the far-reaching influence of Love

Spiritual resource to share: interconnection

I just heard two headlining stories in which Christian Science was nestled in the backstory:  Apparently the recovering Rep. Gifford’s mother is a Christian Scientist and Lionel Logue, the effective speech therapist in The King’s Speech, also had ties to Christian Science.

It made me reflect on the influence of Christian Science thought.

Some time ago, I took a friend to a Christian Science lecture. She was deeply moved. She said, “Kim I don’t know if I could ever be a Christian Scientist, but it gives me such hope to know that there are Christian Scientists.”


What is this hope that Christian Science can inspire? Perhaps it is  knowing that there are people operating on the Principle that good is not helpless but is powerful; that the idea of an all-loving God exists, that there are proofs of healing just as in Jesus’ time.

With my friend, it was knowing that God is love and she is the direct expression of that Love. She knows that she always has another way to look at a problem. If all her known methods of healing, of comfort, of supply fail her, she can look into Christian Science. She never need to feel that she is stuck.

This helps me see that my work as a Christian Science practitioner goes much farther than the work and prayer with individual patients. The very act of operating under a law of Love spreads an influence infused with hope.


Love spurs us on to love our neighbor, to persist in healing, to do compassionate works, to help one another. Christian Science operates on the Science of Love (aka the law of Love). Love is that light that “shines before men.”

It also helped me realize that witnessing God as Love and knowing God as omnipotent Love instills a silent hope that impacts thought that is far-reaching -- reaching farther than we may have realized.

The "still, small voice" of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound. The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, "as when a lion roareth." It is heard in the desert and in dark places of fear. It arouses the "seven thunders" of evil, and stirs their latent forces to utter the full diapason of secret tones.  

                                                 - Mary Baker Eddy

Even the night shall be light around me

Spiritual resource to share: safety and freedom from oppression

Picture a winter scene with a field, a stand of trees and a creek running through those trees. Now sprinkle it all with glittery snow.


Up in the northern part of the northern hemisphere, our nights are long. Nights are when the glitter goes back up to the sky against the dark clear night. The peace and security are tangible.

Nighttime brings me back to a time when I was attending a rally with a friend called “Take Back the Night” in downtown Minneapolis, a rally supporting and celebrating the victory that many had experienced overcoming situations of abuse.




It was a clear night. And the speakers for the rally gave equally clear and powerful denunciations of the abuses suffered by many, but also resounding victory cheers for so many who overcame these challenges. Many women wore their victories as banners across their chests, poignant reminders of the strength and courage that we all have.


There was beauty, clarity, and an awe-inspiring peace present that night. This comes from a profound place of having overcome the most perverse obstacles and realizing that one’s purity is power, incapable of ever being tainted.


I walked home that night crossing a city park known for its crime. I walked home feeling a freedom and safety not normally expected for that time of night and in that area.


That same feeling of peace and security is with us at all times: at night, and in our own times of night, darkness and despair; in all places: rural or downtown.


King David, of Bible fame, included a song now known as Psalms 139 that includes these lines describing the comforting and protecting presence of God, Love:

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?


If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.


If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;


Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.


If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

__________________________


For more info on Take Back the Night event and organization, go to www.takebackthenight.org/

To read another blog on this topic go to Purity - a Fixed Fact

blessings of the season

Spiritual resource to share: multi-culti holiday season

I’ve been a house parent for about four years when my two sons went to a high school where a third of the population hailed from sometimes as many as 15 other countries. So there were many ways to celebrate the upcoming season, whether it was Advent, St. Nicholas Day, Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Winter Solstice and Christmas as well as New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and the first weeks of the solar and lunar year.


During Christmas break, many of them could not get back to their home countries, and we were able to host them at our house. And what great kids they were! At these times it was an understatement to say how universal the love and laughter was that filled our house!


