The Light of Holiness

Art by Adrian Borda

“Therefore, dark past,

I'm about to do it.

I'm about to forgive you

for everything.”

~ Mary Oliver

I’ve been having recurring dreams about a man I loved. He was the smartest, funniest, most messed-up man I’ve ever known. We met late in life and I felt he was the “love of my life”. Neither one of us was particularly easy to get along with — for various reasons. The four years we knew each other were an extremely turbulent time for us personally, and the world in general. He died five years ago and recently I’ve been dreaming of him almost every night. This has caused me to examine my feelings about him and the time we shared. While I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, there is much forgiveness needed in my thoughts and memories. I am always happy to review the ACIM workbook topic which reminds me to “behold my brother in the light of holiness”. As I examine the grudges I’m holding and the guilt I’m feeling, I pray to release them from my being and know that “I am saved because the past is gone”.

“Let me forget my brother’s past today is the thought that leads the way to You, and brings me to my goal. I cannot come to You without my brother. And to know my Source, I first must recognize what You created one with me. My brother’s is the hand that leads me on the way to You. His sins are in the past along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone. Let me not cherish it within my heart, or I will lose the way to walk to You. My brother is my savior. Let me not attack the savior You have given me. But let me honor him who bears Your Name, and so remember that It is my own.

“Forgive me, then, today. And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you cannot be holier than he.”

A Course in Miracles T-288.1:1–2:3

“Spiritually to understand that there is but one creator, God, unfolds all creation, confirms the Scriptures, brings the sweet assurance of no parting, no pain, and of man deathless and perfect and eternal.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 69:13-16

The Seeds of Peace

Mother Teresa was once asked to join a march against the war in Vietnam. She responded that she wouldn’t march against war, but she would march FOR peace. I was reminded of this today when my favorite historian, Heather Cox Richardson, mentioned the monks walking across the United States for peace. They are not protesting the policies of the regime which is working to take over our country, or trying to rid our land of the masked goons who are ruthlessly abusing people, but rather they are reminding us that we have the seeds of peace in us, and that we have the keys to the future. She advises us to look to them as an example of what we can do. Pick one thing and concentrate on that. For example, choose one cabinet member who is particularly offensive in your view — for example, the wrestling woman in charge of education or the alien in charge of health — and write letters or organize others to work to remove them from their unelected positions. Don’t forget those wonderful seeds of peace in us which we can spread. And knowing we have the keys to the future is incredibly empowering in these times of extreme change. 

“The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world.”

A Course in Miracles W-121.2:1

“Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts! Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 45:16–21

“Why I Remain an Optimist” - MLK

Photo courtesy of Blake Lasater

This is an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr last essay:

“People are often surprised to learn that I am an optimist. They know how often I have been jailed, how frequently the days and nights have been filled with frustration and sorrow, how bitter and dangerous are my adversaries. They expect these experiences to harden me into a grim and desperate man.

They fail, however, to perceive the sense of affirmation generated by the challenge of embracing struggle and surmounting obstacles. They have no comprehension of the strength that comes from faith in God and man.

It is possible for me to falter, but I am profoundly secure in my knowledge that God loves us; he has not worked out a design for our failure. Man has the capacity to do right as well as wrong, and his history is a path upward, not downward.

The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them. While it is a bitter fact that in America in 1968, I am denied equality solely because I am black, yet I am not a chattel slave. Millions of people have fought thousands of battles to enlarge my freedom; restricted as it still is, progress has been made.

This is why I remain an optimist, though I am also a realist, about the barriers before us. Why is the issue of equality still so far from solution in America, a nation that professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new ideas, rich, productive and awesomely powerful?

The problem is so tenacious because, despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially. All too many Americans believe justice will unfold painlessly or that its absence for black people will be tolerated tranquilly. Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of disadvantaged black people.

White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, for your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. Only God Himself is more than they but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well. Everyone God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He is.”
—A Course in Miracles T-9.VI.3:1-11

“The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of this new crusade sounded the keynote of universal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but through Christ’s divine Science.”
— Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 226:5-1

Rest…

 

Art by Albena Vatcheva

Rivers in the Ocean

Rest - written by Jeff Foster

“Rest, weary one.

Lay your head down.

You have travelled far.

I have no clever words for you.

No system to teach.

No image to maintain.

You’ll find no philosophy here.

No answers to your many questions.

I offer only presence.

Sanctuary.

A bed. 

A meal. 

A small kindness to repay yours.

I am no better than you.

My guru is life.

My lineage is love.

I do not separate the enlightened from the unenlightened.

I teach nothing I do not live.

I quote not from books but from the cracks in the heart. 

