Dispelling the Reign of Discord

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

I know a number of people who have moved out of our country, saying they could no longer be happy here under this frightening regime. One man’s wife died, to mortal sense, and he moved to South America in an effort to find peace. He is a fine writer and posts his ideas to social media on a regular basis. Today he told us how he doesn’t have the energy to interact with others in the way they expect. These are some of his words: “I’m carrying grief that doesn’t resolve into something useful. Grief for my wife, whose absence still rearranges the physics of every day. Grief for my country, watching itself fracture while mistaking noise for power. And grief for what I can see unfolding with awful clarity: Americans being maneuvered into fighting one another in a war that serves interests far outside their lives or country.” The grief we feel about the changes we see happening in our country is affecting our mental and physical well-being. We are learning that all healing begins in our mind. This is wonderful news, as we are being called upon to be healers in a way we have never considered before these past few years. But I know we’re ready for this, because we’ve been practicing all our lives. 

“This brother who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger. You do not know him, and your interpretation of him is very fearful. And you attack him still, to keep what seems to be yourself unharmed. Yet in his hands is your salvation. You see his madness, which you hate because you share it.  And all the pity and forgiveness that would heal it gives way to fear. Brother, you need forgiveness of your brother, for you will share in madness or in Heaven together. And you and he will raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all.”

A Course in Miracles T-19.IV-D.12:1-8

“As thus indicated, astronomical order imitates the action of divine Principle; and the universe, the reflection of God, is thus brought nearer the spiritual fact, and is allied to divine Science as displayed in the everlasting government of the universe. 

“The evidence of the physical senses often reverses the real Science of being, and so creates a reign of discord, — assigning seeming power to sin, sickness, and death; but the great facts of Life, rightly understood, defeat this triad of errors, contradict their false witnesses, and reveal the kingdom of heaven, — the actual reign of harmony on earth.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 121:28-8

In Lieu of Flowers …

 

Art by Miho Hirano 

On this warm winter day, I’ve been thinking about good friends who have passed from this realm of life, which happens almost on a weekly basis nowadays. Two childhood friends’ birthdays were today, which caused me to ponder where they have gone. Is their energy floating around the universe? Does it come back to material life in some form? Are they in an alternate universe? Are they simply gone? I’ve never feared this thing we call death and think of it as a great adventure. The sentiments expressed in this little essay by Shawna Lemay say what I hope others will do for me — and I wanted to share it with you …

“In Lieu of Flowers - by Shawna Lemay

Although I love flowers very much, I won’t see them when I’m gone. So in lieu of flowers:  Buy a book of poetry written by someone still alive, sit outside with a cup of tea, a glass of wine, and read it out loud, by yourself or to someone, or silently.

Spend some time with a single flower. A rose maybe. Smell it, touch the petals. 

Really look at it. 

Drink a nice bottle of wine with someone you love.

Or, Champagne. And think of what John Maynard Keynes said, ‘My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne.’ Or what Dom Perignon said when he first tasted the stuff: ‘Come quickly! I am tasting stars!’

Take out a paint set and lay down some colours.

Watch birds. Common sparrows are fine. Pigeons, too. Geese are nice. Robins.

In lieu of flowers, walk in the trees and watch the light fall into it. Eat an apple, a really nice big one. I hope it’s crisp. 

Have a long soak in the bathtub with candles, maybe some rose petals.

Sit on the front stoop and watch the clouds. Have a dish of strawberry ice cream in my name. 

If it’s winter, have a cup of hot chocolate outside for me. If it’s summer, a big glass of ice water. 

If it’s autumn, collect some leaves and press them in a book you love. I’d like that. 

Sit and look out a window and write down what you see. Write some other things down. 

In lieu of flowers, 

I would wish for you to flower. 

I would wish for you to blossom, to open, to be beautiful.”

~ Shawna Lemay

One Or Two Things …

 One or Two Things 

written by Mary Oliver 

Don’t bother me.

I’ve just

been born.

