Set Your Table With a Spotless Cloth

Flat Earthers, Hoarders, Agoraphobics -- I've been thinking about people who exhibit what could be called aberrant behavior. I have friends who are afraid to lose their past because they wouldn't know who they are; then there are those afraid of the future, hence they're afraid of everything. I think about personas I've tried on through the years: a survivalist in the early 80's; my mother said the only thing that "saved me from being a hippie" in the 70s was that I liked to be clean (little did she know it has nothing to do with outer accoutrements!); for a summer I even wanted to be a go-go dancer -- ha! There are many identities we can cling to, and it's certainly difficult to keep from mentioning one or more when asked "who are you?" In the new year, my word for the year shall be "truth". It doesn't matter to me what may happen as the result of truth telling; I simply want everything to be out in the open. While pondering that, I realize that the proclivities we identify with are part of what we have decided upon as our own personal truth. As part of my new, more-open thought, I resolve to not fault anyone for thinking in ways I find to be odd or disconcerting. We all have different expressions of the divinity we are, and it is not my place to pass judgment. (Although I'm not sure what's up with people who think the earth is flat!) Happy end-of- the-year, end-of-an-era, to everyone. Here's to Truth!

"Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softly joyous whispering is ever heard. This is a feast that honors your holy relationship, and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in a holy instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gentleness before the table of communion. And I will join you there, as long ago I promised and promise still. For in your new relationship am I made welcome. And where I am made welcome, there I am." 

A Course in Miracles T-19.IV.A.16. 

“Thus we arrive at Truth, or intelligence, which evolves its own unerring idea and never can be coordinate with human illusions. If Soul sinned, it would be mortal, for sin is mortality’s self, because it kills itself. If Truth is immortal, error must be mortal, because error is unlike Truth. Because Soul is immortal, Soul cannot sin, for sin is not the eternal verity of being.

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 467:32-7

Seeing the Face of Christ in Each Other

The Big Jesus

Also Known As: Christ of the Ozarks

In Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Photo credit: Ron Lutz

I’ve never understood wars, and so-called religious wars are particularly incomprehensible. As a youngster, upon hearing of the disputes between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, I thought there must be something incredibly important to cause so much death and destruction. As an adult, I discovered it was basically a disagreement of semantics. When I began playing organ for the Catholics and Methodists a few years back, I learned many things about mainstream religion. As I’d only been exposed to Christian Science services before this, I had no idea what other churches thought of communion, Jesus, death, and the concept of God in general. I could go on and on about this, but there’s no reason to do so. The main thing I discovered is that there is basically no difference in the Protestants and Catholics — certainly nothing to precipitate years of battle. And now we have denominations breaking apart over human rights. What a waste of time and energy, when we could simply follow Jesus’ two great precepts. Let’s love one another actively, and love God with every thought and action. Happy Holidays EVERYONE!

“The Christ was the Spirit which Jesus implied in his own statements: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life;’ ‘I and my Father are one.’ This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him. Divine Truth, Life, and Love gave Jesus authority over sin, sickness, and death. His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being, to prove what God is and what He does for man.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 26:10-18

“The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do. Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are? Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions.”
A Course in Miracles - C-5.2:1-6

Peace is our Gift to Each Other

Art by J. Clement Wall 

Praying for peace — I think we are all doing this in our individual way. It is extremely painful to see the ravages of war. It’s difficult to face and understand the unrest within the United States over more things than I care to count. With this in mind, I offer you quotes on peace today.   Namaste …

"We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate - thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising."

 Maya Angelou

"Peace is our gift to each other." 

Elie Wiesel

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

John F. Kennedy

"There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity." 

Elise M. Boulding

"Every year at this time, an important phrase marks the season: peace on earth and goodwill towards men. It's so common we sometimes forget about what it really means - that we strive for a world without war, a society where we respect and help our neighbors, a place where we protect and uplift our most in need. This isn't a phrase we should live by for one day or one month. It's a set of values that must bond and motivate us every day." 

Dennis Kucinich

“We cannot give what we do not have: We cannot bring peace to the world if we ourselves are not peaceful. We cannot bring love to the world if we ourselves are not loving. Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have but in who we are.”

Marianne Williamson

"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 

“Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that have become illusions’ battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready to be remembered when you side with peace.” 

