Author: CSLT-Faces

Becoming

Dr Ernest Holmes was very clear (The Science of Mind pp.266-268) “Science of Mind is not a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme, neither does it promise something for nothing. It does however promise the one who will comply with its teachings that they shall be able to bring greater possibilities and happier conditions into their experience.”

Holmes continues, “It is a great mistake to say; ‘Take what you wish, for you can have anything you like.’ We do not take what we wish, but we do attract to ourselves that which is like our thought. EACH ONE MUST BECOME MORE IF THEY WISH TO DRAW A GREATER GOOD INTO THEIR LIFE. We need not labor under the delusion that all we have to do is say that everything is ours. This is true in Reality, but in fact it is only as true as we make it. We provide the mold for the Creative Law”

Holmes, again, “The Law is a law of liberty, but not a law of license. It is exact and exacting, and unless we are willing to comply with Its Nature and work with it, along the lines of Its inherent being, we shall receive no great benefit. EVERY ONE MUST PAY THE PRICE FOR THAT WHICH THEY RECEIVE AND THAT PRICE IS PAID IN MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL COIN.” (Capitalization in Holmes’ original text.)

For a full 2 years before Agape International opened their doors, Dr Michael Beckwith and his visioning team met every week to envision how ‘God’ wanted the Agape Center to show up in the world. Only after they all clearly shared and understood the guidance, and every single one of them was completely aligned, and in embodied agreement with the vision, did Dr Michael and the team begin to open the doors.

I remember my first community envisioning gathering in 2009, and the ones that happened every year after that. We imagined, dreamed and visioned about having a place of our own. Many of the dreams were grand (a towering stained-glass sanctuary with state-of-the-art everything, an elementary school, a ministerial school, a community garden, a cafe…), without much embodiment, or ownership, of the vision/dream among the congregation. It was like we were seeking something for nothing. Some people got disillusioned and left.

When we had the opportunity to purchase that 5-acre parcel of raw land on 22nd Street in 2016, it looked like a great investment, and it had potential to become the site where we could build our own Center. The Board members supported purchasing the parcel, though many members of our congregation were not necessarily in favor of us building on it. They didn’t like the location. They thought it would be too difficult. (There were stringent restrictions from the Home Owner’s Association that we had agreed to.) When we received an unsolicited offer to purchase the land at a very good price, it had turned into a fruitful investment for us. (We hold the note for the buyers, and they pay us a percentage of the agreed value each year.) That first year’s annual payment on the raw land gave us the down payment we needed to purchase the office.

Along the way, we grew in our understanding and started imagining what it would really feel like to embody and experience ‘the highest vision for CSL Tucson’. We got closer, because we started owning our vision and it would feel like when it materialized. The last several years, pre-pandemic, we had honed in on what embodiment looked like and felt like for us. You can find several of the previous years’ envisioning notes on our website under About Us, and then under Organizational Documents.

Our annual Community Envisioning has been planned for a few hours the evening of Friday January 14th, and up to half a day on Saturday, January 15th. I invite you to consider what you are willing to embody, what you are willing to become, as we move into this next stage of our enlivenment as CSL Tucson. It’s not just about my becoming, or our Board of Trustees’ becoming. It’s about what each, and all, of us are willing to become.

–Rev Janis

Got “Same Auld Lang Syne”?

Sissy wishes you a Happy New Year

Auld Lang Syne was a poem written by Robert Burns in 1788. The poem
was set to the tune in 1799 and sung to bid farewell to the old year and bring in the new year at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. ‘Same Old Lang Syne’ was written and sung by Dan Fogelberg in 1980. Both are favorite songs that bring me to tears.

Norman Vincent Peale wrote, “To start your new year right, I suggest finding a deeper spiritual life. Something happens deep within you and thereafter you are filled with joy and warmth and beauty. This may happen quickly and dramatically. It could happen today. On the other hand, it may be a developing experience, unfolding as a rose, beginning with a bud and ending with full flowering. But, however it happens, this is the greatest experience possible to a human being.”

As I think back over this past year, I know I have found a deeper spiritual life with CSLT. I know I am filled with joy, warmth and beauty. My heart is filled with gratitude for all I have learned through our teachings and practices, all the friendships I have gained, and all the love I have received from all of you. I’m ready to bid farewell to 2021 and bring in 2022. How about you?

To bring this year to an end, I hope you join us for Endings and Beginnings — Friday, December 31, 5:30 pm on the Sunday morning zoom link. Music by Michael Zimmerman.