I found that all celebrations have much in common. And so from our family here, tucked in the northwoods of Wisconsin, we were able to share heartfelt warmth and love to each of the boys’ classmates and their families from all over the world, along with loads of cookies and small gifts. We all celebrated these things:

•a time for love – for family and friends to come together and to extend our homes to strangers
•a time for quietness, reverence and awe –where those things we deem most sacred to us are honored
•a time for peace – a recognition of our interconnectedness to each other, to our past, to our ancestors and to our future
•and a time for celebration – for new beginnings, fresh starts, and hope – great hope for what life holds in store for all of us

I love that Mary Baker Eddy defined God in broad and sweeping terms that included being all-inclusive!


"God is universal; " writes Mary Baker Eddy, "confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect. Not more to one than to all, is God demonstrable as divine Life, Truth, and Love; and His people are they that reflect Him - that reflect Love." (Miscellaneous Writings p. 150)


May this upcoming season of light be filled with universal Love!

the light that keeps shining

Spiritual resource to share: comfort

Days after the thrill of a surprising victory at a recent competition my son was in, we heard the tragic news. One of his schoolmates passed on after a short illness. This had us all running for comfort, trying to find ways to make sense of this.

Comfort is a gift. And, like a gift, it has to be accepted. This may be hard after shocking news, but after the anger and questions calm down, we can reach out for and receive comfort.

There is a song about comfort:

Like as a mother, God comforteth Her children,

comfort is calm, that bids all tumult cease.

Comfort is hope and courage for endeavor,

comfort is love, whose home abides in peace.*

Comfort as calm, as hope, as courage, as love. This is a gift for each of us. This is a gift that helps to clear our head so we can see what is true and lasting about life.

Some say that time will heal the hard headache of grief. But perhaps that is only the time it takes

• to let go of the disorientation and welcome a new re-orientation to life.
• to stop looking at the lost opportunities and find the opportunities that exist right now to love each other, to help each other, to enjoy each other.
• to replace the shame of past unkindnesses with the affirmation of the life (the love, the goodness, the joy) that was shared
• to replace the guilt of forgetting with the balm of forgiveness. It is not too late.
• and finally, to exchange the fear of loss and change with an understanding of what is changeless.

Sooner or later, we recognize the integral part each friend, each family member and even each acquaintance has in the fabric of our lives. We weave into one another's lives like the threads that weave over and under and cross each other in a taut fabric ..... and there is no unraveling.

Love is spiritual and good - like light. We can no more lose what is good than we can lose light. Consider that the absence of a loved one brings their gifts into sharp focus and demands recognition!

My son and his classmates are celebrating their friend's life. They are preparing a memorial service with his pictures, his stories and all that he brought to this startlingly connected school community. This action - shared by the whole school - was quickly becoming an affirmation of life and the continuity of community. His friend's life's connections showed them what their life connections were.

"Mom, I want to stay here with my friends" my son explained to me when I asked if he wanted to come home for a while, "you can feel the healing going on."

It becomes more obvious than ever before that we are all important to one another. The light that we bring to others keeps shining. And the light of this friend goes on in all the lives of all the people he touched.

* Christian Science Hymnal Hymn #174


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.

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Possibility and Responsibility

Spiritual resource to share: readiness to work

It's been the start of an incredibly upbeat week here in the US as we welcome in our 44th President. Pre-inaugural speeches have played up on the theme of everything is possible. Tomorrow's inauguration of our new president has the theme: ‘A New Birth of Freedom’ commemorating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth and our founding fathers' ideal of equality and freedom for all. Tempered into those talks is the theme of possibility but also responsibility.

I certainly feel the joy of discovering new possibilities and expansive ways of thinking and solving problems. But there is another kind of joy that welcomes our increased responsibility to one another and to ourselves. This is the kind of joy that deepens character and grows confidence.

Taking responsibility for ourselves is how we love ourselves and forms the basis of how we love others. Taking responsibility for one another gives us a place to belong and shows how much we are needed.

Looking ahead of this celebratory week, the challenges we have today will still be there. But collectively we have a new resolve. The Christian Science Monitor's opinion column reports a resolve that goes as deep as spiritual transformation worldwide. "There is a growing confidence that universal peace and well-being are, against all odds, actually achievable on planet Earth.”

