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Thursday, August 28, 2008

break time!

Spiritual resource to share: renewal


St. Martin's in London

For over 25 years, I have been taking off around this time to go for some spiritual sustenance. For many of these years, I have gone across the ocean, joined with other Christian Science healers and friends, and participated in an all-day seminar on Christian Science healing.

The time before and after is all mine and I spend a lot of it walking in the city, maybe visiting a friend or two, but seriously giving myself space to be with myself and to renew my relationship to God, my commitment to healing, and my commitment to be selfless in sharing Christian Science with mankind.

So, all of this to say I won't be online until September 10th! But until then, I hope you all find time for yourselves to renew, reflect and rejoice!









To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

saying goodbye

Spiritual resource to share: knowing each other spiritually

Micah (Germany '08-'09) and Ben (Lithuania "08-'09)
cruising the beach on Lake Michigan

These last two weeks have been full of getting my sons ready to leave for a year - one is going on an international youth exchange and the other is going to a nearby boarding school. And then this last week was spent actually launching them and saying our goodbyes. This has all happened in the context of two communities of people all doing the same thing and I have made some wonderful new friends of the parents of kids who are in the same program and going to the same school as my sons. And we are all helping each other and encouraging each other as our kids head off to their own adventures.

It has been helpful to me to remember and think through again a number of things:

First, our children have their primary connection to God. “God is Love” as it says in the book of John. It is that simple. Our children, like us, are made up of Love: we connect, we grow, we nourish one another and are nourished. This fundamental substance of our being is never lost and, just as the sun is not disconnected from the light and warmth it exudes; we are never disconnected from this source of Life and Love.

Second, new experiences will draw out from them (as from us) new and deeper expressions of this Love. We all have this Love. We are made complete in God’s image and likeness. So these new experiences draw out from us what is already there.

Third, if I know my kids spiritually, I can never lose them. One parent once wrote about how she overcame her “kid-sickness” ( a new term meaning the homesickness a parent gets when their child leaves home for camp, etc.) The main point was that she realized that whether her daughter was studying in the next room or whether her daughter was living a half a world away, it was the woman’s thought of her daughter that never changed - and this changelessness was all spiritually based. My love for my sons deepens when I understand them from a spiritual basis. I can continue to support their love of adventure, their insight, their innovativeness, kindness and joy. I grow to trust their ability to make wise decisions, following Love’s leading and being a help to others. I trust God and I trust my kids.

And finally, I realize that as I love them through a spiritual lens, I am also affirming that they live in an atmosphere created by God, good. I know that Love is also supplying them with what they need. I know that “God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.”

I draw my conclusions on this one idea. The love I have felt for them in the past is indicative of the growing love we all have for one another and will have. All things grow and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Saying goodbye really then becomes saying goodbye to things outgrown and opening our thought and our love to the infinite new possibilities that are right in front of us.






To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Ideas about home - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: home

I've been thinking about home lately, with two kids ready to make new homes for the coming year. Home is such a dynamic idea, centering us as well as giving us that strong foundation that we can jump from.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had last year with a group of close family friends and my family about home. Here are some excerpts from a blog written a year ago:

Our German exchange student son will soon be leaving for home in two weeks and is taking my son who will visit with his family for a month. One of my two goddaughters is leaving for Sweden in a few days. Actually, there is a lot of coming and going, as our Korean exchange student son will leave also be leaving for home next month, and my other son takes his first plane ride alone to another adventure. So, last night, we talked a little about adventures and what that means about home.

"Home is the place where you grow up", said my goddaughter who has lived in one town her whole life. She's got one stamp of Scotland on her passport, and will be soloing into Sweden soon and next year has plans for Chile.

"Home is wherever I am now," said my son who has lived in four homes and three different states in city, suburban and rural areas and is packing for his first trip out of the country soon.

"Home is right here," said our German son, who has already done a fair bit of globetrotting for one his age.

I loved hearing their ideas about home as a presence and place to grow. Home is about the present tense.

A friend of mine, who was temporarily homeless at one point, carried in her pocket a toothbrush, a comb and a card that reminded her "Home is not a place, but a power." (She did get situated in a nice home and a neat job shortly after, by the way.)

This line is from MBEddy's main book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and has been a foundation stone for us as we build our own sense of home:

Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections.


Home to me is an active force, open and as free as a breeze and stable as a rock. When my husband and I got married, we both loved the idea of home being a center and not having boundaries. We have opened our home to, well, it's almost twenty people, both individuals and small families, who have shared our home - some for a few months, others for over a year. Some were near homeless, others were transitioning into new jobs, schools and homes. We've all progressed and grown together and are the richer for these shared experiences.

We've had the added benefit of showing our sons that there are many loving people in this world, and everyone has something worthwhile to teach, and everyone has something interesting to learn. Our sons have learned how to collect feathers, identify gypsy moths, play piano and sing, and learn about opera, babies and other cultures - all from those who enlarged our family for a time.


Knowing that you can take home with you is a comforting and powerful idea. As my dad taught us kids, home is a safe place where you are always welcomed, and then encouraged to go back out again and have adventures.




To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

a lifetime of firsts - revisited

I am giving a lot of thought to parenting and celebrating how my kids and other kids I love are seeking out some wonderful experiences. ( I am tracking six of them: three are gone to all corners of the world, and antoher three are waiting to go within the next two weeks.) This blog, written about two years ago, has a message I am appreciating anew.

One day I got this bit of news from an old friend who had an announcement to make. She wrote:


Hi everyone,

This was a big morning for me and my 6'2" baby ... my son climbed into our car and drove himself to school today for the first time. ... It's like watching him take his first step, first day of kindergarten, first time walking to school alone, first time I left him at home alone while I ran to the grocery store ... all those big "firsts" that just seem to keep coming, an entire lifetime of firsts that bring us all joy and a little
trepidation!

Love, M.



This set me back to remembering all my kids' firsts. But then I started thinking how we are always involved in firsts. My first kiss, my first passport, our first house, first this, first that, etc. etc. etc.

Well of course! Life is a self creative force -- the "seed within itself" - and we reflect God as Life. What this means then is that our lives are ever progressing - "broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." Our lives are always a series of firsts.

Spiritual growth is accelerated when we let go of the old, outgrown ideas. Like, you can't start driving a car if you are still mourning the loss of your stroller!

I'm fascinated with the variety of Bible translations and came across this mix of translations to a Bible verse explaining how to put off the old man and bring on the new by embracing a type of resurrection in our daily doings. In doing so we are

  • freeing ourselves from the guilty feeling of doing work for nothing
  • purging our conscience from dead works or from those acts that lead to limitation and death
  • freeing our thoughts from those dead end efforts to make ourselves respectable

And, being freed from these old, dead end thoughts speeds our receptivity to bring on the new, fresh ideas - so that we can live fully -- glorifying God to the hilt!

God, as the source of creative brilliance, ongoing genius and everpresent love, knows Herself through Her creation -- us. And daily I m become more aware of how God sees me-- and all of Her creation -- as Her perfect expression. I know that I am not the same person I was when I was a child, or when I was a young adult. Likewise, I am not the same person I was last year or yesterday. I realize even more profoundly now, how true this is for my sons.

Each of us has the opportunity to drop the old worn out ideas for the new and fresh and so see our lives a parade of firsts. With these kids, this is as easy to do as it is to breathe.




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