In Togetherness, There is Responsibility

Citizens’ Advice To Congress is the title of an article in which three people express their ideas on how leaders can govern our democracy. One of the people interviewed was Antoinette Tuff. She was a substitute teacher in Decatur, Georgia when a young man with an AK-47 and a backpack of ammunition came into the school and announced, “We’re all going to die today”. She said her motherly instincts kicked in, not just for the children, but also the mentally ill young man. She started out by telling him, no, we’re not going to do this. In the nine minutes it took to talk him down, she repeatedly told him no one would be mad at him if he stood down, and that she loved him. Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a plane in the Hudson River, saving all the people on board, said that he chose the least bad option — and he was glad to have it. Of our democracy crisis he states: “We’ve all gotten a real wake-up call. We’ve had the biggest civics lesson of our lives.” Everyday citizens have to keep on solving problems. A plumber in the D.C. area, Pete Kristiansen, says: “I understand laws enacted by Congress are big, important things. But we do big, important things, too. So if we can get things done, they should, too.” To our Congress he says, “In togetherness, there is responsibility.” Namaste…

“A feasible as well as rational means of improvement at present is the elevation of society in general and the achievement of a nobler race for legislation, — a race having higher aims and motives.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 63:23-27

“Our function is to work together, because apart from each other we cannot function at all. The whole power of God’s Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son, and gave him the power to create with Him. Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, as holy as He is. Through our creations we extend our love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this, because you who are God’s Own treasure do not regard yourself as valuable. Given this belief, you cannot understand anything.” 

A Course in Miracles T-8.VI.8:4-11

Let It Out

One Billion Rising

Photo credit: Richard Quick

Women’s circles are powerful vehicles for creation and, also, release. While watching an episode of Better Things (a fabulous, irreverent television program), I thought of times when I’ve been part of a group of women who supported each other in a common cause. Lest I be thought of as sexist, I’m sure this could happen with any gathering of people, but it seems not as many men are open to the type of emotional honesty which is requisite for powerful purpose. The show which caused me to think on these things involved five women who gathered on Father’s Day to release pent-up resentment towards their ex-husbands. After writing and reading their pain, they burned the papers in a fire pit, held hands, and howled at the moon. I felt empowered just watching them! During the summer of 2020, while we were all in some form of quarantine, the people of Eureka Springs went outside and howled at 7 p.m. each evening. It felt really good. I hope some men were doing this, but the voices I could hear were women’s. I know the man in my house wouldn’t howl, insisting he couldn’t make his voice do that. Cheers to everyone who has the courage to express their true feelings, whatever those may be!

“Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed, or dash us to the ground in hopelessness.

Is this the Son of God? Could He create such instability and call it Son? He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation. All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.” 

A Course in Miracles W-186.8:3–9:6

“The chief difficulty in conveying the teachings of divine Science accurately to human thought lies in this, that like all other languages, English is inadequate to the expression of spiritual conceptions and propositions, because one is obliged to use material terms in dealing with spiritual ideas. The elucidation of Christian Science lies in its spiritual sense, and this sense must be gained by its disciples in order to grasp the meaning of this Science. Out of this condition grew the prophecy concerning the Christian apostles, ‘They shall speak with new tongues.’”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 349: 13-22 

Home Is …

 

There’s nothing like a new circumstance in life to bring about self-examination of motives and acts. In my decision to move to Colorado later this year, I am coming face to face with why I am reluctant to do so. Of course, I love it here in Eureka Springs. No place has ever felt more like home, and I am happy here. Life is easy in its routines and I wish for nothing more than I have. It is scary to think of living in an apartment, yet it’s exhilarating to imagine new scenery and the possibilities of duplicate bridge and organist opportunities. The only reluctance I have in leaving this safe space is the fact that I really, truly do not like to socialize. But yet, I recognize that too much alone time allows me to lose empathy for others. It’s easy to slip into a complacent judgmental attitude when I’m not directly witnessing the difficulties of fellow humans. This is a rambling post as I’m thinking my way through this change which is both anticipated and dreaded. I just want to Be, not to do. And that can happen anywhere!

“We all must learn that Life is God. Ask yourself: Am I living the life that approaches the supreme good? Am I demonstrating the healing power of Truth and Love? If so, then the way will grow brighter ‘unto the perfect day.’ Your fruits will prove what the understanding of God brings to man. Hold perpetually this thought, — that it is the spiritual idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of healing, based upon its divine Principle, Love, underlying, overlying, and encompassing all true being.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 496:9-19

“Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life. No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air.” 