Heady stuff.

What I love about Christian Science is that it shows how these ideals can be made practical. How? The founder and discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, has some salient points:

• By understanding that God’s work is already done and is good: "Science reveals the possibility of achieving all good, and sets mortals at work to discover what God has already done."


• And that we have the resources to reveal this good through God: "Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul."


• And that we have a perfect example in Christ Jesus’ work as to how this can be done: "His (Christ Jesus’) mission was both individual and collective. He did life's work aright not only in justice to himself, but in mercy to mortals, — to show them how to do theirs, but not to do it for them nor to relieve them of a single responsibility."

Responsibility, practicality, community, possibility and the joy to do the work will probably be recurring themes throughout the year. And we are ready!

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.

honest achievement

Spiritual resource to share: commitment to good works


The Urban Nutcracker from Skillimon on Vimeo.


"The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible."

I'm inspired to see others' commitments to excellence, good works and progress. It's an affirmation that good is possible. It inspires me to become even more steady in my own commitment to grow in grace and in the practice of Christian Science. MBEddy offers some helpful guidance for those committing themselves to do good works:

... self-denial, sincerity, Christianity, and persistence alone win the prize, as they usually do in every department of life.

I have one such friend who has made an incredible commitment to use dance as a tool to inspire and empower youth and communities. Not only is this friend, Tony Williams, talented and experienced, but he has the humility and sincerity that one sees in leaders of many progressive institutions.

His company and school, Ballet Rox, puts on an annual show the "Urban Nutcracker." My older son got in at the ground floor and performed in its first and second years. Every year, there has been more growth and progress and it has expanded its audiences and shared its inspiration.

Enjoy the clip above and take in the celebration that encourages us all to deeply commit to our own paths of blessing others and see where it takes you!

More information about the Urban Nutcracker and how you can support it:
Press release on the making of a documentary about the Urban Nutcracker

Get involved





To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact

restorative justice

Spiritual resource to share: healing our communities

photo from Waswaagoning Village

To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;
To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.

-Proverbs 1

In this community group that has been meeting in an effort to support youth and dismantle racism, we regularly share possibilities and stories of how to go about accomplishing these aims.

This story is an incredible example of how establishing restorative justice can do much to heal the hurt and bring understanding to those who have committed hate crimes. Restorative justice has its roots in native American and Aborigine culture. It basically provides a way for the victim and the perpetrator to come together to address the wrongs done and find a healing solution for themselves and their communities.

In this story, Nick and Charlotte, from the Ojibway nation, are the ones whose property was vandalized and who set up a jail time alternative for the perpetrators. These notes were taken from one of our community meetings:

As many of you remember, five (white) local Lakeland area boys vandalized and burned the Hocking’s Waswaagoning Village (a remake of an Ojibway village) a few years ago. It was a terrible act of hatred fueled by drinking. The boys were eventually caught and faced 35 years in prison-each.

Nick and Charlotte both felt that sending these boys to prison was not going to accomplish anything good-that in fact they might come out more prejudice than when they went in.

They did something really quite remarkable in order to try and make sure these boys lives were not destroyed-they offered the 5 boys a path through Restorative Justice-the option to fulfill certain requirements over a two year period instead of going to jail for arson felony.

They spent a great deal of time working with these boys and developed a path for them to follow: the boys had to read 4 books, write reports, answer 5 questions about racism, pay fines and complete 250 hours of community service.

They also had to make a video describing what they did to share with others-in the hope that others would learn from the mistakes these boys made and not do such things. This process had a powerful impact on these boys and the Hocking’s, through their actions, have shown the rest of us that there are other options for enforcing consequences while helping teach youth to learn from their mistakes. We watched the first two interviews of the boys and then took time to talk and share responses......

In the end, the process was successful for those boys who went through the restorative justice process.

From this meeting came all kinds of ways to further the role of restorative justice in our own local courts, as well as discussion on how the video could be used as a teaching tool. Other ways to spread this message of restorative justice were discussed.

