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Sunday, May 29, 2011

imagine............. (revisited)

Spiritual resource to share: our timeless Truth

Graduation! A few years ago, I remember as our oldest son crossed the stage to be handed his high school diploma. To see his class of 35, who represented about ten countries, and knowing that they have just been educated into a love of nature and a responsibility to take care of it, was inspiring to say the least.


One of the sweetest moments that started me off on a long train of thoughts was when our son's graduating class sang the song "Imagine" by John Lennon as their class song.


As they sang, I realized that there is no generation gap between my son's generation and my generation's love of music and hope for peace. This led me to consider my parent's generation. We definitely had different tastes in music, but also had the same hope for peace. And then this led to the realization that the desire for peace, as for Truth, is timeless.


There is a point that I get to in my healing work where I realize the timelessness of the Truth that I follow and practice: it isn't about generations, or persons or time, or anything linear at all. Truth, peace, hope are timeless and universal. "Imagine" speaks of a universal hope and a prayer that we all live as one.


Jesus sang this same song :
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us:


And hundreds of years before that, King David sang:
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!


In fact, one could say that all major world religions sing the praises of unity and peace!

So.... what is my song that I can contribute? I wanted to sing along with my son's class.  My best contribution for the world I imagine for my children is through my practice of Christian Science. To me, it is the most practical, inspirational, and universal of any discipline I have ever come across. It applies to the care of nations and to the care of an infant. You prove love. You prove what you believe by how you live.


In Christian Science, progress is demonstration, not doctrine. This Science is ameliorative and regenerative, delivering mankind from all error through the light and love of Truth.


It gives to the race loftier desires and new possibilities. It lays the axe at the root of the tree of knowledge, to cut down all that bringeth not forth good fruit; "and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me."


It touches mind to more spiritual issues, systematizes action, gives a keener sense of Truth and a stronger desire for it.


....This movement of thought must push on the ages: it must start the wheels of reason aright, educate the affections to higher resources, and leave Christianity unbiased by the superstitions of a senior period.


-from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 235



What is your song?

© AndreasG - Fotolia.com

Friday, May 27, 2011

travelers and tourists - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: open road

"So in a word, what did you think your son learned from his trip abroad?" asked my cousin. I love questions like this, when you have to distill all kinds of experiences and ideas into a word. "I think that he became a traveler," was my almost automatic response.
Let me explain.


A tourist is one who brings all of what they know into a new experience. Each new experience is compared to what they expected; perspectives and prejudices are confirmed, and if not, the experience is usually held at fault.


A traveler leaves themselves open. They know that they don't know what they don't know and so they enter each new experience unconditionally, with an expectation to learn and with a willingness to step out of their comfort zone.


Mark Twain, rascal that he is, has some great things to say about travel and what a true traveler is:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.- Innocents Abroad


...nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people.- Letter to San Francisco Alta
California, dated May 18th, 1867; published June 23, 1867




Mary Baker Eddy, a much less rascally person, wrote, "Meekness and charity have divine authority." I think that's what my son experienced.

He fit comfortably into the family he stayed with for a year in Germany. He listened. He appreciated things.  He let go of pre-conceived ideas.  He saw his own country in a new light; he was able to see that there are many ways to do things: zip a zipper, travel in a car, eat chocolate, as well as understand politics, experience new uses of space, success, and time.  He felt the presence of history in the castles and architecture. He saw how much in common we all have - much like the Harry Potter book he bought in Germany: the cover was different , but the inside was all the same.
And best of all, it stirred in him a desire to possibly become tri-lingual and to continue to explore more broadly, learn more deeply, and find one's place among humanity. And in my book, that's a traveler.


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.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

hitting the road again

Spiritual resource to share:  timeless inspiration
 
Gabe's friends climbing down from Cerro Negro in Nicaragua
 It's time to be heading far south again - to Costa Rica - where I'll be celebrating another landmark: my younger son's graduation from high school.  He's been attending a Quaker high school in the mountains of Monteverde, Costa Rica,  and has taken several trips in the country and to neighboring Nicaragua.  His experience there has been rich.

While I'm away, I've scheduled a series of blog posts every couple of days on a variety of ideas:  travel, supply, feeling the strength of a single purpose, what it means to be a global citizen and being ageless

Enjoy!  And I'll be back mid June!

Photo by Gabe Korinek (c) 2011

Friday, May 20, 2011

The world has been healed of its flatness!

Spiritual resource to share:
a spiritually perfect starting point


Isn’t this wonderful news! People have been praying to see earth in its perfect orbness, and because they prayed so hard, for so long, and got different practitioners to work with them at different times, the earth responded and became round!    