A Course in Miracles W-156.3:1-3

A Violet in the Garden of Truth

 

Torii - Gateway to the Sacred

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

Kahlil Gibran has an essay titled The New Frontier, in which he asks groups of people who they are. This paragraph is of particular importance, I think …

“Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income? Or are you a devout and a pious man who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depth of his own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the world? If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God even if you fast by day and pray by night. If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved.”

“Shepherd show me how to go,

O’re the hillside steep;

How to gather, how to sow,

How to feed thy sheep.

I will listen for They voice,

Lest my footsteps stray.

I will follow and rejoice,

All the rugged way.”

Mary Baker Eddy - from the poem, Feed My Sheep

“Let us together follow in the way that truth points out to us. And let us be the leaders of our many brothers who are seeking for the way, but find it not. And to this purpose let us dedicate our minds, directing all our thoughts to serve the function of salvation. Unto us the aim is given to forgive the world. It is the goal that God has given us. It is His ending to the dream we seek, and not our own.”

A Course in Miracles W-fl.in.2:5–3:4

Passing Through Illusions

“Whatever suffers is not part of me" [ACIM ​W​orkbook ​L​esson #248]​ These words​ could possibly be taken as an unfeeling, heartless statement. I see it as an expression of pure Love which allows us to pass through illusions into the reality of good, God. The death of a loved one is difficult in many ways, but I think the myths we have concocted surrounding this passage may do more harm than good. We say things like, God took her to be with ​Him because she was so good. Although these words are spoken in the name of kindness, I’m not sure they help anyone ​who is grieving. As we begin to understand divine reality, we are released from the stories we tell ourselves in favor of the Truth which sets us free. I'll always remember reading the book, "Beloved Prophet", which is the story of Kahlil Gibran and the woman who loved him. She sat at his funeral with a peaceful smile on her face, and when asked why she wasn't upset, she responded that she had never felt closer to him. What a lovely realization of Oneness and eternity!

"It was the divine law of Life and Love, unfolding to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life; that human experiences show the falsity of all material things; and that immortal cravings, ‘the price of learning love,’ establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 108:5-11


​"​A Course in Miracles - LESSON 248​ - ​Whatever Suffers Is Not Part Of Me.

I have disowned the truth. Now let me be as faithful in disowning falsity. Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself. What is in pain is but illusion in my mind. What dies was never living in reality, and did but mock the truth about myself. Now I disown self-concepts and deceits and lies about the holy Son of God. Now am I ready to accept him back as God created him, and as he is.

Father, my ancient love for You returns, and lets me love Your Son again as well. Father, I am as You created me. Now is Your Love remembered, and my own. Now do I understand that they are one.​"​

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

 

Kurt Vonnegut - pre-iguana days

Kurt Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors in the 70s. I am revisiting his fine novels and have just finished “Cat’s Cradle”. It did not disappoint, nor do these words of his which I saw today:

“In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:

 “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!"

Kurt Vonnegut

Meeting Needs

When I first moved to Eureka Springs, a woman on my street was starting a business she called Good Works. Her main goal was to help women. Her impetus was knowing a young single mother who needed a place to live, and an older woman who owned a home and needed help. The idea seemed so logical and perfect, but never got off the ground because women were afraid to take a “stranger” into their home. The past few days, I’ve been telling you about my dear friend, Jean, who is in her 90s and recently lost her only son. He was much-needed around the house as Jean has broken her hip twice and is quite frail. Her husband is suffering from dementia and is unpredictable. They are now alone and desperately want to stay in their lovely lake home. My fondest hope is to get them together with someone who needs a place to live — hopefully with a cat! Help me put that intention out for them. Time is short, as another snow storm is on the way. 

“The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother’s need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another’s good. Love giveth to the least spiritual idea might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through all as the blossom shines through the bud. All the varied expressions of God reflect health, holiness, immortality — infinite Life, Truth, and Love.”   Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 518:15-23 

‘The Holy Spirit’s function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture in itself. To each He offers his Identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. And when he sees this picture he will recognize himself. If you share not your brother’s evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.” 

A Course in Miracles T-28.IV.8:1-6)