 

The butterfly’s loping flight

carries it through the country of the leaves

delicately, and well enough to get it

where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping

here and there to fuzzle the damp throats

of flowers and the black mud; up

and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

 

for long delicious moments it is perfectly

lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk

of some ordinary flower.

 

The god of dirt

came up to me many times and saidany wise and delectable things, I lay

on the grass listening

 

to his dog voice,

crow voice,

frog voice; now,

he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

 

which has nevertheless always been,

like a sharp iron hoof,

at the center of my mind.

 

One or two things are all you need

to travel over the blue pond, over the deep

roughage of the trees and through the stiff

flowers of lightning—some deep

memory of pleasure, some cutting

knowledge of pain.

 

But to lift the hoof!

For that you need

an idea.

“All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong. Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception proceeds from it.”

A Course in Miracles T-6.V-B.1:1-11

“Divine Science does not put new wine into old bottles, Soul into matter, nor the infinite into the finite. Our false views of matter perish as we grasp the facts of Spirit. The old belief must be cast out or the new idea will be spilled, and the inspiration, which is to change our standpoint, will be lost.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 281:27-1

Friendship

Scout the Cat, Maggie the Dog, Friends

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Determine now to see all these people as friends. Say to them all, thinking of each one in turn as you do so: I would see you as my friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself.”
A Course in Miracles W-68.6:1-3

“Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 266:5-12

Forever Fiercely Good

At a time when egos are raging out of control, running over anyone or anything in their path, I ask for guidance and find it every day — when I am willing to accept it. But my ego also jumps up and down, telling me my judgment is righteous and I deserve — no, I am obligated to condemn and seek justice from every ugly-acting person I witness. How do I do anything else? It is difficult to see the way, and I am grateful for this writing from A Course in Miracles, which showed itself to me first thing this morning.

“Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone. Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven’s Help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time. The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to avail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger turned to an event which justifies his love. He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can, with equal ease and far more happiness, bestow forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy.”

A Course in Miracles  T-25.III.6:1-8

For Renee Nicole Good Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026 - by Amanda Gorman

They say she is no more, 

That there her absence roars, 

Blood-blown like a rose. 

Iced wheels flinched & froze. 

Now, bare riot of candles, 

Dark fury of flowers, 

Pure howling of hymns. 

If for us she arose, 

Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief, 

Crouches our power, 

The howl where we begin, 

Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater 

Of the worst of what we’ve been. 

Change is only possible, 

& all the greater, 

When the labour

& bitter anger of our neighbors 

Is moved by the love 

& better angels of our nature. 

What they call death & void, 

We know is breath & voice; 

In the end, gorgeously, 

Endures our enormity. 

You could believe departed to be the dawn 

When the blank night has so long stood. 

But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone, 

When they forever are so fiercely Good.

Poem by Amanda Gorman

The Fruits of Judgment

Leading With Love

Decades ago, when the “moral majority” began its judgmental march to stamp out all that is liberal and based in free thought, we didn’t think it could possibly take hold of enough people to shape our society. We thought that they were a silly fringe group with prejudiced ideas, and there was no reason to take them seriously. Well, through the last 45 years we have seen what repetition of lies and hateful rhetoric can do to shape a society. It has made a certain faction of people believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong.  They have elected politicians which push their policies, our Supreme Court has been stacked with judges more interested in material positions than the rule of law, and our supreme leader is a dictator who wants to dominate everyone but has no idea why. When a young woman was murdered in cold blood yesterday by the Gestapo, we were overwhelmed with dismay. Many of us are depressed, more of us are angry, a few of us are doing our best to see through the illusion. When I see people yelling in anger, or being brutal while drunk on their power, I do my best to see them as they were created, not as they have become. I have never seen harsh words negate harsh words, nor violent actions create peace. We all have something we can do to tip the balance away from fear and toward Love. It doesn’t matter how small the act may seem to you. Your actions are exponentially powerful. Don’t stop believing …

“The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict that does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of love is without meaning if love is everything. You will go through this last undoing quite unharmed, and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the readiness for God. Be not unwilling now; you are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love will never satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything.”