A Course in Miracles

Peace Like A River — Happy Christmas Day

Joni Mitchell - photo by Joel Bernstein

"God's answer is some form of peace. All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy. All prison doors are opened. And all sin is understood as merely a mistake."
A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson #359

Peace like a river. As I read the above words. this is what keeps coming to mind. Peace like a river. On this beautiful Christmas morning, I allow all imprisoning beliefs to leave my mind, while welcoming Love through the Science of the Christ. The Christ that we celebrate today flows through each and every thing there is. It leads us to healing in all thought and deed. It keeps us happy, safe, wholly directed by eternal Truth to green pastures and quiet repose. Peace like a river, flowing before and around us, pulling and pushing wherever we need to be. I won't fight the flow. I'll float and rest in the Christ consciousness which we celebrate today. This Spirit which permeates everything is recognized by me for what it is: God's answer.

“Christmas to me is the reminder of God's great gift, — His spiritual idea, man and the universe, — a gift which so transcends mortal, material, sensual giving that the merriment, mad ambition, rivalry, and ritual of our common Christmas seem a human mockery in mimicry of the real worship in commemoration of Christ's coming.

“I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth's appearing.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Miscellany 262:20-30

“Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing? Such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give you that you may give it and return it to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in the time of Christ communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son’s creation.”
A Course in Miracles T-15.XI.8:1-5

The Birth of Truth

Photo courtesy of Blake Lasater

Many people have told me they don't like Christmas. What they mean, of course, is that they don't like the way Christmas is promoted by the media and corporations. It seems there is too much emphasis on buying unnecessary things —  and going into debt to do so. We all know people who are over-stressed, for various reasons, during this beautiful time of the year. And so the words of Mary Baker Eddy which are quoted below are what I will concentrate on today. Spending the day quietly listening, in peace and joy, today and every day, is all I want. This is the gift which is ours for the claiming of it, anytime, anywhere. Happy Christmas to All...

“I celebrate Christmas with my soul, my spiritual sense, and so commemorate the entrance into human understanding of the Christ conceived of Spirit, of God and not of a woman—as the birth of Truth, the dawn of divine Love breaking upon the gloom of matter and evil with the glory of infinite being.

“I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth’s appearing." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Miscellany Page 262

“In this season (Christmas) which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me who decided for holiness for you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond all your littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you. For God would give Himself through you. He reaches from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son’s creations, but without leaving you. Far beyond your little world but still in you, He extends forever. Yet He brings all His extensions to you, as host to Him.”

A Course in Miracles ACIM, T-15.III.7:1-7

Oneness Blessing

Art by Peter Max

Years ago, I took an intensive course in giving the Oneness Blessing. At the time (probably 20 years ago), the training had been intensified and done in two days, as opposed to the two weeks that it had taken before. Our instructor told us this was because it was necessary to get as many conduits of divine Love open as quickly as possible. The time was now because great changes were coming and we needed to be prepared. Looking back at that time, I can’t help but wonder if we took our obligation seriously enough. I don’t feel that I did. Having always been a procrastinator, it seems I put off opening my heart 100%, thinking that what I was doing was “good enough”. I urge everyone who works with positive energies — and you know who you are! — to go forward, fearless in our Giving. Truly, what the world needs now is Love, sweet Love. Let’s do it!

“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

“Holy child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give you peace? Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would but teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness.”
A Course in Miracles T-15.III.9:1-9

Certainty of Purpose

Photo credit: Aaron Springston

As the year draws to a close, our busy-ness tends to increase until we are, perhaps, in a tizzy all the time, much like the spinning dreidel which is a staple of many celebrations. I witnessed a friend in such a dither today. As I watched her, I realized she was taking personal responsibility for everything around her. She felt put-upon and over-loaded with duties and chores. She breathlessly rushed about feeling that no one but her would know what to do about any number of things. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly and deeply, hoping it could spread to her, but she wasn’t receptive. She was no more able to accept the peace that was hers, as the expression of Spirit, than she was able to trust that everything would be done with or without her — or not! It’s easy to slip into believing that we’re the only one who knows how to do certain things, thinking that everything will fall apart without us. I have found, time and again, that to stand with divine Love “in peace and certainty of purpose” will allow perfect results to transpire! So take a deep breath and trust the Universe!

‘“Rest in peace’ is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining. Dreams are illusions of joining, because they reflect the ego’s distorted notions about what joining is. Yet the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on behalf of waking if you will let Him.”
A Course in Miracles T-8.IX.3:5-8

“When we reach our limits of mental endurance, we conclude that intellectual labor has been carried sufficiently far; but when we realize that immortal Mind is ever active, and that spiritual energies can neither wear out nor can so-called material law trespass upon God-given powers and resources, we are able to rest in Truth, refreshed by the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 387:5-12