I see your fragility yet I see your immense power.

You are not broken.

Don’t let them tell you that you are broken.

We met long ago when dust settled to form worlds.

I think I saw your courage then.

Close your eyes; 

I will keep watch tonight.”

~ Jeff Foster 

“Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love — be it song, sermon, or Science — blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ’s table, feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 234:4-8

“Real freedom depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, 

for the Comforter of God is in you.”

A Course in. Miracles T-11.II.7:7-8

Know Better, Do Better

I love watching gardening shows, and many favorite programs come from an Englishman named  Monty Don. Today I saw him taking young children to vegetable gardens and letting them experience how potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes are grown. They were fascinated and surprised to learn how food comes from the earth! As I witnessed the wonder on these children’s faces, it occurred to me that people are this way with any form of education. When we learn the truth of events which have been misrepresented to us, we may have many reactions. Perhaps truth first brings anger, because we are upset that we’ve believed lies. Hopefully, eventually we will be glad that we finally know the truth, and then we can move forward in life with a newfound peace. I see many folks refusing to admit that they have been fooled by our highest level of politicians. It’s difficult to accept that we have been duped by those we trusted. Let’s be kind to those who are beginning to see the light. We can help by extending love rather than many of the reactions which we are tempted to have. Remember, it’s easy to love those who love you first. It’s more of a challenge to see through the mirage of someone flinging insults at you. Don’t forget, when we change ourselves, we change the world. Namaste …

“What can be fearful but fantasy, and who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that your only hope is to change your mind about reality. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. And I assure you that God is right. Be glad, then, that you have been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you were. Had you known, you could no more have been wrong than God can.” 

A Course in Miracles T-9.IV.10:1-6

“Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours. Material sense does not unfold the facts of existence; but spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth. Humanity advances slowly out of sinning sense into spiritual understanding; unwillingness to learn all things rightly, binds Christendom with chains.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 97:28-6

The Heart of Life

“On Death - by Kahlil Gibran

You would know the secret of death.

But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.


In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;

And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.

Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?

Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?


For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?


Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

“Question: What is Life?

Answer: Life is divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit. Life is without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in proportion as the other is recognized. Time is finite; eternity is forever infinite. Life is neither in nor of matter. What is termed matter is unknown to Spirit, which includes in itself all substance and is Life eternal. Matter is a human concept. Life is divine Mind. Life is not limited. Death and finiteness are unknown to Life. If Life ever had a beginning, it would also have an ending.”
—Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Pages 468:26-6

“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

Cascading Thoughts …

Art by Kaoru Yamada

In our little village, the death of a woman in childbirth has taken my thoughts down the perilous path of motherhood. The magnificent movement of growing a baby within her body, of birthing that baby into the world, of feeding that baby — these things are huge events which we taken as everyday occurrences rather than the miracle they are. Wait, what am I saying? Everything is a miracle when you pay attention! Although our Eureka Woman had loving care and support in every way, her passing has caused me to think of the pain women often endure due to lack of proper care during their pregnancies and births and the parenthood which follows. Many instances of impossible pregnancies come to mind, and then I think of the people who insist that these gestations come to full term and the consequences suffered by the women. My book club is currently reading The Frozen River. The story tells of an 18th-century midwife in the cold and cruel atmosphere of a Maine winter. Perhaps that is why I am feeling the distress of the thousands, perhaps millions, of women who are misunderstood and maltreated. This book has caused me to feel what a frightened, misinformed young woman might experience. It causes me to wonder how much disinformation many of our young people are being given today. I also wonder at the misplaced values being espoused when they talk of traditional” marriages and “moral” politicians. May we all mentor a child, befriend a young mother, help our neighbor in any way possible — and vote for freedom in all of the coming elections!

“Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. This is the prerequisite for knowledge only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom. Knowledge can be restored only when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of an imaginary will that is not His. Knowledge isHis Will. If you are opposing His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but perhaps you do not yet regard this as wholly desirable. If you did you would not be so ready to throw it away when the ego asks for your allegiance.”
—A Course in Miracles T-8.I.1:1-10

“Pale in the presence of his own momentous question, ‘What is Truth,’ Pilate was drawn into acquiescence with the demands of Jesus’ enemies. Pilate was ignorant of the consequences of his awful decision against human rights and divine Love, knowing not that he was hastening the final demonstration of what life is and of what the true knowledge of God can do for man.

“The women at the cross could have answered Pilate’s question. They knew what had inspired their devotion, winged their faith, opened the eyes of their understanding, healed the sick, cast out evil, and caused the disciples to say to their Master: ‘Even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.’”
—Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 48:25-6