Rise up!

Spiritual resource to share: a higher hope

Hope. Change. Freedom. It is not surprising in an election year how powerful these words are……and how often they are used.

But these words can be used to generate fear and division and ridicule as much as they bring out the most cherished human ideals. So how to sort through the emotions on the human scene in this campaign season in the US - full of news headlines of division and lack and fear?

We rise up - letting our thought rise to the level of what is spiritual. Then we see that there is a spiritual basis for hope, for change and for freedom.

MBEddy writes under the heading of “Higher hope:”

The human mind will sometime rise above all material and physical sense, exchanging it for spiritual perception, and exchanging human concepts for the divine consciousness. Then man will recognize his God-given dominion and being.

Check out this article that explains more about a spiritual basis for hope in "The power of resurrection brings hope" from spirituality.com.






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.

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.

"we are living in exponential times"

Spiritual resource to share: joy and confidence for the journey



This video clip delightfully captures facts and figures about the "exponential times" we live in. While watching it a few times, I had to ask, from a spiritual standpoint, What is changing? and
What is changeless?

In a nutshell, what changes are the forms and means of those things that are changeless. Like, how we worship may change, but that we worship doesn't. How we communicate changes, but the fact that we communicate doesn't.

Ideas that transcend time are lasting, and I find lots of these ideas in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, who has written her book based on the Bible. Here are some of those ideas.

God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.

Academics of the right sort are requisite. Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal.

Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human progress. The age seems ready to approach this subject, to ponder somewhat the supremacy of Spirit, and at least to touch the hem of Truth's garment.

Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the infinite.

Evidences of progress and of spiritualization greet us on every hand. Drug-systems are quitting their hold on matter and so letting in matter's higher stratum, mortal
mind. Homoeopathy, a step in degrees advance of allopathy, is doing this. Matter is going out of medicine; and mortal mind, of a higher attenuation than the drug, is governing the pellet.

Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the
spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal. All things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the creator. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man.

Science reveals only one Mind, and this one shining by its own light and governing
the universe, including man, in perfect harmony. This Mind forms ideas, its own images, subdivides and radiates their borrowed light, intelligence, and so explains the Scripture phrase, "whose seed is in itself." Thus God's ideas "multiply and replenish the earth." The divine Mind supports the sublimity, magnitude, and infinitude of spiritual creation.

Divine Love blesses its own ideas, and causes them to multiply,--to manifest His power.

And from Mary Baker Eddy's other writings:

This age is reaching out towards the perfect Principle of things; is pushing towards perfection in art, invention, and manufacture. Why, then, should religion be stereotyped, and we not obtain a more perfect and practical Christianity? It will never do to be behind the times in things most essential, which proceed from the standard of right that regulates human destiny.

Human skill but foreshadows what is next to appear as its divine origin. Proportionately as we part with material systems and theories, personal doctrines and dogmas, meekly to ascend the hill of Science, shall we reach the maximum of perfection in all things. Miscellaneous Writings p. 232

(From an interview with Mary Baker Eddy) "But the pursuit of modern material inventions?""Oh, we cannot oppose them. They all tend to newer, finer, more etherealized ways of living. They seek the finer essences. ..... We use them, we make them our figures of speech. They are preparing the way for us." from The First Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany, p. 35

bright skies

Spiritual resource to share: brightness in times of change

I have sung this hymn so many times when my life was going through some change. I think the first time I ever struck out on my own, this hymn was right with me, comforting me and assuring me of God's progress and Her tender care.

I have two boys, teenagers now, and this hymn comes into thought again as one is planning for a year abroad and the other is pursuing the fall and winter sports: football/wrestling/hunting - sports I never would have been involved in - except for now and only because of my son. So they continue their steps and leaps forward toward their own lives. It is exciting to see them take on challenges, future plans and their own laundry.

I see more clearly that these guys have come to us, complete with a mission and purpose - their Father -Mother God has their treasure. Nothing changes about my relationship to them because nothing changes about our relationship to God. And God keeps walking with us all.

Enjoy the poem!

In heavenly Love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear;
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.

The storm may roar without me,
My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me,
And can I be dismayed?

Wherever He may guide me,
No want shall turn me back;
My Shepherd is beside me,
And nothing can I lack.

His wisdom ever waketh,
His sight is never dim;
He knows the way He taketh,
And I will walk with Him.

Green pastures are before me,
Which yet I have not seen;
Bright skies will soon be o'er me,
Where darkest clouds have been.

My hope I cannot measure,
My path in life is free;
My Father has my treasure,
And He will walk with me.