2022 is offering us many fun opportunities to engage, learn and spiritually grow with each other! Consider joining us at our next “Watch Party”. We are also offering fun new classes to start off the new year with class. As I have said many times, “I’ve got class.” All the information can be found in our weekly electronic newsletter, and on our website.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, pleasantly abundant, blessed, deeper spiritual life. Happy New Year! Let’s bring in 2022 together as We Are All One.

–Love, Madeline & Sissy

What Was I Thinking?

I woke up Sunday after having an anxiety dream about doing the Spiritual Mind Treatment for service. I’m still learning to do Spiritual Mind Treatments, and feel comfortable enough treating for my classmates, but larger gatherings I’m still working on. When I got up our internet was down. It had been working inconsistently, so we bought another router, and it was working. However, on Sunday morning after numerous tries to get it working, and not succeeding, I decided to go to the office. It was advantageous that I had hosted the watch party the previous week, so I knew how to connect to the internet.

I got to the office with Terri’s laptop, my itouch and ipad, (devices galore!) and connected with the internet, but had difficulty with my email (which had the Zoom link) on the laptop. Sometimes when things like this happen, I stop, laugh and ask myself, “Are you having fun with this? Seeing me panic?” I finally got the email to work and emailed Rev. Janis that I was in the office, and that perhaps my anxiety dream manifested my problems.

When the time came, I was able to lead the mediation, voice only, not knowing why the camera wasn’t working. On the PC laptop I borrowed (I’m a Mac sort of gal) it has a camera slider which acts like a lens cap, which I finally figured out.

Then came the giving of the Spiritual Mind Treatment. The laptop was working, I had the ipad with the spiritual thought. During the reading of the spiritual thought, I must have touched the screen and it disappeared, hence the long silence, and a scramble to get it back on the screen.

This term of Practitioner Studies I’m getting to look at my issue of feeling like a disappointment. It’s followed me around for too long. I think some of that crept into my dream and my morning. The shift that took place during the term was focusing on the word, belief, and behavior of “confidence”, instead. It was like I had never heard the word before! Yes, I need to think of confidence and not disappointment, because if I think of disappointment, that’s what I’m going to get. I choose to shift my thoughts toward confidence, and as a classmate suggested, “Not putting a limit to it,” which was a great reminder.

This reminds me of a time I went skiing, and took a group lesson. I was struggling, so the instructor took the whole class up the lift. When we got off the lift he said, “if you look over the cliff, you’ll go over the cliff,” then he disappeared over the embankment. “And if you look to the middle of the path,” he reappeared, “That’s where you’ll go.” It was a great lesson, one that I continue to work on.

–Maria

Hi! I’m Chris (Wheeler)

My path to the Center for Spiritual Living Tucson started when my wife told me she had discovered an interesting group of people that gathered on Sundays. This automatically sent me into “This sounds like too much work” mode and… “People! I need to run and hide.”

Soon after my introduction to the idea, I was able to avoid gathering for many Sundays. I had gone to churches as a child. We joined the Unitarian Universalists to give our children exposure to a faith community. And to give our youngest child the opportunity to wear her shiny shoes once a week. That’s another story.

My first contact with CSL was by taking Mary Morrissey’s Prosperity Plus program at the office on River Road. Prosperity was a subject I could relate to. The approach to the subject was different than I expected. And the hints of the metaphysical approach gave me a feeling of some sort of connection and I really liked the other participants. So, I said I would go to the Gregory School and attend a service.

It was while in the prosperity class we were responding to a question about dreams and goals and I realized I wanted to become a working musician again and play drums professionally. (I think there is a connection here) It was suggested that I could be the backup drummer for Sunday service. Around the same time the drummer for CSLT decided he wanted other things. I auditioned with the music director, David Prouty, and started playing drums for the CSLT Orchestra on Sundays. Around the same time as this event a musician friend pointed out a bulletin board ad for a drummer at a music store. I auditioned for, and started a gig, that was every second Saturday downtown that continued for several years.

I have been getting involved in more and more classes ever since. The CSLT experience has really helped me broaden my spiritual life, and my life all around.

Thanks to the all-inclusive aspects of the Science of Mind teaching and the loving support of this community, I get to expand my life. Even to the point of serving as a board member! That in and of itself would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Yet here I am, and I am looking forward to the next 3 years.

–Chris Wheeler

Wait! What Was I Thinking?

