All Gifts Are Ours

Photo credit: Christopher Fischer

All the good that is being given and received by everyone, everywhere, is goodness being given by and to me, right here, right now, all the time. Well, how far out is that??! After expressing this thought to someone, they said, "But what about the bad? Isn’t it given and received by everyone, and doesn’t it cancel out the good?" We could go through lots of conversations about these points, concerning the unreality of bad and the only-ness of good. But I don’t want to think in those terms any longer -- of right and wrong, good and bad -- so I won’t speak or write in those ways either. There is only One God, expressing only Itself. If we are the idea of God, there’s nothing else to consider. God is Love. We are Love and that’s a powerful principle by which to abide! “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Rumi

“All gifts I give my brothers are my own. As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me. Each one allows a past mistake to go, and leave no shadow on the holy mind my Father loves. His grace is given me in every gift a brother has received throughout all time, and past all time as well. My treasure house is full, and angels watch its open doors that not one gift is lost, and only more are added. Let me come to where my treasures are, and enter in where I am truly welcome and at home, among the gifts that God has given me.

“Father, I would accept Your gifts today. I do not recognize them. Yet I trust that You Who gave them will provide the means by which I can behold them, see their worth, and cherish only them as what I want.”

A Course in Miracles W-316.1:1–2:3

“… that joy which finds one’s own in another’s good.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 127

Weaving Threads of Humanity

Art: Elin Manon

“Here's to the bridge-builders, the hand-holders, the light-bringers, 

those extraordinary souls wrapped in ordinary lives who quietly 

weave threads of humanity into an inhumane world. 

They are the unsung heroes in a world at war with itself. 

They are the whisperers of hope that peace is possible. 

Look for them in this present darkness. 

Light your candle with their flame. And then go. Build bridges. Hold hands. Bring light to a dark and desperate world. Be the hero you are looking for. 

Peace is possible. It begins with us.”

Written by L.R. Knost 

“All gifts my brothers give belong to me. Each day a thousand treasures come to me with every passing moment. I am blessed with gifts throughout the day, in value far beyond all things of which I can conceive. A brother smiles upon another, and my heart is gladdened. Someone speaks a word of gratitude or mercy, and my mind receives this gift and takes it as its own. And everyone who finds the way to God becomes my savior, pointing out the way to me, and giving me his certainty that what he learned is surely mine as well.

“I thank You, Father, for the many gifts that come to me today and every day from every Son of God. My brothers are unlimited in all their gifts to me. 

Now may I offer them my thankfulness, 

that gratitude to them may lead me on to my Creator and His memory.”

A course in Miracles W-315.1:1–2:3

"In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever 

blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes,--

Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply."

Science & Health Page 206;15-17

A Future Different From the Past

It seems everyone is tired. In my opinion, this weariness stems from there being many so-called problems without solutions. We seem unable to do anything about mass shootings, although there is a simple solution. Self-serving politicians appear to be an unsolvable problem, but that also has an obvious fix. One of my earliest experiences with A Course in Miracles was Wayne Dyer’s book, There’s A Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. People often tell me it’s too difficult to change long-held beliefs and move their thoughts to a spirit-based level. To them I say that it is simple, but it is not easy. It’s not easy because it is a constant, conscious monitoring and translating of learned behaviors. In the past few years, we have all been tested. When we are bombarded daily by ugliness from leaders and media reporting, it can be tempting to throw up our metaphysical hands and surrender to the sorrow. But let’s not do that, okay? 

“I seek a future different from the past. From new perception of the world there comes a future very different from the past. The future now is recognized as but extension of the present. Past mistakes can cast no shadows on it, so that fear has lost its idols and its images, and being formless, it has no effects. Death will not claim the future now, for life is now its goal, and all the needed means are happily provided. Who can grieve or suffer when the present has been freed, extending its security and peace into a quiet future filled with joy?

“Father, we were mistaken in the past, and choose to use the present to be free. Now do we leave the future in Your Hands, leaving behind our past mistakes, and sure that You will keep Your present promises, and guide the future in their holy light.”

A Course in Miracles W-314.1:1–2:2

"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." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 536:1-9

Floral Apostles

A dear friend helps me with my flower beds. He was here today, and after he ripped vines out of trees (a very cleansing endeavor, even for me as the watcher), we were looking over the garden and marveling at a three-inch tall zinnia blooming happily; a tiny dianthus of the same height had a sweet pink bloom; and probably the most surprising, a marigold seed had taken hold, giving us a beautiful little plant with numerous joyful flowers. And then the most amazing thing happened: a large flock of geese flew overhead, raucously honking in the most uplifting way!! We laughed, we cried, and it was good … 

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting  

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.” 