The impact of the patience, dignity, understanding and trust the Hockings had that this situation could be healed is an inspiration.

For more on restorative justice practices, click here.


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 to change a culture

Spiritual resource to share: vision and achievement

"If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it!" Jesse Jackson

"The devotion of thought to an honest achievement, makes that achievement possible." Mary Baker Eddy

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

This is an ongoing blog about the dynamic of our community meetings. Just to sum up for those new to this blog, we are a group of people representing various voices in our community. We have been meeting to address the need to forge together a community that focuses on healthy kids, families and communities and in so doing, create a community wide prevention plan that alleviates or reduces racism, violence, and alcohol and drug abuse. These problems have been around a long time and lately have escalated.

We have come to an exciting junction in the road in these meetings. It started with people getting frustrated. At our last meeting (the eighth one) people had time to voice their concerns and opinions. It was feeling like we had little traction with what we had accomplished so far.

Several times "plans" had been presented as a way of organizing thought. Some of it has gelled, some have not. I love watching the dynamic of organization ebb and flow. And the meeting started out not flowing. I kept praying, establishing in my thought the oneness of Mind, intelligence, and recognized that it was being expressed with clarity.

This is what happened.

People stayed to the end of the meeting.
People's grievances were heard.
THEN came the boom. "We are trying to do too much. This is over-whelming." said one therapist who shared some of his reasons for saying this. "If we can't perceive what it is we are trying to do, we will never achieve it."

Yep. We had taken on trying to reverse a cultural footpath that has been so thoroughly documented and trod on, that it would appear to be an intractable rut. We were really asking now, how can we change a culture? How can we lift a culture of low expectations and abuse to a culture of tolerance, progress, and a celebration of diversity?

Then came the reversal of the boom: "HOWEVER", said a counselor who worked in a drug prevention program, "look at what happened with cigarettes! How did they do that? I don't know, but they did it. Now, everyone is aware of its health hazards. We can do this, too."

From there, various people commented on what worked in other programs, another recognized that success builds success, another saw how large of an umbrella we could be to give more focus to all those willing to buy in to the idea of building healthy communities.

A tribal elder commented, "In all the years we have been trying to tackle these problems, there has never been this many people willing to work for a solution. I've never seen this happen before now." He added, "By coming together like this, each of us from different walks of life, we form a formidable power. We are already having an impact. We are already moving forward."

Several agreed and a number of them mentioned certain steps that were taken in the high school that were progressive and responsive to the community - and were directly in line with what this group is hoping to achieve.

We are now on a success and possibilities track. This is good.

How do you change a culture? Culture is defined as the context of our human experience. To change the culture is to change the context. And changing the context from a limited, material basis of things (which breeds limitation, abuse and division) to a spiritual basis (which nurtures peace, unity, progress and innovation) is the way to change a culture. And it can be done.

Success in life depends upon persistent effort, upon the improvement of moments more than upon any other one thing. -Mary Baker Eddy

A deep sincerity is sure of success, for God takes care of it. -Mary Baker Eddy

With God, all things are possible. - Christ Jesus

....and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.... -The Book of Hebrews

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.

The Community Table

Spiritual resource to share: nourishing home-cooked prize-winning food !

Church: whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle

In my newfound expansive expression of church, I am so happy to share an activity that my family and other area churches are involved in. It is called The Community Table. The idea behind it is a community meal to all, with a focus to invite those who need to stretch their dollars at the end of the month.

The watchword is dignity to all, and no one should know who comes from the food pantry or is homeless and who isn't. The instigator of this project is a Franciscan Catholic and I so admire her vision - a divine Principle - to bring the sense of equality and dignity to the community.

In order to do this, she has set down some ground rules:

• We use china and real cups and silverware
• Breads and desserts go directly on the tables
• It's a buffet style feast that includes 3-4 host churches' best foods: Gramma's famous potato salad, Fred's silky chiffon cake, Al's mouthwatering squash casserole and on and on.
• Host churches are assigned for set up and clean up, but everyone serves everyone.
  

