all things are new - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: fresh starts


Our backyard

Up here in the very northern hemisphere, the new year has been welcomed in with an abundance of snow. Conditions at my favorite cross-country ski park are listing it as "fluffy." This is another way to describe it as ideal. The beauty of the season, the crisp cold, the blanket of snow covering the upcoming spring, all this makes it an ideal backdrop to think ahead and prep for the year ahead. Here are four areas I feel are important for me:

Rest.
Although this seemed like a funny way to start off, I am intrigued with rest. It certainly is nourishing, and it is based on ( or rests on) a profound trust - that God is governing all: all systems and functions of the body, of organizations and of nations. "God rests in action" makes me think of my activity as productive, efficient. During yesterday's skiing, I constantly reminded myself to rest in each stride which helped me relax into the movement and release any tension. Resting in action brought more fluidity and grace.

Be alert.
Just so the "rest" part doesn't fall into sleep, I am adding alertness. Alertness is sharp, is keen insight and means we stay open to experience more of God's infinite goodness. We are engaged, a part of life - not mere by-standers.

Work.
Once we accept an idea of God (like goodness, abundance, companionship, and so on) as already present, we can then get to work at demonstrating it. You know, like once you have accepted that 4+6 is 10, then you can find all sorts of ways to work with that idea by managing finances, baking, figuring out the mileage to your cousin's, etc. Likewise once we accept that God is All-present and All-good, we can get to work at seeing this goodness everywhere. Working diligently, striving and patiently persisting just throws off the baggage of chatter and puts us in the honest, naked pursuit of demonstrating spiritual being.

Love.
Connection. Redemption. Celebration. I wholeheartedly agree with MBEddy's statement about Love: "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love." Yep. Love is something I'll be exploring eternally. MBEddy goes on to say:

Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power. (from Miscellaneous Writings, p. 249)

Please feel free to share your ideas for renewal!


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.

gloom and doom or making room

Spiritual resource to share: insistence and persistence



Gloom and doom rule the baby boom.....Baby boomers are bummed.....Are boomers gloom and doomers?

Just google "Pew Research and boomers" and you get all kinds of articles with these headlines.  Or go straight to Pew Research and read for yourself: "Baby Boomers Approach 65 - Glumly"

After reading this article, I found myself asking all kinds of other questions, like:

• Who or what is it that we allow to determine our future and our expectations for the future?
• Shakespeare has said that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So are we making our own gloom and doom by thinking it to be so?
• How can we make room in our hearts for zoom and bloom, instead of doom and gloom?
• Do we wait for good to happen or do we wake up to see and acknowledge it ourselves?

Even the darkest night cannot withstand the light. And the agreement to acknowledge good acts as the light chasing away any gloom.  This is the seed of progress. This is something we can do, day to day, even blink to blink. We can take responsibility for our own thinking and align it with God, good. We can bring light to our thinking.

Hopi Elders have said "Now is the time, and we are the ones we have been waiting for." Christ Jesus has said "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

Both ideas leave me with the feeling of urgency, potency and potential. Now is the time!

Some of you may remember that old phrase: "Question authority." Let's question the authority of these predictions. Let’s challenge these assumptions with an understanding of God. How deep is our understanding of God, Love? How much room have we made in our hearts to accept that God is eternal, omnipotent?

In Science and Health, it says “The world must grow to the spiritual understanding of prayer.”


Prayer is what aligns our thought to what has divine authority. It is the highest authority there is. “'God is Love.' More than this we cannot ask, higher we cannot look, farther we cannot go.”


God is the foundation of being and there is no other power. “God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?”

If God is omnipotent, than evil (resentment, anger, fear, doubt, ad nauseum)  cannot have any power whatsoever. Nil. Nada. Zip. God, good, is the only power, is all the power that is.

Let’s question the authority that says we are sick, weak, vulnerable, unemployable, unlovable and incapable of determining our own course. Let’s answer it with the divine authority of God - in healing discords, healing the sick, affirming our strengths, partnering ourselves with Love, and affirming our ability to listen to our loving Father-Mother God to lead us in the paths that will glorify Him -- glorify Life, Truth and Love.

Let's make room for progress, innovative solutions, patient and persistent prayer. Day by day, blink by blink, we can see 2011 bloom into surprising possibilities for good.

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.

2009 - a year to pour on the joy!

Spiritual resource to share: overflow!



I have been getting an awful lot of happiness messages on my various technologies lately. (Thank you Amy for this article on the secret of happiness and happiness quotes!) I even have an assignment from one of my mentors to start tracking those everyday happy moments -- of times with friends, children, pets, with nature and so on. Growing up in a photographer's family, we've been dealing with capturing moments of happiness for decades. These all add up. It is these moments that bring out the best of who we are.

