good is not helpless

Spiritual resource to share: true power in organizations

These statements have persistently intrigued me: that good is not helpless; truth always triumphs and love never fails. The power behind these absolute statements forms the basis for their expression.

So - I have puzzled - how do you engage with organizations that seem to fall flat of ethical and noble goals? Who have told outward lies, blatantly disregarded laws? Quitting those organizations is one option. Staying with and trying to bring about change is another. Both responses to these moral dilemmas are difficult.

Once a group hired a non-professional musician who was earnest and consistent and, as one friend said, "he plays most of the right notes most of the time." This grateful and compassionate approach helped me to see how I could engage with other groups where I didn't always agree with how they operated. I could see the good that they do and work with that.

But this went deeper. This wasn't a Pollyanna approach.

I understand that good works are born of honesty, commitment, dedication and selflessness and are powerful. In fact, these are the only qualities that accomplish anything worth accomplishing!

Deeply understanding the fixed nature of good trumps the mesmeric and discouraging aspects of greed, selfishness and even criminal thought that would bring on apathy and a sense of hopelessness.

Understanding the nature of good also heightens our awareness of good so that we don't mistake well intentioned efforts incorrectly.

I realized that it doesn't matter how many people are involved in an organization or how many differing opinions arise in the operation of an organization. Good will prevail.

Tangled bureaucracy, rumor mills, gossip and lawlessness do not have an absolute or spiritual basis. They can't stand.

Like a blade of grass pushing up in a desert - Truth, Life and Love - all elements of good - are insistent. Truth slices away at the tons of conflicting opinions like sand dunes drifting back and forth. Love plants its roots deeply. Life continues to create and perpetuate Life.

I continue to apply these ideas to my own life, the smaller groups I belong to and those larger groups that are fighting genocide, are encouraging earth stewardship and global efforts toward peace.

A human organization with noble goals is working its purpose out as surely as I am understanding and fine-tuning my life purpose.

Compassion, patience and an absolute hold on the power of Truth continue to guide me and remove any baggage as surely as it is guiding each of those organizations that I am committed to. I found I need to be as patient and persistent with these groups as I hope others are with me.

This can only bear good fruit. Love never fails; Truth always triumphs; and good is never helpless.

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.

Celebrate dignity and freedom/celebrate Martin Luther King

Spiritual resource to share: kindness and service to others




The late Coretta Scott King has been quoted as saying: "The greatest birthday gift my husband could receive is if people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds celebrated the holiday by performing individual acts of kindness through service to others."

Martin Luther King's statement "Life's most persistent and urgent question: What are you doing for others?" is answered by this statement from another great humanitarian: "We should measure our love for God by our love for man;and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience to God, — fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all; imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought." (from "Love Your Enemies" in Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy ).

In celebration of Martin Luther King's life, I have posted some of his quotes taken from spiritualityandpractice.com , quotationspage.com and time.com:

ON RELATIONSHIPS: "No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent."

ON BOLDNESS: "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up."

ON FREEDOM: "Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial."

ON VIOLENCE: "Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."

ON LOVE: "Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it."

ON NONCOMFORMITY: "This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a
nonconforming minority."

ON SILENCE: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

ON NON-VIOLENCE: Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Enough said. In honor of Martin Luther King, may we all find more ways to be kind and so scatter that mustard seed of peace more widely. Happy day.

photo by time.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.

Important weekend of prayer report on Darfur

Spiritual resource to share: prayer



Spirituality.com has posted an important article on the situation in Darfur.

A prayer for the innocent—meaning everyone—in Darfur
by Jeremy Carper

More than a thousand individuals, houses of worship, and faith-based organizations throughout the United States are expected to participate in a “Weekend of Prayer for Darfur” from December 8 to 10, 2006.

This initiative, led by the Save Darfur Coalition, is part of a continuing response
to the horrific situation in this area of the Sudan, where millions of people are displaced or have been affected by mass genocide.

Worthy efforts like the weekend of faith-based action show that prayer is as much a component of solving world problems as raising money for the victims or arousing public outcry. In my own life, I've found that prayer is not an empty response to a
challenge, but one that aligns my thought to God.

Read more by clicking here......

Learn more about the Save Darfur effort here.

