Forgive and know Inner Peace

Sunday, March 15, 2015

I love signs. Here’s one you might see in a business: “Hourly Rate Depends Upon Customer Attitude.” Here’s one you might see on private property: “No Trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” These words were on a billboard I actually saw: “Illiterate? Write for details.”

Here is a sign that may well be hanging on the wall in some businesses across the country: "To err is human – to forgive is not company policy."

That is not the company policy here.

A “Psychology Today” Magazine article about forgiveness once said, "By giving this gift (forgiveness) to the other, it is the gift-giver who becomes psychologically healed."

Forgiveness is the key to inner peace.

Research makes it clear what the value of forgiveness is. In one study, top psychologists interviewed a group of incest survivors; none expressed any desire to forgive their perpetrators.

The psychologists assigned half of the women to some forgiveness workshops anyway. When the study ended a year later all participants – those who forgave and those who didn’t completed surveys about their current well-being. Those who forgave reported far less anxiety, sickness and depression then the non-forgivers. A Psychologist involved in the study, Dr. Enright, said, "I have never seen such strong results."

What does forgiveness mean to you? Within the entirety of your idea of forgiveness is there, “no excusing and no forgetting?” in other words, “I can forgive them but there is no excuse for what they did and I will not forget, either.”  Well, I’d say it’s not that, but that it is this (SLIDE): the giving up and releasing of resentment to which you think you're entitled.

 When you say there is no excuse and I will not forget what they did, you have placed them in a prison cell in your consciousness, and you have become a jailor.  And while you are jailor to your prisoner, you are prisoner, too.  You are not free while you imprison anyone. A jailer is not free, because they are bound together with their prisoner. They must be sure that they do not escape, and so they spend their time, in consciousness, keeping watch on them. The bars that limit your prisoner become the world in which you live, along with them. It is your prisoner’s freedom that gives liberty to both of you.

I invite you to hold no one prisoner in your heart. Release instead of bind, for thus you are made free. The way is simple: every time you feel a stab of anger, realize that you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall on you or be averted as you choose to condemn or free.

You could think of judgment this way: each person who seems to tempt you to be angry is actually your savior from the prison house of judgment. And so you owe him thanks instead of pain.

I invite you to be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. Would you deny him/her that? The Father's Love for him/her is the same Love that belongs to you. Your function here on earth is only to forgive. Everyone else is as God created them. And you are what they are, a wholly loved child of God. Forgive them now the sins you have attributed to them , and you will see that together in Love, you are One.(A Course in Miracles)

Forgiveness is the key to inner peace.

  “Through your forgiveness of others you will find yourself.” (Fr. Leo Booth )

How much better we feel when we can bring peace to a situation by some carefully chosen word, by some gesture of love, or by simply saying: "Forgive me," or "I understand, and I love you."

Throughout my life I’ve had many things to forgive and I feel peace more fully because of it.

In the summer of 1953 I was seven years old.  Seven, when I was sexually molested by the 19 year old teenage son of a friend of my mother. I had no real understanding at that age that the inappropriate touching and demand to touch back in the same way was wrong.

Seven years later, now 14, I found myself alone with this man again. We were no longer in the old neighborhood where I could have just left the house, we were in New York City. I had no way to leave and get home on my own when he forced himself on me again. I got away and called my parents to come and get me.

These were events that could have scarred me for life. Some forgiveness was involved in my limited understanding and “it worked,” no scars nor unhealthy attitudes were carried forward.

In 1987 I was a 20% owner in a packaging and shipping business. My partner, I’ll call him Leonard, proposed to me one day that we sell the business and that he had a buyer. I didn’t really have any leverage in the deal and I agreed.  We sold the business to “Jerry,” taking monthly payments with a lump sum due in five years.

I agreed with Leonard that I would take my potion of the sale price in five years when the lump sum was paid.

A year or so after the sale I run into Jerry and he says something like, “I hope you were happy getting paid early.”

Me: “Huh?”

Jerry: I approached Leonard a few months ago and asked if he’d take less if I paid off the loan early and he agreed. I thought you would know that.”