A Course in Miracles T-16.IV.2:1-6

“The notion that both evil and good are real is a delusion of material sense, which Science annihilates. Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something, — for lust, dishonesty, selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft, adultery, murder, dementia, insanity, inanity, devil, hell, with all the etceteras that word includes.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 330:24-32

St. John’s Vision …

Photo by Blake Lasater

The idea that we are transcending the thoughts which bind us, evolving to another stage of consciousness, is very exciting! The possibility of stepping out of habitual thought and living in the present moment can be frightening to those of us who are accustomed to living for the future. Perhaps, with the busy-ness of our thinking, we have lost the connection with our sense of being; with the intelligence which is more than thoughts in our head. Now is the time to move into another stage of evolution, one which allows consciousness to release our addiction to circular thinking. For humanity to continue its evolution, we must transcend the mind, going beyond the compulsion to think and realizing a deeper level of being. This evolutionary transformation of consciousness is no longer a luxury, but a necessity if we are to survive. Giving up the beliefs and interpretations which we have assigned to everything clears the way for the thought-expanding ideas which will lead us to exactly where we need to be, doing what needs to be done. What an exciting time to be alive!

"In the Apocalypse it is written: 'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.' In St. John's vision, heaven and earth stand for spiritual ideas, and the sea, as a symbol of tempest-tossed human concepts advancing and receding, is represented as having passed away. The divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness."
Science & Health Page 536:1-9

“Evolution is a process in which you seem to proceed from one degree to the next. You correct your previous missteps by stepping forward. This process is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because you return as you go forward. The Atonement is the device by which you can free yourself from the past as you go ahead. It undoes your past errors, thus making it unnecessary for you to keep retracing your steps without advancing to your return. In this sense the Atonement saves time, but like the miracle it serves, does not abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for time. But the Atonement as a completed plan has a unique relationship to time. Until the Atonement is complete, its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement stands at time’s end. At that point the bridge of return has been built.”
A Course in Miracles - T-2.II.6:1-10

A Place of Rest.

Marsha at Meow Wolf - Denver, CO

Fear misshapes everything. Doug Myerscough has written a calming antidote for us, and I share it with you here.

“I want to speak quietly for a moment, because quiet is in short supply.

I can feel the fear moving through people — not as panic, not as hysteria, but as something thinner and more dangerous: a steady pressure, repeated often enough that it begins to feel like certainty. Very intelligent minds, turning the same thought over and over, until the thought begins to feel like the world itself.

This does not mean you are wrong.

It does not mean you are weak.

It means you are human, living inside a time that keeps asking your nervous system to do more than it was built to do.


Nothing has happened in the last few hours that requires your life to shrink.

Nothing has crossed some invisible line while you were looking away.

History does not usually announce itself by whispering only to the anxious.


Pause here, if you can.

Notice where you are sitting.

Feel the ordinary weight of the day — the floor beneath you, the light in the room, the body you are still inhabiting.


Fear has a way of pulling the future forward, laying it across the present like a shadow, until it becomes hard to tell what is happening now from what might happen later. But these are not the same thing, no matter how insistently they blur.

You are not required to solve what comes next.

You are not responsible for carrying the whole moment.

You are not responsible for stopping the machine. You are responsible for reducing its surface area in the lives you can touch.

Today is enough.


It is enough to eat something.

Enough to step outside, even briefly.

Enough to speak to one person in a voice that remembers warmth.


Vigilance does not have to feel like terror.

Awareness does not have to cost you your ability to live.


If your mind feels frayed at the edges, it is not because you are failing — it is because you care, and care, under repetition, can exhaust itself. There is no virtue in that exhaustion. There is no moral requirement to remain braced every hour of the day.


You are allowed to rest your attention.

You are allowed to turn the volume down.

You are allowed to keep your life intact.


Calm is not denial.

Calm is how we remain capable — of kindness, of judgment, of showing up tomorrow with ourselves still whole.