Click on the Save Darfur - Weekend of Prayer home page here.

(Photo from the Save Darfur website)



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.

"Keep praying for us," he said - Sago mine tragedy

'Outside Weaver's funeral, 72-year-old Sam Felton said that's just what the families of those killed at Sago mine need. "Keep praying for us," he said.'

Our Sunday School discussion today was all about prayer, its centerpiece being the Lord's Prayer given by Christ Jesus to his disciples and used for centuries throughout the Christian world. "How would you use this prayer for someone caught in a cave?" one of the students asked. So off we went talking about how the Lord's Prayer was probably prayed during the ordeal at the Sago mines and still continues to be prayed for the families and for Randall McCloy, Jr., the sole survivor who as of this writing is still hospitalized.

There are so many praying about this situation now. To Sam and all those praying, we join you. I have always learned that the Lord's Prayer is a prayer that meets every human need. Below, is the Lord's Prayer from the King James Version of the Bible, the second line, Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual sense of each verse and the third line, inspiration that came to me as I was praying.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father which art in heaven,
Our Father -Mother God, all-harmonious,
Our Father - We are all under one God, we are all in this together

Hallowed be Thy name.
Adorable One.
Life is sacred.

Thy kingdom come.
Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.
God was here with us during the tragedy, is with us now, and will be with us in the future

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Enable us to know, — as in heaven, so on earth, — God is omnipotent, supreme.
Imagine God filling all space, the space we breathe, the dark corners of doubt and the brilliant heights of praise -- God is the power we can lean on.

Give us this day our daily bread;
Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections;
Nourish us with your peace; we are united with those we love and all can feel that satisfaction and love.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And Love is reflected in love;
Forgiveness frees us to get on with the business of loving one another.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.
Wherever we are, God gives us a way to deal with any situation we are confronted with. God helps us.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
Amen! One of the miner's wives, Debbie Grove, said it best during her husband's memorial service. "Eternity is forever."

When hearts and hopes are broken, divine Love rushes in.

Please add your own comments or email to a friend.

World AIDS Day - investing in prayer

UN envoy urges "exceptional response" to AIDS crisis
Thu Dec 1
JAKARTA (AFP) - Countries around the world must make an exceptional response to the global AIDS' epidemic if they wish to stem the crisis, the executive director of UN AIDS Peter Piot warned. "On this 18th World AIDS Day, the world faces a choice in the global response to AIDS," Piot said in a message released in the Indonesian capital to mark World AIDS day. "...we can recognise the exceptional global threat posed by AIDS and embrace an equally exceptional response." He urged countries to invest in HIV prevention as well as treatment and care. "By making these investments, each and every country can reverse the spread of AIDS... With a crisis as unprecedented as AIDS, we cannot afford to neglect any vital front," said Piot, who is on a four-day visit here.

After reading this article, I realized that Piot had just laid out four main points that I am now using as my prayer agenda for AIDS. This is how I am praying:

"The world faces a choice"
Choose hope. Hope not based on wishful thinking, but on a growing recognition of the omnipotence of God. God is bigger than any disease. Hope keeps thought open to all possibilities.

"embrace an equally exceptional response"
Choose prayer. Prayer is communion with God. God is exceptional. God is omnipotent, all knowing, all good. "Neither red tape nor indignities ever hindered the divine process." writes Mary Baker Eddy. Numbers cannot hide the spread of hope; ignorance cannot stop intelligent care; bureaucractic snarls cannot stop the flow of solutions; disease cannot overcome health; addictions cannot overcome compassion. Prayer confirms this, puts the stake in the ground of human hope and is not reversed. There are no retrograde steps in prayer.

"make an investment - we can reverse the spread of AIDS"
Give your consent. Invest your prayer that affirms that the spread of AIDS can be reversed. This is possible. Give your consent to this possibility and expect to see it. Expose and target the problems and bring them down. Celebrate and cement the progress that you hear about.

"do not neglect any vital front"
Work it. Prayer is the vital exceptional response needed. It is the momentum under all effective action. Daily prayer and its accompanying affirmation of the power of good keeps the momentum going. It wears and tears away at the foundation of disease and restores us to our natural state of radiant health and robust living.

Please add your own comments or email to a friend, and visit my website at kimckorinek.com for more resources on prayer