I love how efficient the Universe is at showing us what we believe. I’ve had so many examples of this in the past couple weeks, I probably can’t even count them all. Mostly, I’m just glad I notice I’ve been thinking, and believing, and have a chance to change my mind about my experiences.

Last Thursday, I got my booster shot up at the Tucson Convention Center. It was the first day they were open and they had all three of the options. I had a preference, and so I had avoided getting ‘boosted’. I was cracking jokes in line with the couple standing behind me. Of course, he had heard that people who hadn’t gotten ill from the previous shots were laid low by this one. I’d heard that too, but I didn’t pay it a lot of attention. Friday, I woke up feeling a little bit achy, and my arm was sore. Friday’s usually my day off, and I thought I’d just take it easy because I’d been pushing pretty hard for a while. No biggie.

I opened The Science of Mind Friday night to do my daily evening practice, which is to consider the reading for the day (252.2-5) that Dr Edward Viljoen picked out when he was in ministerial school over thirty years ago. Friday’s reading was about how we can choose to think about Colds, Influenza and Grippe. (I don’t even know what grippe is.) I had to laugh out loud at myself. How is it possible that I needed to be reminded of this exact thought form on this day, so I could notice what I was thinking?

What I noticed was that I had two competing thoughts in my mind. As a biologist, I knew that when the body’s defenses were activated, they would kick up a little bit of a fuss, and the body would prefer to have a low-key, restful day so that the internal reinforcements of health could gather the troops, and nothing further would be needed. As a Religious Scientist, I knew that we believe in the healing of the sick and the control of conditions through the power of this Mind, and so I didn’t have to experience those achy sensations. I also knew that it is done unto us as we believe. If my belief in the mechanics of human physiology was stronger than my belief in what we teach and practice, then I was going to get to have that experience.

Well, duh. Of course, I did a treatment. Friday night I slept, unbothered. By morning, I was back to normal.

Saturday, I was running errands in town and noticed the clouds gathering. There were even a few raindrops on my car’s windshield, not enough to turn the wipers on, but it was still rain. Part of me delights in the clouds gathering, because I very much appreciate the soft, gentle winter rains. And if they happened to start early this year, I’d be quite okay with that. But the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association was doing a stargazing party in Tucson Mountain Park, near where I live, and I had a ticket to go Saturday night. I was looking forward to it. I did my ‘standard weather treatment’ that I used to do when I lived in Arizona City and drove to Tucson multiple times a week for certificated classes. I didn’t have a problem with rain, or dust storms, for two years.

Astronomers aren’t generally as happy about overcast skies as the rest of us desert dwellers are, and the club cancelled the viewing if they thought the skies wouldn’t be cooperative. Over Tucson Mountain Park, the skies stayed relatively clear, so I drove over just after sunset to look through the two telescopes and ‘ooh and ahh’ at the planets and galaxies with about 15 other people. I’ve seen Venus, Jupiter and Saturn before, but I’d not seen Neptune or Uranus. The two amateur astronomers had great telescopes and great skill in using them, so we could even see multiple moons around several of the distant planets. We do get to experience what we believe. How marvelous is that?

–Rev Janis Farmer

Beyond Beyond Gratitude

Rev. Janis just concluded her Beyond Gratitude class this week. The homework for week 1 included doing a gratitude practice of listing three things you were grateful for each day. “Okay,” I said to myself. “I’ll start a new journal. Again.”

Like many of you, I have started such a practice many times. I keep it up for a few weeks or months, then record less frequently until I stop altogether. I think of 3 things I’m grateful for and list them, trying not to repeat myself. Once again, I began making my list of three things that I noticed each day for which I am thankful.

On Veteran’s Day, I thought I should put veterans on my list, but I had already recorded three things. I looked at the three items to decide which one to take off and substitute with veterans. I didn’t want to replace any of the items with veterans. This made me look at why I included items on my list. Each of the items I included made me feel something. That day I wasn’t feeling any particular emotion related to any veteran in particular or veterans in general, so they didn’t make it to the list. The next day I meditated on what it was about veterans that I was grateful for. Now I had a feeling to go with the thought and veterans made it on the list that day.

Instead of just making a list I’m currently keeping an actual gratitude journal. I write down three things, one at a time. Then I write down why I’m grateful for each one and how each makes me feel. This has given my gratitude practice more meaning.

