jet!

When all the rain about the town

Is like a looking-glass,

And all the lights are upside-down

Below me as I pass.

Everything Is Waiting For You

 

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte

"Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into

the conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you."

“I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. ²It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. ³It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that _is_ its illusion. ⁴I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. ⁵That is why I am the light of the world. ⁶If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone.” A Course in Miracles T-8.IV.2:1-7

Love Your Enemies?

All of us, individually and collectively, can find things to be upset about. Humanity is roiling with the pain of events. I wrote yesterday about the emotionally unsettled feelings of the male of our species. For centuries, women have felt put upon because of injustice perpetrated by men. Native Americans, black people, Asians — well, I’m not sure there are any groups of people who have not been tyrannized by their fellow beings. What I am sure of is that it does not need to affect our behavior today, right here and now. Forgiveness means releasing anything and everything from past experience or psychic memory. How do we not hold it against a person who has brought misery to us? What of the genocide, the destruction of art and beauty, the raping of the land? Loving someone who perpetrates such travesties seems impossible, as well it should be. Their actions come from a deranged mind. But following the instruction to love your neighbor as yourself does not mean to love the material, ego-based human. It means to love the true man, the spiritual being which is the creation of the divine Mind. And since we change the world through our own thoughts, every time I see someone committing heinous acts, I will translate the situation in my mind. We are not material; we are spiritual. What if everyone realized this? What a wonderful world …

“The metaphysician, making Mind his basis of operation irrespective of matter and regarding the truth and harmony of being as superior to error and discord, has rendered himself strong…” Science & Health Page 423:18-21

"The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the spirit. His ability to deal with symbols enables Him to work with the ego’s beliefs in its own language. His ability to look beyond symbols into eternity enables Him to understand the laws of God, for which He speaks. He can therefore perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes, not by destruction but by understanding. Understanding is light, and light leads to knowledge. ⁶The Holy Spirit is in light because He is in you who are light, but you yourself do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to reinterpret you on behalf of God. A Course in Miracles, T-5.III.7:1-7

Masculinity

Throughout the last seven decades, I’ve watched women and so-called people of color take their rightful place as functioning members of society. It hasn’t been much longer than that when women were not allowed to vote in elections, and only since1962 if you happened to be a black woman in the United States. Nowadays, most women can hold any job and live any way they choose. It amazes me that men feel threatened by this, but now I’m seeing that many are — and it’s become quite a problem for society. The latest Christian Science Monitor features the plight of the white man. Throughout the years, I’ve laughed when I was told they had a plight, but observance and thoughtful articles are opening my eyes to what has happened. The most startling statistic is that 70% of the suicides in 2019 were white men. Add to that the fact that only 40% of college students are male. Between 2019 and 2020, men who died from drug- and alcohol-related causes spiked 35%! There are numerous reasons for this, of course. Some have simplistic explanations, such as women have stolen their jobs and they have no purpose. I think it’s true that men feel lost in the current climate of changing gender roles, but I also believe it’s mental conditioning which has caused them to feel this way. This topic will be revisited soon, but for now, I’ll end with a quote from Andrew Yang: “We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves.” 

“…man is a generic term. Masculine, feminine, and neuter genders are human concepts.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 516:29

Freedom From Fear - Aung San Suu Kyi

Art by Vladislav Yerko

"Withina system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.” -- Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom From Fear 

"The rights of man were vindicated in a single section and on the lowest plane of human life, when African slavery was abolished in our land. That was only prophetic of further steps towards the banishment of a world-wide slavery, found on higher planes of existence and under more subtle and depraving forms." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 225:31

Friends, Inexplicably Bonded

 Today my book club discovered that one of our group was missing in action. None of us realized we had not heard from her in quite a while, and it seemed to hit us all at once that something was wrong. After frantically checking with her family, it turns out she has had a physical problem and is in a facility which is helping her recover. This happening brought home to me the importance of connections and being there for each other. Our group of friends have been close for more than 15 years, brought together by the small independent school where our children attended, and kept together by our love of books and each other. Years ago I read a quote by Joel Goldberg which has stayed with me: “Groups of people who share spiritual Love are bound together for eternity.” My friends are my family, and I love you …

"I think some people are just inexplicably bonded. Drawn by forces beyond their own comprehension, they have no choice but to gravitate toward one another. Destined by fate to keep crossing paths until they finally get it right.” L.B. Simmons

"Love never loses sight of loveliness. its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 248:3

Every Little Thing

Grand Baby Torin

The comfortableness of days passing. I’ve been savoring the gentleness of life. During our recent ice storm, I loved the feeling of being in a cocoon, warm and happy. Every morning, I look forward to waking up slowly, enjoying hot coffee and reading, while petting a cat. There is great joy to be found in gathering ingredients to make soup, chopping vegetables, smelling spices and deciding which ones to add to the mix. The coziness of word games is almost more than I can bear. Most of this life I’ve been happy, but never like this. Every little thing is exquisite. 

“The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.” From A Course in Miracles, Text Chapter 4: The Illusions of the Ego. Love without Conflict

Dickinson — I Had No Time To Hate

Photo credit: Aaron Springston

I had no time to Hate -
Because
The Grave would hinder me -
And Life was not so 
Ample I
Could finish--Enmity -

Nor had I time to Love -
But since
Some Industry must be -
The little Toil of Love -
I thought
Was large enough for Me .

Emily Dickinson

Imagine All The People…

Art by J. Clement Wall

JudyClementWall.com

 When the attacks of 9/11 happened more than two decades ago, I remember thinking it was an opportunity for our world to come together in peace, to stand united against aggression of all sorts, to form a bond which would neutralize all which is unlike good. I see the attack by Russia on the Ukraine as another pivotal point where we have a chance to do the right thing. While reviewing what is happening and why it has come about, I also have come across all the propaganda proclaiming this selfish dictator is doing a good thing. At this point, I see more people every moment recognizing what is happening, comparing it to the power plays which have been happening in this country, and realizing it must be stopped if the people of this world are to have a chance of thriving in peace and happiness; helping each other through times of trouble rather than locking their doors and looking the other way. Imagine all the people, living life in peace …

“This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 96:12-20

War and Peace

 While contemplating peace, these writings were brought to my attention. 

“One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled. And the prince inquired of him, 'What has befallen you?' And the man replied, 'O prince, I am by profession a thief, and this night, because there was no moon, I went to rob the money-changer's shop, and as I climbed in through the window I made a mistake and entered the weaver's shop, and in the dark I ran into the weaver's loom and my eye was plucked out. And now, O prince, I ask for justice upon the weaver.' 

Then the prince sent for the weaver and he came, and it was decreed that one of his eyes should be plucked out. 

'O prince,' said the weaver, 'the decree is just. It is right that 
one of my eyes be taken. And yet, alas! both are necessary to me in order that I may see the two sides of the cloth that I weave. But I have a neighbour, a cobbler, who has also two eyes, and in his trade both eyes are not necessary.' 

Then the prince sent for the cobbler. And he came. And they took out one of the cobbler's two eyes.

 And justice was satisfied.” Kahlil Gibran

“Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. " John F. Kennedy

“The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress." Mary Baker Eddy 

“No one attacks without intent to hurt.This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.” A Course in Miracles — W-170.1.