Lay your burdens down -revisited

Spiritual resource to share: freedom from resentment

I felt I had a perfectly justifiable reason to feel this disgust. I had been a part of a noble effort to uphold a cause that was near and precious to me. Others I would have normally depended to help uphold this issue  were distracted into ignoring this effort and some even maligned it. I buried my anger and took up the fight without them. We gained some ground, lost some ground, and life went on.


A couple of decades later this anger surfaced in a very subtle way. I found myself becoming dismissive to anyone who even slightly resembled this type of distracted and reluctant thought. This grew to feeling contempt  towards others. Every time I recognized these thoughts, however, I would replace them, and gain some ground on the front of loving my neighbors as myself.


As I continued to grow in my healing practice, I realized that I needed to root out these feelings of contempt, once and for all.  There is simply no room for anything in a healing thought, but love.


A good friend once defined sin as a boulder. One voluntarily picks up the boulder, carries it around for however long they want and then decides when they want to lay it down. The sin is never a part of them.


I also realized that if I was seeing others as misguided (or in any way sinful), that I have planted in my thought the possibility that others could be misguided.  I too could be misguided. So, in essence, if I am seeing another as sinful, I have picked up my own boulder! No wonder I feel burdened!


In my prayer, I realized that God knows nothing about the human drama. It is so irrelevant to life, that God does not even acknowledge it. Whereas I don't ignore what others are saying or doing, I realized that the human drama of apathy, resentment, distraction only has the power we give it -- it simply has no reality or power of its own. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.


When we pray, we let in the light. We accept that there is another way to see things. We follow the Christ, who multiplies our efforts to see and to do good things. Thought totally shifts from a material basis to a spiritual.


Then, if God doesn't know it, why should I? Why should I experience any type of discord?


And why did Christ Jesus say that we could cast all our cares on him?  He said that  "my yoke is easy, my burden in light." What did he know? Perhaps he knew that the only real thing going on is God's activity.
Christ Jesus could take on our burdens because he knew their weight - nothing. And he knew the allness, the thoroughness of God's pure and perfect control of each of Her ideas.


Each idea of God (this includes each person, each activity, each group) is coordinate, harmonious, self-less and helpful. I realized that I cannot lose anything good. And if this is true for me, it is true for others. No one can lose anything good.


I can lay my burdens down. The battle is not mine, but God's and Truth is always the victor. With this, I felt God’s power and love. I felt power in my ability to replace apathy and contempt with compassion for others, who may be feeling that they are fighting an uphill battle. I felt power in my ability to reflect God's love. And I felt more freedom and joy in my days.

OK, this might hurt a bit.....

Spiritual resource to share:  self-examination and relationships

I was reading a self-help article in a popular magazine the other day.  It suggested that the way out of a snarly relationship issue may be to write a letter to that person (the snarler, no doubt) and share all your concerns and hurts and criticisms.  Then after you have written it all down, you (the snarlee) are to erase that person's name and replace it with your own.  Then re-read it with your name at the top.

Ouch.

But I saw that there was great merit to this.  It is based in part by the timeless idea of casting the log out of one's own eye before removing the speck in your neighbor's.  Many of you will recognize this from Christ Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  (See the Bible Matthew chapters 5 to 7.) We won't see what is snarly unless we know it.  And we may know it because we may already be acting a bit snarly ourselves. This little letter writing exercise helps to uncover that in thought.

But Christ Jesus' work takes us farther than this exercise.  His healing work was based on the principle of perfect God and perfect man.  He could see "the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals."  In Christian Science, we are taught to see the perfect man, and this starts with ourselves.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.  We are not a mass of unresolved issues, reactions and temptations.  We are made to be the expressed likeness of all that is good, pure, productive and brilliant.

And so are others.

The deepest self-examination takes humility to pierce the self-imposed justifications and condemnations  that may be jamming the systems of our thought to reveal God's very loved and lovely man or woman (or child).  Letting go of the log of false and hurtful view of ourselves frees us to be at peace with the child whom God has created.  This brings more freedom - because now we can see others - without a speck - and in the clearer light of God's creating.

Alone at Christmas

Spiritual resource to share:  giving Christmas

It was my first Christmas away from home and family. I was working at a Christmas Family Camp, but mine wasn’t going to be there. I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas day at all. There were other college students on staff, but I still felt lonely. How I would miss Christmas morning, the stockings, the presents, and the big family meal!

Then I thought about how everyone on staff had agreed to work over Christmas to make it a really special time for other families. The more I thought about my co-workers, the more I started thinking of ways we could all have a special Christmas together on Christmas morning.

I dove into the preparations. My Christmas tree was a green triangle made of yarn, put up on the wall of my shared tiny apartment. I tacked on pine cones, colorful ribbons and bows. I scoured the campus’ vending machines and wrapped up small single use boxes of laundry detergent, a box of toothpaste, a bar of soap. I found a brand-new pair of socks in my drawer. My mom had sent a fruitcake I hadn’t unwrapped. I wrapped all these gifts with newspaper and placed them under my Christmas tree with the names of those on staff who were also spending Christmas without their families.

That Christmas morning, everyone came over. We made a fire and sat around the tree. We all opened Christmas presents and laughed and sang our way through the morning. One friend even said it was the best Christmas he had ever had!

It definitely was one of my most memorable Christmases! Loneliness disappeared right when I started praying about ways to give Christmas to my friends. I learned it’s not how much money you spend but the love and joy and spunk behind each gift that makes it special.  All the joy I put into this effort, multiplied and came back to me!

And the gifts are really just a symbol of the appearance of Christ in our hearts. And that’s always joyful, abundant, satisfying, and inclusive. That’s the kind of Christmas that stays with you all year long.



To read more Christmas blogs, go to http://tmcyouth.com/blogs/alone-at-christmas/