Also during that week 1 class, Rev. Janis suggested we include things from three different categories:

1 – tangibles. (what you can see, touch, taste, smell, hear)
2 – invisibles, but tangibles (like oxygen/air, lungs/breath, kidneys, spleen…)
3 – intangibles (like safety, contentment, creativity…)

Previously, the things that made it to my list were mostly from the first category. Thinking about and including things from the other two categories has broadened my practice in another way.

As suggested by Dr. Karmen Smith and reiterated by Rev. Janis, to take my gratitude practice to an even higher level I reflect on difficult experiences and try to find a reason to be grateful. Knowing that all happens for my good, I ask to be shown the good. Often this is not possible to see while experiencing the situation, but recalling events from the past that are over and done with I am usually able to find something there to be grateful for if only that it is in the past.

Taking this class has allowed me to take my gratitude practice beyond anything I have done in the past. I think I will stick with this practice longer this time around because of this.

I love that our Center offers a variety of classes on a regular basis. Participating in the classes, I always discover something that I can incorporate into my daily life to make it fuller, deeper, bigger, etc. If you haven’t taken a class lately, I encourage you to do so. Allow yourself to go beyond.

–Janet Salese

Got Turkey?

“Appreciation, gratitude, and thanksgiving — the motive power which attracts and magnifies the hidden potentialities of life.” – Ernest Holmes The Science of Mind 637

I think in most homes the idea of the Thanksgiving revolves around being grateful and appreciative of the blessings we already have. The idea of dinner revolves around the meal being prepared by the matriarch of the home. In my home, this dinner consists of a feast that I have prepared and is enjoyed by my family and friends. Preparing for this feast can take quite a bit of planning to present the perfect meal.

I appreciate two of my dearest friends. At least a month ago they notified me that there is an apparent turkey shortage and that I’d better get my turkey now! They were sincerely concerned that I wasn’t aware of this shortage and what would I do if I didn’t have a turkey to serve? They were right. I wasn’t aware of the apparent shortage. However, I immediately thought — what are they talking about? Don’t they know we live in an abundant Universe and that Source is always providing for us?

Often at Thanksgiving my mom would tell this story. One year back in the early 60’s, my parents couldn’t afford to buy a turkey for dinner. They bought a 39-cent chicken, stuffed and roasted it. My brother thought it was the best dinner ever. They were grateful.

A thanksgiving memory I hold happened back in the mid 80’s. I had bought a turkey, my mom bought a turkey, and my grandmother won a turkey. We had 3 turkeys to cook that year. Thanksgiving morning, we all woke up and no one felt like cooking a turkey. My mom suggested we go out to dinner at a restaurant my grandmother used to own. They were open and serving a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. We were thankful. The next day we cooked turkeys.

“Thanksgiving is a grateful recognition of past benefits and the activator of blessings yet to come. Thankfulness stimulates a continuous flow of blessings. If, in your life, there is a paucity of blessings, it may be that your practice of thankfulness has grown weak and inactive. The attitude of gratitude is important in achieving wholeness in life. Only by enumerating the many blessings bestowed upon us can we fully appreciate the generous bounty of God.“

— Norman Vincent Peale

With appreciation & gratitude to you, Happy Thanksgiving.

Madeline Pallanes

2022 CSLT Calendars are Here!

My opportunities are unlimited. There is a Divine Urge to express. It permeates me and fills all of me. All of my affairs are in Its hands. To It are clearly visible the best ways, methods and means for my greater expression. I leave my affairs in the hands of this Principle, and I cooperate with it.

Today the possibilities of my experience are unlimited. Spirit flows through me, inspiring me and sustaining that inspiration. I have the ability and talent and I am busy using them. This talent is Divinely sustained and marketed under a Universal plan of right action.
Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind 304.6 – 305.2

The CSLT calendar for 2022 is ready. Thank you to the following people for contributing their creativity through art, ideas, photographs, and words: Cheri Anderson, Carolyn King, Ethel Lee- Miller, Mariann Moery, Gregg Molzon, Madeline Pallanes, Susan Seid, and Beryl Varno, (as well as all the congregants who sent pictures of their pets!)

The calendars are $15 and there are a few ways to order:

  • Online through PayPal. Go to https://www.tucsoncsl.org/donate, and in the “donationcategory” type “calendar”.
  • Send a check to CSLT office: 911 S. Craycroft Road, Tucson, AZ 85711
  • Through Zelle, send funds to admin@tucsoncsl.org.

If you have been one of our major donors in the past 12 months, you will receive one in the USPS mail, with immense gratitude from your Board of Trustees.