I love this activity for its simplicity. It is so......pleasant! There are no agendas, no sermons, just the community taking care of the community. There are a number of ideas that are relevant to this activity that I am reading in a Bible Lesson this week, including these two:

• Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
• The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity.

There is something wholesome and real about serving others, and joining with others to do good works. The Community Table is one vehicle that makes me feel good about the higher concept of church which is to elevate the race and rouse the dormant thought to a more spiritualized understanding of who we are to God and who we are to each other.

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.

the spiritual ingredient of organizations

Spiritual resource to share:
your own spiritual specialty baked into your work

In our fourth community meeting, reps from dozens of community organizations, individuals and parents continued to work together on a community wide plan. This is ambitious. This plan will help support our youth while at the same time build community and flush out racism and drug use. Tall, tall order.

To begin the meeting this time around, all were welcome to come into the kitchen and help make Native American fried bread.

Afterwards, we met in a group and the leader noticed that in making the bread, we were missing something. People guessed various ingredients, but no one had the answer. The leader commented that we were missing the blessing. Then he gave an Anishinaabe blessing.

This is a large, sometimes unwieldy group. But their general understanding on the spiritual elements necessary to make this group's work effective are so heartening! I'm sticking with this group until we're done!

Organizations have always been one of my favorite art forms. Whether as an observer or as the organizational architect, the spiritual element has the key roles of being the fuel, the direction and the glue.

MBEddy has some great points about organizations.

• In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, she advises Christian Science teachers to form associations, churches and "any other organic operative method" that is useful and beneficial to mankind. Organization as an organic operative method. Interesting, yes?
• In another article in (from Miscellaneous Writings, p358) MBEddy talks about leaving organizations and its material forms after "a higher spiritual unity is won." She recognizes the value and also the peril of organizations. Referring to organization as a material form of cohesion and fellowship, she recognizes that once it has done its job, it can retard spiritual growth and should be laid off.

What strikes me about her take on material organizations is that they are fluid - an "organic, operative method." And that while they are important in the beginning of an enterprise, one shouldn't overdo it, once its purpose of spiritual unity and fellowship is accomplished.

I can see this -- I have left organizations when I knew it was my time to move on because I felt "done." In other cases, I have known organizations to change to meet their objectives, or an organization simply was not needed -- things just got accomplished organically (I'm thinking about all the times our extended families of 25+ people come together to make holiday meals).

As this community group moves forward, its newly developed goals are lofty, but noble. We are at those first stages of building the organizational structure. It requires of everyone a measure of fluidity, humility, patience and commitment. But first and foremost, we are starting to see the blessing of this work together: spiritual unity in the community. I'm in.







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.

Who is a Christian Scientist?

Spiritual resource to share: our God-love

Yesterday was National Prayer Day. Did any of you catch that? I spent it in part with the prayer team at the local hospital. There were three of us who gathered together. Each of us is at home with three different disciplines: an evangelical Baptist, a Catholic, and me, the Christian Scientist. (Of course, we all call each other Brian, Halcy and Kim.)

I always (really, I always) feel such a tenderness when getting together with this group. We are all doing what we can to help alleviate suffering through our highest sense of prayer. We looked at The Lord's Prayer and broke it down to four main elements (adoration/affirmation, confession/contrition, thanksgiving, and supplication/petition) and together shared our free-form prayers in each of those areas. As we shared, I noticed that we each were strong in a different element -- adding another dimension to one another's prayer. I love this kind of stuff.

Mary Baker Eddy has said some amazing things about our work with people of other denominations. It has been something I have thought about often. I am copying it down in total here, so I hope you'll read it and comment afterwards.

It is from Pulpit and Press ( p. 21)

Our unity with churches of other denominations must rest on the spirit of Christ calling us together. It cannot come from any other source. Popularity, self-aggrandizement, aught that can darken in any degree our spirituality, must be set aside. Only what feeds and fills the sentiment with unworldliness, can give peace and good will towards men.