Me: “Nope. First I’ve heard of it”

I contacted Leonard to ask him why he hadn’t told me about the new offer. His answer was, “Well, you were willing to wait five years so I thought it wouldn’t make a difference to you. I was going to pay you on the original due date.”

I wanted to know what happened to the money and a few days later he brought me a hand written accounting sheet showing the distribution of funds. Interestingly there was no total on this long list of payouts. When I totaled the list at home the number was far short of the amount Leonard told me he re-negotiated.

To make a long story much shorter, Leonard showed he was still paying on the second mortgage he took out on his house. I was suspicious about that, so I called the bank pretending to be Leonard and asked them to verify the payoff date of the second. They gave me that date… he had paid off the second mortgage and lied to me about it.

Our attorney sent him a letter asking for immediate payment under the threat of a law suit. He responded by filing for bankruptcy. I lost my significant initial investment and any profit that I would have realized from the sale.

Once again a significant forgiveness opportunity.

Forgiveness is a form of God's Divine love, a love that keep us in tune with our world and in harmony with every person in it. Forgiveness allows that Divine Love to be known on a very personal level.

Forgiveness is the key to inner peace.

Let us thank God for the love that forgives and blesses, the love that dispels disharmony, the love that restores peace and understanding. May we always be aware it is ours.

If you don’t have a regular spiritual practice each evening, why not extend forgiveness each night before bedtime to wherever it is needed in your life?

We’ll close today with these words from Ephesians: "Do not let the sun go down on your anger… be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another." 

Would you do that with me?

Snow Day

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Snow day on Sunday... no Monday Message for this week.

Exploding Whale!

Sunday, February 22, 2015

“An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.” - Winston Churchill (our way of thinking is what tells us what we see)

 “The greatest danger for most of us is NOT that we aim too high and we miss it, but we aim too low and reach it.” – Michelangelo (aiming high and missing is not failure)

How many of us love the experience of rush hour traffic?

Rush hour is an interesting phenomenon if you let yourself be present to what is going on. You can sit in your car and watche the faces of the people in the cars next to you. Most of their faces will exhibit an empty look like, “I am doing this because I have to do, but my heart is not in it.”

These people who are down and disheartened in daily life are our brothers and sisters. These are God’s children. What about the promise of fulfillment, the promise of great glory, the promise of God’s joy? What is happening to those promises, in regular, everyday ordinary life?

A lot of people do not feel joy in daily life... It can change.

It seems to me that the brother of the Prodigal Son did not feel joy in daily life. The story ends this way (Luke 15:25-32) ^“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

What I want to ask you is: Was that older brother, the older son, aware that he was always with his father, and that all his father had was his? Or did he carry his relationship with his father as a burden?

It sounds to me as if there was a lot of resentment there, a lot of the older brother comparing his life with his brother’s life, and feeling he was coming up on the short end.

We can feel this way in life, too. We compare ourselves with others and assign success to them but no success, or less success, to us. Then we’re not happy enough because we’re living an “ordinary” life, and we might try to satisfy ourselves with achievements, accomplishments, and things, and it does not work.

Maybe we become like Ziggy in the cartoon where Ziggy is coming around a corner. Heading toward that corner is a man carrying a sign that says, “Happiness is just around the corner.” Ziggy says, “Gee, I must have missed it.”

Is life like that for us??

My answer to that is, “Probably from time to time.” Spirituality is what you make of life, day by day, becoming FULLY awake to, and aware of, the Presence of God. Spirituality loves the regular ordinary days as much as the extraordinary.

Part of the problem is a learned behavior that we humans have that induces us to be overly critical. Some people call it human nature. They say it’s human nature to make mistakes. We look at the mistakes we have made and we say, “This is terrible! I call myself an evolving spiritual being, and yet I do things like this. I certainly hope nobody ever finds out about it!”

I wonder what life would be like if we could read each other’s minds, what things we would see. I tend to think we would see a commonality in the things we are ashamed of that would make us smile. We all make mistakes. And because we all make mistakes, and because we criticize ourselves for mistakes, I want to share with you a story about a mistake that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Let’s look at a video clip of a television broadcast from KATU TV Portland, Oregon. The year is 1970. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVVW8BferzQ)

God is present in the little mistakes and in the epic mistakes. God is present in the little successes and the epic successes. God is present in the exciting and in the mundane. God is Present. Period.