I went to bed last night after watching a home made video of my friends' daughter singing ( like really well!) "I'm yours" by Jason Mraz. I wasn't able to get her video on this post but I did get one of Mraz's. Listen to it above. Pure happy.

And now, with the Golden Globes winners announced, that's strong indication that there may be a bigger happiness thing going on! Golden Globe winners and nominees like Slumdog Millionaire, Happy-Go-Lucky and Mamma Mia may make 2009 to be a year for joy to pull out all the stops.

Mary Baker Eddy's take on happiness is timeless:

Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.

(For other thoughts on happiness from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, click here and type in happiness.)

Happy ( really deeply profoundly happy) 2009!





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.

New Year's resolution: to love

Spiritual resource to share: spiritual intention

I woke up this New Year's day to about three inches of fresh fallen snow. A friend once commented, "I love new snow. It makes me feel that we have all been redeemed."

What a great way to start the new year!

Looking ahead, I'm going to promise myself one resolution. My one resolution from last year:

I am practicing living more simply and more closely to my prayer. My new backbone -- the only thing on my "list" for this new year is to praise God. That's all.

I liked this "list." It was short and to the point and I did it. So this year, on my list, I have one thing and that is to love.

Mary Baker Eddy's take on Love is penetrating and powerful, and individually empowering. In her book Miscellaneous Writings on page 250, she writes an article entitled "Love"

What a word! I am in awe of it! Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love.

Later in the article, she gets into the demands on love:

Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occassions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfiet, having no ring of the true metal.

Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power.

The New Testament speaks of God as Love, a Love that casts out fear. In agreement with this, Eddy makes the point that Love demands expression and that that expression brings us into alignment with harmony. So powerful is this Love that an understanding of it heals.

She writes about the practice of Christian Science:

If the (Christian) Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine.

I remember reading that Eddy was asked how she healed, and she responded, she just loves. Far from being a simple answer, it is that Love that I want to explore more deeply. And knowing that the Bible mentions love 280 times ( King James version) and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Eddy mentions it 121 times, I think that's a good start for the year.

If you had one resolution to make for the year, what would it be?









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.

"How can I make perfect mashed potatoes?"

Most newspaper headlines are rife with themes of "Renewal" "New Hope for the New Year" "Positive resolutions for the New Year" etc. etc. Did you know that there are over 21 million other references to New Year's Resolutions on the Web? All that being said, I have to applaud the Rhinelander Daily News (Wisconsin) for getting down to the everyday with the Community section's article on "How can I make perfect mashed potatoes?" What a bold, radical and refreshing headline for the New Year!!

I am ready for a new refreshing twist on New Year's resolutions. What resolutions come down to is basically how to be better. See the ten top resolutions for the year. These include:

• I will be kinder.
• I will lose this weight.
• I will accomplish my goals.
• (and, I am sure, some where at the very bottom of the list) I will make perfect mashed potatoes.

Been there. Done that. This year, doing resolutions seems to me to be just another list. Lists, once the backbone of my daily activities, have slowly lost their influence with me.

At one time, lists gave me a way to see who I am by what I do. I loved checking off the list and going to bed at night feeling a sense of accomplishment.

After having an incredibly full schedule in the last seven years, a never-ending list of things needing to be accomplished was just depressing. Today, my time is purely mine to determine what needs to be done and lists are total fabrications. So, lists are on their way out. They have been replaced in part with more active listening and letting inspiration move me forward toward an accomplishment or insight.

I am practicing living more simply and more closely to my prayer.

My new backbone -- the only thing on my "list" for this new year is to praise God. That's all.

If this sounds a little flaky, consider the powerful impulse of praise. It opens thought to an omnipotent force of good (God), it protects you ( there is no room for evil thoughts to grow in a consciousness filled with the awareness of good), it establishes you (praise for God means you recognize God and your ability to sing His/Her praise!), it purifies thought (singing praise uplifts and keeps going higher; the purity of happiness and joy are self-creative qualities that build on themselves and burn away any impurities).

Praise for God does more good things:

• It makes you kinder and more thoughtful
• You start to glorify God in your body
• Your accomplishments are done with more ease and grace because your motive for accomplishing anything is to glorify God
• AND you are perfectly nourished in the awareness of your tender, nurturing relationship to God who is all good. As a result, you can probably make the most perfect mashed potatoes!

Have a blessed gratitude-enriched New Year, all!

Praise ye the Lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely. (From Psalms 147 - the Song of David)

Kim




Please feel free to add your own comments or email to a friend and visit my website kimckorinek.com.