Gratitude

Hi.  No Monday Message today.  Yesterday the congregation shared the service expressing what they were thankful for.

I hope your Thanksgiving was enriching and that we all remember to be grateful everyday.

Bless everything,
Rev. Brad

"But-Head"

For those who were at service on Sunday, November 18, 2012, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

• Please don’t take this the wrong way.  I have to ask, “How big is your “but?””

• The “but” I’m talking about is your, “Yeah, I know, but…” followed by a reason why some good idea (aka application of spiritual principle) won’t work for them.  “But… thinking” is what keeps us stuck in our experience.

• I hear, “yeah, but…” a lot as the reason why people aren’t willing to choose a different path of thinking that will lead them away from the experiences that come with their entrenched habits.

• “But thinking” is a choice that keeps us stuck.  Is being a “but-head” working for you? :o)

• We are here to find freedom.    
• Freedom is having a sense of complete well-being regardless of our circumstances or conditions 

• We find freedom by choosing to live by proven spiritual principles, (aka a God-centered life, Christ consciousness) in any given moment. 

• Spiritual freedom is a choice.

• We want to push away our feelings – I hear this all the time – “I don’t want this, I’m tired of this, I want to get rid of this feeling.”  Then I might suggest a spiritual approach and that’s when it comes out, “Yeah, I know, but…” Have you ever heard yourself say this?

• I once heard a man say, “The healing is in the feeling.”

• I believe we have to feel our feelings in order to heal them.

• What we resist persists… looms larger.

• Feel your feelings and act from spirit no matter how loudly your feelings invite you not to.

• Freedom is a choice.  Make a commitment to choose Spirit over fear.

• A woman tells a story about the day her son came into her office to tell her he was going to make a parachute jump the next day, what he was going to do and how he was going to do it the next day when he made that jump.  She said she could also hear the fear in his voice.  “Yet,” she said, “it was about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”

• The next time the pressure is on and you want a change, don’t fall back into old patterns of pushing away the pressure…don’t be a “but-head…” feel the pressure and choose to express Spirit. :o)

 
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To read the complete text of "But-Head " from Sunday, November 18, 2012,  click here.

Spiritual People

For those who were at service on Sunday, November 11, 2012, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

• Who are you?
• What is your profession?
• I suggest the answer to both these questions is, "Spiritual person."
• Spiritual person is our profession.  Anything else we do in the world is our avocation.
• A spiritual person demonstrates the following three characteristics (among others):
• "Risk Taker"
• Step out and follow God, even when it's not in the normal flow of the people around you
• "Visionary"
• Lives for what is forthcoming.  Sees the good, the perfect pattern of God, and they are willing to do whatever needs to be done now to let that pattern emerge.
• "Outrageous"
• We have found our spirituality because we were looking for something that didn't fit the normal flow, something that we could use every day of our lives to live in an unusual, fulfilling, incredible space where we are aware of God's presence every moment in our lives. When we become willing to be outrageous enough to see God's design for our lives, we become willing to do what it will take to fulfill that design.
•  Jesus demonstrated these characteristics
• "Risk Taker"
• He dared to challenge the scribes and the Pharisees 
• "Visionary"
• He looked around at a time when people had very little, when they were struggling to find their daily bread, and said to them, "The kingdom of heaven is within you, and it is God's good pleasure to give you the fullness of that kingdom."
• "Outrageous"
• He ate with publicans and sinners; forgave an adulteress; touched lepers; stood before the tomb of his friend Lazarus and said, "Come forth," knowing absolutely that his friend would arise; was crucified, died, buried, and rose up.  Then He goes an outrageous step further and says to us, "These things that I have done, you can do also, and even greater things."  Definitely, He was not your average person
• What must it be like to live within and from the power and Presence of God?
• Take the risk of the visionary and in outrageous contentment live that life.

God Bless you.
 
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To read the complete text of "Spiritual People" from Sunday, November 11, 2012,  click here.

The Kidney Stone

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

·        I was in the hospital for a kidney stone

·        Kidney stones are small (mine was about 1.5 mm, the width of a penny)

·        How can something so small have such a big impact?

·        A small thing such as a misplaced, thoughtless, or unkind word directed at another (or ourselves) can be the catalyst for suffering and pain 

·        Jesus counsels us in Matthew 17:20 that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed (or a kidney stone?) we can move mountains

·        Even a small dedication to spiritual principles will have a big impact on your life

·        Attending to “the small things” with spiritual principles (before they turn into unnecessary mountains) will have a big impact on your life

·        How do we do this?

·        “Step back and let God lead the way” (listen to our inner guidance… let divine wisdom sit on the seat of authority)

·        This can be difficult because we have been trained to be in control of our lives.  If we want something, we are told to go out there and make it happen

·        There is a light in you, in everyone; the Light of God… and the universe and all that it contains is longing to behold your release of this Light.  The entire universe and all it contains is waiting to join with you in the Light of God.  As you step back, the Light in you steps forward and encompasses the world in happy union.

·        You are the Light of the world, and that is no small thing!

·        “Step back” and let the Light of God shine in every little thing you do

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To read the complete text of "The Kidney Stone" from Sunday, October 14, 2012,  click here.

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.