In the story of Jacob’s ladder, Jacob is travelling from Beersheba to Harran and he stops along the road for the evening. He lays his head on a stone, sleeps, and dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven with God at the top and angels ascending and descending. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it.”

Where was Jacob? He was along the road (could we say, “on the path”?), sleeping with his head on a rock. In other words his surrounding was mundane.

The next verse is probably even more telling. “And he said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”

I am going to give you a challenge. I invite you to take a thought and use it in some of the places you do not consider so particularly sacred.

I do not know what you are going to be doing today—whether it is something wonderful or something very ordinary and mundane—but I do know that whatever you are going to do, wherever and however you do it, God is there.

Walt Whitman said, “To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.” This is real life!

When we are out of this awareness we are experiencing only a part of life because we have left God out. I would like you to take the thought with you: How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

God is an experience. Spirituality is experienced in the midst of doing ordinary things.

William Shakespeare said, “All glory comes from daring to begin.”

Get personally involved with God.

I give you the invitation today, and the challenge, to remember this thought in those times when it seems like nothing much is going on, like nothing of any great value is happening, or like you are not particularly worthy of being called the child of God that you are.

How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Spirituality is all about our awareness. The gift has been given. God has said, “Child, you are always with Me, and all I have is yours.” It is up to us to respond, to see opportunity everywhere – in the exhilarating and the seeming calamity to be aware of the Presence of God.

Aim High!

How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. Think about it! I wish you a regular ordinary day filled with the presence of God.

God bless you!

C'mon in, The Water's Great!

Sunday, February 15, 2015

"Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.." (Isaiah 41:10)

I want to tell you about two fellows who went outside for a duel – Pete and Repete. (Not Pete and Repeat like the kids joke, “Pete and repeat are on a boat. Pete falls overboard, who is left?” “Repeat.” “Pete and repeat are on a boat….”) In a little bit I’ll tell you why I’m using Pete and “RePete.”

Pete said to Repete: “You have your choice of weapons.”

Repete said, “All right. Our weapons will be ideas wrapped up in nice boxes.”

So, Pete took the first shot and delivered a package to Repete.   Repete opened it and inside was the idea of sickness. Repete got very, very sick, but, in time, he overcame that sickness. He got well.

Then it was time for Repete to deliver a box to Pete. Pete unwrapped his box and received the idea of poverty. Pete spent many years believing in the ideas of lack, believing he couldn’t have what everybody else had, but, he overcame and soon he was back on top again.

Soon he delivered another box to Repete. This time when Repete opened the box, he received the idea of lack of education. Right away he began to shrivel. He accepted for himself the thought he could not do what others could do because he did not have formal education. In time, he began to realize that our human brain is not alone, that we work with God’s mind, and God’s wisdom can come through.

He overcame the lower ideas and thoughts of society.

Repete then delivered another box to Pete.   Inside this box was the idea of death. Pete accepted that idea and died; but a funny thing happened. He came to realize that death is not a period but a comma in life, and that life in this physical body is not all there is. He realized, we go on.

Finally the time came for the last box to be delivered. Repete opened it up and inside it he found discouragement. Immediately, no matter what came into his life, whether it was sickness or poverty or lack of education, or even the idea of death, he was not able to overcome any of these ideas because he was too discouraged.

Pete and rePete are symbols for the telling and retelling of the thoughts we tell and retell ourselves.

It’s easy to get discouraged on our path to spiritual remembrance when we operate from the idea that we are human… from the forgetting of our divinity. It is hard, operating from human identity, to lift ourselves out of that discouragement.

Today, I pray that through this talk and God's help, that your discouragement will dissolve and transform it into encouragement. I know it can, because I know God is here and God is working inside of my life, thus in yours, too.

When our 10 year old niece was visiting last summer we went to the pool in Pendleton. She was reluctant to jump in the water because she tested it with her toe and it seemed cold. Being the manly uncle that I am, I jumped in the water and said to her, “C’mon, jump in. The water’s great once you jump in.”

The spiritual life is that way, too. Once you jump in, its ok… the water’s great, so to speak.