Written by Mary Oliver

“The floral apostles are hieroglyphs of Deity. Suns and planets teach grand lessons. The stars make night beautiful, and the leaflet turns naturally towards the light.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 240:6-9

“Now let a new perception come to me. Father, there is a vision which beholds all things as sinless, so that fear has gone, and where it was is love invited in. And love will come wherever it is asked. This vision is Your gift. The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon. Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of sin and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with which I would identify.”

“Let us today behold each other in the sight of Christ. How beautiful we are! How holy and how loving! Brother, come and join with me today. We save the world when we have joined. For in our vision it becomes as holy as the light in us.”

A Course in Miracles W-313.1:1–2:6

Perception Follows Judgment

 

Image created by Octavio Ocampo

There are so many thoughts swirling in my head this evening; it’s difficult to corral them into any cohesive writing. Tomorrow’s ACIM Workbook Lesson #312 tells us that we see things as we want them to be. So the question is: do I want to see my fellow humans as guilty or innocent? When I wake up in the morning, do I choose to see the world through the eyes of mortal mind, ego? Or do I want to bypass that fearful decision and look at everything through the lens of Spirit? As stated in the quoted words below, “I have no purpose for today except to look upon a liberated world, set free from all the judgments I have made.” I’m going to have these words by my bedside, in order to ponder them before rising. 

“I see all things as I would have them be. Perception follows judgment. ²Having judged, we therefore see what we would look upon. ³For sight can merely serve to offer us what we would have. It is impossible to overlook what we would see, and fail to see what we have chosen to behold. How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit’s purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ’s Love for what he looks upon.

“I have no purpose for today except to look upon a liberated world, set free from all the judgments I have made. Father, this is Your Will for me today, and therefore it must be my goal as well.”

A Course in Miracles W-312.1:1–2:2

"The supposed existence of more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry. This error assumed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the spiritual presence of Life as infinite Truth without an unlikeness, and the loss of Love as ever present and universal." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 479:5-10

Facing Tragedy

 Art by Laura Makabresku

Despite having always been a proponent of facing tragedy and finding ways to move through it, I’m tempted to put some platitudes on paper tonight, find a few good quotes, and leave it at that. But I must say that when Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016, it was a much tougher event for me to face than when I had lost a leg two years before. Last night, when Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, it was much more difficult than any event many of have faced in our lifetimes. And yet we must. Moments ago, I read the following quote by Victor Frankl: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom." I pray for that freedom tonight …

“I judge all things as I would have them be. Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely. Let us not use it today, but make a gift of it to Him Who has a different use for it. He will relieve us of the agony of all the judgments we have made against ourselves, and re-establish peace of mind by giving us God’s Judgment of His Son.

“Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be.”

A Course in Miracles W-311.1:1–2:3

“One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself;' annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,--whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 340: 23-29

In The Interest of Humanity

Photo credit: Gabriel Carlson

While watching a documentary on India, I found myself weeping. It wasn’t the beauty of the country or the people, although those could bring a tear, but it was their election. Every five years this democracy comes together to elect their leaders. The thing of beauty which caused emotion to well up was the diligence with which their election officials set up voting facilities. There is a place to vote every two square miles, even where the population is so scarce that only one person is going to vote. There is a man living in a temple in the middle of nowhere — literally. The only time he leaves his space is to vote, and there is a place set up just for him. The beauty of their elections overwhelmed me. This country is on its way up, developing solar farms for energy production, and building a democracy worthy of emulation. I pray we in the United States can understand the sacredness of daily life and the obligation we have to each other. Namaste...

“In fearlessness and love I spend today. This day, my Father, would I spend with You, as You have chosen all my days should be. And what I will experience is not of time at all. The joy that comes to me is not of days nor hours, for it comes from Heaven to Your Son. This day will be Your sweet reminder to remember You, Your gracious calling to Your holy Son, the sign Your grace has come to me, and that it is Your Will I be set free today.

“We spend this day together, you and I. And all the world joins with us in our song of thankfulness and joy to Him Who gave salvation to us, and Who set us free. We are restored to peace and holiness. There is no room in us for fear today, for we have welcomed love into our hearts.”

A Course in Miracles W-310.1:1–2:4

"Truth should emanate from the pulpit, but never be strangled there. A special privilege is vested in the ministry. How shall it be used? Sacredly, in the interests of humanity, not of sect." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 236:2