oneness - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: a rousing call for unity

Got this note in an email and loved it. It is a quote from one of Paul's letter to the Ephesians and taken from The Message. It applies to everything!

"In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting on your hands.

"I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.

"You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all.

"Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness."

Say AMEN somebody!






Public photo by Bill Adams

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.

cool old guys - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: ageless living

When I grow up, I want to be like these guys. My dad and my two uncles are adventurous, always trying new things, traveling, reading, teaching others or joking around. Life is never dull here.


About a year and a half ago, I was inspired my my parents and aunts and uncles and wrote this blog and called it celebrate the octogenarian. Enjoy!


Here are some of the activities from the last few years of my favorite octogenarians: downhill skiing, travel to Italy, sailing across the Black Sea, writing as a regular columnist for the local paper, canoeing, managing a specialty bookstore, getting back into real estate, memorizing Shakespeare, etc.


Even Mary Baker Eddy is on my list of favorites -- she was the one who put the finishing touches on the Christian Science world wide movement and started up The Christian Science Monitor when she was eighty-something. All before women even had the right to vote!


These guys have got a wonderful sense of agelessness. Who says you can't play at any age? The Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures written by Mary Baker Eddy certainly confirm this:

And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning - Job

The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun. - Science and Health

I love how Mary Baker Eddy characterizes growing older. She says,

Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom. - Science and Health

As my lessons are getting larger and my years more ripe I remember years ago, when I went to a talk (later written up as an essay entitled "Doing Sixty") by Gloria Steinem. It was unforgettable. "I love sixty" she said "there are no rules anymore."


So I am now asking myself, "Whose rules am I following? Material health laws or God's laws?"


The choice is, of course, God's laws. My expectation is that year after year, I will grow into understanding more about beauty, power, abundance and peace. One day, after skiing down some slope, hiking up some mountain or writing a prize winning blog about spirituality and agelessness, I, too, will become someone's favorite octogenarian.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

cherry blossoms and nesting pelicans and the permanent presence of Life

Spiritual resource to share: persistent, insistent and consistent Life

These two stories came into my newsfeed this morning. There was a story about cherry blossoms moving north into the Tohoku region of Japan – the region most affected by the earthquake and tsunami. And once relocated Gulf pelicans making their way back home to an area that was severely damaged by the oil spill of last year.

Psalms 104: 30 sings out: Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.

What is this spirit, captured in the determined blossoms and insistent pelicans? What are the rules of Life that persist in the face of what can seem almost hopeless disaster? It is this: that Life is insistent and Life is God. Truth is always the victor and Love never fails.

What occurs to me is that these rules set down and practiced over thousands of years are not soothing words that sugar-coat the problems facing us, or catchy phrases that inspire us to ignore what most needs attention and healing. These rules are facts that define what is real. Our ability to wake up to these rules are what ushers in healing.

Healing is inevitable. We can learn grand lessons from the blossoms and nesting birds. Life lives. And this we will find restores each of us, and frees us from despair, hopelessness and allows us to do what we were created to do: to be loving, to do good works, and to heal.





Photo of Japan from http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2011.htmlPhoto

Photo of pelicans from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/19/national/main20055305.shtml

PLaYing -- revisited

Spiritual resource to share:  the spiritual root of play

some kid playing in puddles

I tell this story so much that my sons roll their eyes when I tell it to someone in their presence. Although they have heard it a gazillion times, it still holds fresh lessons for me. This is the story.

Gabe (at 4 years old) had a bad earache/infection. I was praying for healing, praying and affirming God's allness and the powerlessness of illness to harm Gabe, when Micah (at 6 years old) came to the door. I asked him to help me pray. He waited about two seconds, said okay and then said 'Gabe, let's go play!!' Gabe immediately woke, his ear totally cleared up. Both boys then ran into the next room where they proceeded to jump up and down on our guest bed.

After a while I joined them. I asked Gabe how his right ear was and he said fine. I asked him how his left ear was and he said fine, then went back to the business of jumping. When I asked Micah how he prayed he told me that "God gave me His playing thoughts."

Micah knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God made us to play. Nothing could convince him otherwise. Nothing could stand in the way of that clear truth. Although my sons are much older now, I continue to draw lessons from this wonderful healing.

We are made to play. Our Father/Mother God did not make us to suffer, God made us to jump up and down. God made us in His image and likeness, perfect, whole and entire.

Play (in a very unplayful analysis) is about engagement, presentness and adventure. I once attended an educational conference on play. The speaker, Herb Brokering, started off with an umbrella, a brick and a plastic flower or some other obscure thing on the stage. It was a widely disjointed talk, at times even silly and I found myself getting irritated. But as his presentation went on, there was also something magic in what he was saying. He kept talking, weaving stories and anecdotes along the way. Toward the end, he got us all to sing a beautiful lilting tune.

He had invited us all to come to a place of playing.

There was this huge auditorium of students and professionals all singing. It was almost hushed and we were quietly happy. We were remembering what it was like to play. We were all made vulnerable a bit, being caught with one another playing. It was delightful!

Those experts of play - children - are showing us the way back to play. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new,
renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false
landmarks and joy to see them disappear, - this disposition helps to
precipitate the ultimate harmony.

In the book of Matthew of the New Testament, Christ Jesus says,

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is
greatest in the kingdom of heaven

So I think that playing is about dropping pretension. Play is selfless and is about the serious business of discovery. It's about being open to new possibilities, about connecting to very different things and laughing that things do connect in surprising ways. Play brings us home to who we really are. And in healing, who we really are is God's perfect and play-full child.