I know life can be discouraging because I’ve dealt with enormous amounts of negative self-talk. I’ve dipped my toe into the spiritual life and pulled back, afraid of the work involved and the change that might come. Eventually I realized “the water’s great” because I finally jumped into the spiritual life.

When we come to the point when we say we can’t go forward; when we get discouraged and lose hope, it is vital to remember You are NOT alone—God is with you.

Lifting ourselves up strictly from the human perspective is hard, hard, work. It can be done, to a certain level, but it’s the long way home. Remember, always, that God is with you. God can lift you up and keep you up and show you a shorter path.

Get involved with whatever you call the creative power of life.

I’ve suffered at the hands of negative belief about prosperity until I decided to experiment with believing something I used to hear Jane say, “There isn’t a finite amount of money in the world.” I began to experiment with not clutching onto the idea that whatever money goes out from me is loss. I began to experiment with the idea that there is a flow to all things in the world and that my thinking, my trust, my faith affected the inflow coming to me. Once I saw that God did for me in the smallest way I was able to open up and trust that God would do the same for me in the biggest way.

The water’s great. C’mon in!

Another big challenge that turned around in my life was the drag on my life that was present because I was holding to the idea that “lack of education” meant I was “less than.”

In order to enter seminary I was required to hold a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university. I didn’t have one because I never attended college. Unity, thankfully, also offered an option for people without a degree. They call it their “bachelor equivalency path.” I took that road. It required the completion of a two-year program, under their supervision, as well as documenting life experience and showing how that experience related to ministry. All this had to be completed, submitted, and accepted before I could even apply to seminary. Now a person might think that completing a two-year program, submitting a 51 page application, its acceptance, being invited to interviews and testing, and subsequent invitation to seminary would be proof enough of educational competence.

But not for me. I continued to look at what I thought I didn’t have instead of what was present for me.

Why? Because that was all human effort.

I had a classmate named Grace Nicodemus. Grace was in the same boat as I was with respect to a college degree and I would share with her my doubts and misgivings about being qualified. She would say to me, just as in the story I told recently about how Jack Nicklaus said to President Clinton’s admission that he didn’t feel worth of making a putt for an “eagle,” “You’ve got to get over that.”

I did, eventually, once I let go and let God into my heart and mind to direct me about what to do next.

C’mon in, the water’s great!

These two examples show that I have been discouraged along the way.

Yes, there are potholes on this road of life. But we must never stay in the pothole. We must go beyond. Albert Einstein said something extremely powerful. You’ve probably heard this before about being faced with seemingly insurmountable difficulties and discouragement, “The significant problems we have today cannot be solved at the same level of mind that we created them.”

Yes, you may have a problem. You may be in a mess, and you can’t solve it at the same level of mind you entered that problem with.

You can’t solve the problems negative thinking and belief bring by changing outer circumstances; your inner landscape (belief) has to change first.

Un-clutch those ideas of limitation you think you see in yourself and others!

This calls us to expand our thinking as human beings. Expand to what? These negative ideas aren’t actually gone, they just aren’t in the forefront anymore. We push them to the side and we then allow in, or, become aware of the thoughts of God in the forefront of our mind.

One thing that I’ve found to be necessary on my journey to the remembrance of the Presence of God is, to consent in my human mind to the mind of God inspiring through me. There comes that powerful point in our lives when we say, “Dear God, I can’t do it alone anymore. I have to have Your help.” The instant you say that, and really mean it, the Divine ideas flood in. The application of those ideas is what can change your life.

Ephesians 6:13. says, “Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand [the challenges in your life.]”

It is one of the greatest techniques for overcoming. It teaches that when you have done all you can do and are at the point where you are just about ready to get discouraged and give up, you take on the whole armor of God. You take up the belief that God is with you. You are not alone. Your ever-present source of guidance is with you.

Having done all you can do humanly, you just breathe and stand and wait. You become quiet and allow those ideas to flood your mind. Then, and only then, when you are recharged, refreshed and revitalized, you take the actions you need to take.

But why wait until you’ve exhausted every human possibility? Why not take on the full armor of God now? Ask, be quiet and listen for the divine ideas of God to surface in your mind and act according to that guidance?

I invite you one last time today, “C’mon in. The water’s great!”