Church Picnic tomorrow!

Service and pitch-in picnic at Mounds Park in the pavilion. Service at 11:00 a.m. and picnic to follow.

Bring a friend, bring your musical instruments, bring a game to play, and/or bring a dish to share!

Seeing God in the Mundane (plus a Q&A session)

For those who were at service on Sunday, September 23, 2012, a few comments to jog your memory:

Just as Robert Frost took the path less traveled, we trod off the beaten path yesterday.  Our service had two parts: some comments from me and then a question and answer period in which the congregation had an opportunity to ask “spiritually based” questions.

In part one of the service we trod the unbeaten path with my asking, “Can you see a reflection of God in the mundane; in the inanimate?”

One of the examples I gave of seeing the inanimate in a “God-reflecting” light was my eyeglasses.

I can see myself as having a vision problem that needs to be fixed… which is what my corrective lenses will do.  In this perspective I hold there is a problem.  I believe the subconscious message with, “I have a problem” is that there is something wrong with me.  That’s not a message I want my subconscious to be entertaining.

Alternately I can ask myself, “How do eyeglasses reflect God?”  The answer for me is, “Where vision is limited, applying God will bring things into focus.”  This is a dramatically different message for the subconscious.  First of all, there is no hidden message that I have a problem… that something is wrong with me.  Instead there is a “God-cognizant” awareness present… that adding God in my life brings clarity and sharpness of vision.

Perhaps you’d like to give it a try yourself?  How can you see the inanimate as reflecting God?  The power of an exercise like this is that we begin to expand our awareness of the presence of God; we begin to recognize that we can, in everything, find a connection to (or reminder of) God.

In part two of the service I entertained questions.  Here are two questions, and answers in summary form.

Question: “I struggle reconciling the idea that God is omnipotent and lets suffering continue without stopping it.”

Answer (as I see it): When we anthropomorphize God we tend to see things backwards.  The idea that we are made in the image and after the likeness of God becomes interpreted as, “God has human characteristics,” rather than as, “I am spirit, whole, complete, and eternal”

When we attribute human characteristics to God we then believe that God analyses behavior as good or bad, right or wrong according to “His” perspective; punishes what is “wrong” and rewards what is “right.”

At the same time we attribute God as being love and as being all powerful, and we don’t understand why an all powerful, all loving God would allow man’s inhumanity to man.

The very question of why God allows this is a statement that we are victims of the whim of God.  This, again, is a human based perspective… seeing God from a societal standpoint: when we don’t follow the rules the Judge will punish us, and the Judge also has the power to order people stop what they are doing.  Except in this case God, because God is all powerful, God can make people stop act in an unloving way.

The answer lies in a shift in awareness.  If we are made in the image and after the likeness of God, and God is Love, and if God (Love) is all powerful then we possess the power of Love, too.

Here, then is my answer, in short: The power of Love, when applied according to its nature heals and harmonizes.  The power of love withheld, which we call fear (aka: attack) results man’s inhumanity to man.

The application of the resolution of man’s inhumanity to man lies in the hands of man, not God.  The resolving power comes from God, not man.

Question: I have a hard time seeing the point of view of “the other side” in the politics of the upcoming election.  Sometimes I can’t even stand to listen to them.  What should I do?

Answer (as I see it): Vote and forgive… forgive being the operative word.  Charles Fillmore defined forgiveness as, “A process of giving up the false for the true.” 

Once again, this is a spiritually based answer, not a worldly based answer of good and bad, right and wrong.

We are all trying to find inner peace in a world of constant disrupt and we have varying ideas of how to go about this.

My best suggestion in relation to anything that upsets us is to forgive. Look beyond the false to the true in this case means extend forgiveness to your ideas about right and wrong, good and bad.  That way you are forgiving yourself for your judgments against_______, because it’s our judgments that make us uncomfortable, not the perspectives of others.

 

Peace is Personal

For those who were at service on Sunday, September 16, 2012, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

• This past week US embassies were attacked and four American citizens were killed.
• The general reaction of the talking heads on TV news programs was that we must kill in return.
• What was your reaction to the news: anger, hate, sick to your stomach, anxious, fear? 
• “In our world, certainly, it is much easier to hate people and feel justified in this hatred, than it is to truly love someone.  This is not the love that specialness holds dear, but the love that does not see another as separate from ourselves; not seeing another person’s interest as separate, or more or less important than our own.” Ken Wapnick, The Obstacles to Peace. (Pgs 190-191)
• I believe everyone's interest are the same: internal peace
• My personal reaction to these events after watching TV new shows for a couple of hours was deep anxiety
• I had to ask myself if this was the emotion I wanted to experience.  "No, I choose Love, because I believe in the power of love to bring peace to my heart.”
• Matthew 5:37-48 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect [consistent], therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect [consistent]."
• There is value in our giving attention to that which we choose to experience.  “Where love is, there God is also. Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love.” (Gandhi)
• “What you want also wants you. If you seek the celestial, the celestial also seeks you. There are no unanswered requests in the universe.” (Vernon Howard)
• I trust in the power of love to bring peace to my heart.  In doing so on an ongoing basis there is more peace in the world. 
• When you work to bring peace to your heart on an ongoing basis, there is more peace in the world.
• Peace is not won through religious or governmental domination. 
• There will never be a peaceful government in the world until we are governed by peace in our hearts and minds.  Let’s keep our “eyes” focused on the “Hilltop of Peace.” 
• Peace is possible because peace is personal.
• We can do this… we can do this.