Nothing important will be lost if you step back for the rest of the day.

What matters most — your ability to remain present — is preserved that way.


We will take this as it comes.

Not all at once.

Not tonight.”

Written by Doug Myerscough


“Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.”
A Course in Miracles T-18.VII.8:1-5

“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

The World Inside

Gazebo at Long Creek Herbs

Blue Eye, Missouri

Have you noticed that art — as in books, movies, plays and other narratives — always predicts new/old ways of thinking? Whether it be science fiction or historical stories, we seem to be living in a loop of events. I recently watched the movie, The Life of Chuck. It is delightful! Before you watch it and disagree, let me say that the first part of it is not quite so charming, but Part 2 gets into Chuck’s life and it was fabulous! Here is an intriguing quote:

“The human brain is so finite - no more than a sponge of tissue inside a cage of bone - but the mind within the brain is infinite. Its storage capacity is colossal, its imaginative reach beyond our ability to comprehend. I think when a man or woman dies, a whole world falls to ruin - the world that person knew and believed in. Think of that, kiddo - billions of people on earth, and each one of those billions with a world inside. The earth their minds have conceived”
― Stephen King, The Life of Chuck

“You also believe the body’s brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. It is as if you thought you held the match that lights the sun and gives it all its warmth; or that you held the world within your hand, securely bound until you let it go. Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the body’s eyes can see; the brain can think.”
— A Course in Miracles W-92.2:1-4

“The theoretical mind is matter, named brain, or material consciousness, the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit. Brainology teaches that mortals are created to suffer and die. It further teaches that when man is dead, his immortal soul is resurrected from death and mortality. Thus error theorizes that spirit is born of matter and returns to matter, and that man has a resurrection from dust; whereas Science unfolds the eternal verity, that man is the spiritual, eternal reflection of God.”
— Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 295:25-3

A Peaceful Purpose

 

Walk For Peace - Buddhist Monks and dog, Aloka,

On Their 2300-mile trek in the United States

We all have a purpose to fulfill on this plane of existence. Years ago, I realized I am here as a portal for people to experience the light, the divine Love, which is central to our being. Whether your place is to open the door to spiritual truth, or to inform people as to the happenings in our material sphere, we all are a part of the whole picture. There are charlatans operating in every avenue of this material existence. And so if your spiritual guru — whether they are called preacher or adviser — leads you down dead-end roads and answers questions with a non-answer, such as, “you just have to believe”, know that you have choices. If you find out your favorite tea is proved to have pesticides and plastic particle residue, which you imbibe three times a day under the guise of a healthy drink — know that you have choices. While many of us turn away from tough situations in this corporeal world, we are doing ourselves an injustice by not speaking truth to error. You may worry about “level confusion” and so you refrain from weeding out inaccuracies which your friends are swallowing as truth. Perhaps it’s just the opposite and it’s your worldly purpose to stand up and just say no!

“By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others. The message you then give to them is the truth that their minds are similarly constructive, and their miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this you release the mind from overevaluating its own learning device, and restore the mind to its true position as the learner.”
A Course in Miracles T-2.V.5:4-6

“Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 506:18-21

The Body Cannot Contain You

Art by Catrin Welz-Stein

Many meanings, both literal and metaphoric, come to mind when thinking of the word "death".  There is the death we experience when we are born into this existence. Suddenly, our spiritual sense is deadened by the deluge of materialistic stimuli which constantly bombard us. In this forgetting of Truth, life becomes very uncertain. We are victims of inharmonious circumstances, until we recognize ourselves as expressions of divine Mind, then we see glimpses of eternity. We may begin to imagine the unreality of time and space, and perhaps we've always suspected this.  These misunderstandings may fuel dissatisfaction which drives us to "feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace." (Browning)  We know there's something more, and we keep grasping at what it might be. We search for freedom from the belief that we are victims of circumstance. We have the choice of waking up! We will see through the veil we have hung to hide Truth. With this sight will come the understanding of Life as timeless!

“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 

“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 T-6.V-A.1:1-4