All Christian churches have one bond of unity, one nucleus or point of convergence, one prayer, — the Lord's Prayer. It is matter for rejoicing that we unite in love, and in this sacred petition with every praying assembly on earth, — "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

If the lives of Christian Scientists attest their fidelity to Truth, I predict that in the twentieth century every Christian church in our land, and a few in far-off lands, will approximate the understanding of Christian Science sufficiently to heal the sick in his name. Christ will give to Christianity his new name, and Christendom will be classified as Christian Scientists.

When the doctrinal barriers between the churches are broken, and the bonds of peace are cemented by spiritual understanding and Love, there will be unity of spirit, and the healing power of Christ will prevail.

I am so happy to see - in a degree - doctrinal barriers be lifted and to learn of others who are practicing healing through prayer. I am happy to participate and grow here.

But the excerpt above has made me ask, who is a Christian Scientist?

In Science and Health, MBEddy refers "to those natural Christian Scientists, the ancient worthies, and to Christ Jesus, [to whom] God certainly revealed the spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter." I certainly feel I have met a number of natural Christian Scientists who, in the discipline of their worship and dear love for God, humankind and all that is sacred, have inspired me to deepen my commitment to prayer and healing.

So now I have to ask you, who is a Christian Scientist?


(photos by Gabe Korinek)

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.

Who are we really? (continuing prayer for Virginia Tech)

Spiritual resource to share: spiritual identity

To donate to Virginia Tech's

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, click on ribbon

One post from The Wall (a Blacksburg community's response to the Virginia Tech tragedy), drew my attention to a growing concern about cultural stereotyping. Here is an excerpt:

Tuesday night, at an Emory candlelight vigil, a South Korean student stood up and said he was afraid. He was afraid that the shooter at Virginia Tech was going to ruin things for all South Korean students studying in America. Perhaps he was thinking about the backlash towards Muslim students after Sept. 11.

But Virginia Tech does not need to become an example of a culture clash. As educated people, we are taught to see the foolishness of generalization and false-attribution. I pray that nobody on this campus feels afraid because of what they look like, or because of the hometown they left to come study at Emory. We must find the courage to unite against the unfounded stereotyping used by some in the aftermath of Sept. 11. - D.H.

In a couple of days, we welcome into our family a very well-loved international student who has been here for over seven months. Not only is he fun and active in sports, he is well liked by his fellow students, teachers and community members. He is from South Korea, so I have been attentive to the climate of thought here. Although I don't think there will be an issue in this community, the issue of negative cultural sterotyping still needs to be addressed prayerfully.

South Koreans students represent one of the largest international student populations in the US, according to my son's admissions counselor at his school. And since racial stereotypes have flamed into ignorant acts in the past, I feel that prayer - focussed on all of us as God's children - is going to help dissolve the negative suggestions of ethnic stereotyping.

The identity of one does not determine the ethnic character of all. To me, each individual has a unique relationship to the divine. Each individual has their own spiritual journey, which reveals his or her own spiritual qualities.

But classifying ( stereotyping) others can be a subtle force, making us feel that we know others when we don't and isolating others on the basis of physical characteristics or behavioral patterns. I felt this when I lived abroad for a short period of time and I had the opportunity to see that I was more than my cultural sterotype. As a child of God, I had unique talents and insights. I could see that God determined who I really was.

So it makes sense to me to continue that prayer and line of thought that recognizes each individual in his or her own true light, as a child of God. We're not absorbed into a clump of humanity, but we are all children of one God who is spiritual -- good and loving.

I can also support the intelligent care of our community to see beyond cultural stereotyping to the spiritual qualities in each of our community's students.

This intelligence runs throughout every community. The spiritual insight, to recognize the good in each individual member, has a healing impact. Being alert to everyone's spiritual identity helps to bring people in to community, as opposed to seeing only their physical attributes which tends to isolate others who are different than us.

Man is not absorbed in Deity, and man cannot lose his individuality, for he reflects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, solitary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all substance. - Mary Baker Eddy

(For more articles and resources on this topic, see Virginia Tech prayers.)

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.