Not.


After reading Laurance Doyle’s article: A spiritual, higher view, I had to laugh just thinking about a hypothetical news article announcing earth’s “healing.”


Do we sometimes approach our healing work like this? Wanting to change what seems so real to us, we give our best efforts to try to change one so-called "fact" for another.  We may feel that we need to achieve a level of spirituality that we don’t quite yet have, so we vow to try harder and harder and pray more and more. We’d accept even a little change.


But that’s not how Jesus healed.

Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.
Just as the world was always round and we needed to wake up to this fact, we start with the fact that we are made in the perfect image and likeness of God. Healing is about waking up to that fact.


As Laurance Doyle says in his article “The earth didn’t need fixing, but our thought of it did.” Likewise, who we are doesn’t need fixing, but our thought about who we are does.


Our spiritually perfect starting point also becomes our ending point.  Just like the earth was found to be always round, we see ourselves as always whole, robust, and free - the image and likeness of God. The mistaken view is corrected and we are healed.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

No labels in God's kingdom

Spiritual resource to share: our common heritage
 
A bustling humanity at an international airport
"Have we not all one Father?" Malachi 2: 10


I regularly read tmcyouth.com - a website for those who want to know more about Christian Science a/o are practicing Christian Science.  It has, as its name implies, a youthful bent.


One post shared how a young Christian Scientist came to grips with who he was and how to break through any resistance to share who he is - as a Christian Scientist!


Its title: "I'm gay"  "Oh yeah!  I'm a Christian Scientist!"  made me think about all the categories we find ourselves in and responding to, and how there is a higher calling - a more all-inclusive uber-category that we all belong to.  Here is my response to that post:


What a startling title! And what a great example of coming out and blessing others!


Today, I thought about this post and just knew I needed to respond.

You know, being gay and being Christian Scientist have a bit in common: They are both labels; there are arguments in some circles that both are against the Bible; and again, in some circles, they are both perceived as being strange.

Michael (this is the individual who wrote the tmcyouth post), I love that you were brave enough to announce that you are a Christian Scientist – you had to face up to some stereotypes and had the moral courage to do so. So anyone who is stuck with a label that has been maligned or misunderstood has had to have that same moral courage and to show themselves as God knows them.


The bottom line is that we are not all running around in scared and isolated little categories! We are all the children of God.

A friend of mine was going to Brazil for the first time and was a little nervous about fitting into that culture. I had gone to Brazil a number of times and told her so. “And you know,” I shared, “the Christ is already there! In fact, the place is crawling with children of God!” We laughed. And that certainly broke any mesmeric sense of being an outsider. She went and had a wonderful time.

What was healing with my traveling friend and what I got was healing in Michael’s case is that there is an understanding that we are spiritual, not material. And because we are all the spiritual image and likeness of Love, we have something profound in common with everyone – we are all children of God.

This is the healing idea (that we are ALL the children of God) that lifts stereotypes we have of others, dissolves fears that others are bad influences, it reverses prejudices and false assumptions. We can get a better glimpse that we “… are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus….. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”* We can add ...there is no human category: neither Brazilian, nor gay, nor Christian Scientist, etc…..for we are all have one Father-Mother God!

*Galatians 3: 26, 28

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

to end hatred and terror

Spiritual resource to share:  the calm strong currents of true spirituality



And Hussein Rashid, a native New Yorker and Muslim commentator, said: “The way Osama bin Laden died is difficult for me as an American opposed to the death penalty and committed to the courts as a space for the performance of justice. [Bin Laden’s] death does not heal the world, but allows the dirt in the wound to be washed away. Now we need to spend time healing, and it will be a job. The symbol is dead, what he symbolised should die as well.”

Swirling around on the internet are healing, redemptive currents of thought.  It is deeply moving to see, once again, the attraction to a higher calling of healing.

My cousin, Sandi,  and I both had the same idea today:  to collect the many ideas of comfort, guidance and love to counter the impact of hatred surrounding Osama bin Laden's death. Thank you friends for your comments via facebook, twitter, and email.

 Love your enemies. -Christ Jesus


The pursuit of truth does not permit violence being inflicted on one's opponent. - Gandhi

Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble.  —Proverbs 24:17

Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.  – Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and writer



If we're ever going to collectively begin to grapple with the problems that we have collectively, we're going to have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level.
Wilma Mankiller, chief of the Cherokee Nation

 If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world. – Deepak Chopra, spiritual teacher and writer


Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?…I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live. -Ezekiel 18


I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. - Anonymous


Religion is caring, intensely, for God and for God's creation. – Faraz Rabbani, Muslim scholar



Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. - Martin Luther King



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