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To read the complete text of "Peace is Personal" from Sunday, September 16, 2012,  click here.

The Gospel of Thomas #76, "The Pearl"

For those who were at service on Sunday, September 9, 2012, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

•   Just as a drink of water bring vitality to the body, drinking in God brings the awareness of vitality that is already in our being 

•   There is purported to be buried treasure on Oak Island, off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Men have been seeking to find this treasure for over 200 years.

•   Real treasure is the awareness of God that is "found within" (actually, remembered rather than found)

•  Saying #76 from the Gospel of Thomas: Jesus said, "God's Divine Rule is like a merchant who had a supply of merchandise and then found a pearl.  That merchant was prudent; he sold the merchandise and bought the single pearl for himself. So also with you, seek the treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys.”

•   Generally when we want to change our awareness is focused on what we "lack."

•   We will never obtain something if our main focus is on the lack of it.

•   The sure way to do something for your future is to do something with your present.

•   Saying #76 suggests we must "sell" (divest ourselves of) our "Merchandise" in order to obtain (possess, have the experience of) the one great pearl , which I define - as one of a number of ways to define it - as inner peace.

•   Inner peace is our most valuable possession.

•   Like "The Traveler" in the story I read, let no one discourage you from continuing on your path.  Take no ones word for anything about the experience of traveling the path to inner peace. Find out for yourself!

•    Give all your troubles, thoughts, cares, and concerns to God for God to heal.  Do this as often as they appear for you (Also known as, "Keep selling your merchandise"),

•   and keep drinking in God, this will lead you to the one great pearl!

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To read the complete text of "The Gospel of Thomas #76, "The Pearl"" from Sunday, September 9, 2012,  click here.

Perspective

For those who were at service on Sunday, a few bullet points to jog your memory (actually these are nearly all my notes, with an added surprise at the end):

•    Everything I see has all the meaning I give to it.
•    Mrs. Goldberg and Mrs. Weinstein are visiting with each other
•    “How’s Marvin?” Mrs. Weinstein asks?
o    "His wife is a leech." says Mrs. Goldberg.
o    "She Just sits around all day,
o    Has a maid to do cooking and cleaning,
o   he's going broke buying her expensive gifts
o    Sleeps late every morning
o    Brings her breakfast in bed."
•    “That’s terrible… a blessing she isn’t!” they agree
•    “Enough about Marvin, already, how’s your dear, sweet, Abigail?”
o    "Abby's a lucky girl. says Mrs Goldberg.
o    "She married a man who treats her like a princess,
o    Buys her anything she wants
o    Hires people to take care of the house
o    She doesn’t have to dirty a finger.
o    Every morning she brings him breakfast in bed."
•    Both women concurred, “Isn’t that wonderful?”
•    Everything you see has all the meaning you give to it

•    Let’s have a lithe fun with perception
•    Do you see an old woman or a young woman (or both)?

•    Do you see a frog or a horse (or both)?

•    Our perception is suspect
•    We see with our minds, not with our eyes
•    Sight = thinking

•    Grandpa Smith lives in Wisconsin
o    He invites his grandchildren to spend the summer with him
o    Every morning they would slip into his bedroom and watch him sleep
o    One morning they decided to put Limburger cheese on his mustache
o    He woke up in a few minutes, “Something smells bad.”
o    Put on robe, walked around bedroom, “It's bedroom smells bad”
o    Out the door, down the hallway, “It's the hallway smells bad”
o    Down the stairs and through the house, “It's the living room that smells bad... it's the dining room that smells bad... it's the kitchen that smells bad”
o    Outside, he says “The whole world smells!”
•    Isn’t that the way it is?  We think IT is not in us; It is out there in the world

The "it" that I think is out there causing my experience is actually me!

•    Sight = thinking
•    (Mark 9:47) “And if your eye offends you, remove it..."
o    If your perception offends your sensibilities, change your thinking.
•    Remove the old way of thinking and begin thinking with
•    The Mind that created us


•    Poem from James Allen's book. "As I Thinketh"
Mind is the Master power that molds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:--
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.

•    As long as we have the ability to choose how we experience events, why not choose to see through the eyes of Love... to see as God see?"






Here's a song you might enjoy (this was not part of the service): I Choose Love