Life opens to me – rich, full, abundant. My thought, which is the key to life, opens all doors to me. I am one with Infinity, Divinity. I realize this unity. I proceed on my way as one who knows that God goes with me into an eternal day of infinite privilege. I have only to open the portals of my soul and accept that which is ready to express through me. Today I fling these portals wide; Today I am the instrument through which life flows. Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind 304.6

Each person is a unique expression of Divine Mind. Using our time and energy to create is a gift to ourselves and others, and an expression of gratitude for our individual lives.

–Maria

Sometimes, Finding Gratitude Takes Work

I learned this week that another CSL minister friend has decided to retire. That makes five new thought ministers that I know of (and my universe of ministers is not that large) who have decided to retire, or just quit, in about the same number of months. The Great Resignation is alive and well among clergy, too. To be sure, most of their decisions are not entirely pandemic related. And… during these last 20 months of uncertainty and rising discontent, the job of being a minister has been even more challenging than usual.

It does seem harder to find gratitude when things don’t work out the way we want them to. I mean, after all, doesn’t the Science of Mind teach we can have what we want? No, actually, it doesn’t. It teaches we can experience what we are willing to become. There’s a big, and important, difference.

Holmes wrote in The 1926 Science of Mind 154-155, “Everyone automatically attracts to themselves just what they are, and you may set it down that, wherever you are, however intolerable the situation may be, it is just where you belong. There is no power in the Universe but yourself that can get you out of it. Someone may help you on the road to realization, but substantiality and permanence can come only through the consciousness of your own life and thought. Each must bring themselves to the point where there is no misfortune, no calamity, no accident, no trouble, no confusion; where there is nothing but plenty, peace, power, Life and Truth. They should definitely, daily, using their own name, declare the truth about themselves, realizing that as they reflect their statements into Consciousness, they will be operated upon by It.”

If I look out at the world in front of my eyes (some would call this the ‘real world’, I don’t), and see things I don’t like, what are my choices, really? I can criticize, demean, demand, distain, disrespect, destroy, etc … what I’m looking at, or I can decide that I must not see the whole picture, and I can choose to see the same situation with ‘God eyes’, remembering that, somehow, what I’m experiencing is for my continued awakening.

Freed Roman slave Epictetus was quoted as saying, “It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance, and a sense of gratitude. Without gratitude, what is the point of seeing, and without seeing, what is the object of gratitude?”

Do we ever have a ‘complete view of what has actually happened in each instance’, really?

What are the gifts that I perceive, and receive, from my friends who have decided that continuing to serve as ministers doesn’t support their continued wellbeing? How can I find gratitude for their decisions? First, I get to look at why their decisions unsettle or disturb me. Then I get to look at how their decisions inform and influence me.

I’ll look at the unsettling aspect first. These last 20 months have been the hardest, most unpleasant, work I’ve ever done, and we’re not yet done with this pandemic experience. I have felt the urge to just run away. A friend told me just this past week that if she were in my position, she’d already have been ‘outta here’. However, to quote Jack Kornfield, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ Leaving doesn’t actually solve the issue.

What’s the gift in the situation? Where’s the pony in the barn full of manure? How can I change my mind about these present circumstances and find gratitude? Holmes gives us clues in The Science of Mind 411.3, “We can sit in the shade, or move into the sunshine. Sitting in the shadow, we may not really believe that there is any sunshine. But the sun would be there all the time. All the time we are in bondage, real freedom exists. It is there, but we must awake to it. The Law of Mind as quickly creates one form as another for us, and we must allow the patterns of our thought to become molded from the highest sense of Reality we possess.”

I find gratitude when I remember what I’ve learned from my friends who have retired or quit, that I’ve chosen to do this work, and have decided that walking away right now doesn’t serve who I’ve come here to be. I discover a deeper level of gratitude when I realize I’m more guided, stronger and more resourceful than I ever knew I was. I also gratefully recognize that I’m continuously supported in so many ways, because the Divine lives and expresses in, as and through me, and in, as and through everyone I come into contact with.

Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow… if you will keep digging.”

Where do you find gratitude for stuff that seems hard, unpleasant or distasteful in your life?

–Rev Janis Farmer

Tucson’s All Souls Procession

If you are new to Tucson, you may be wondering what’s up with all the skulls and skeletons (many brightly decorated) still around town. Did people forget to take down their Halloween decorations? And why are so many still constructing skeletal costumes? The calaveras (sugar skulls) and calacas (skeletons) are traditional symbols of the Mexican celebration of Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. They represent loved ones who have passed on. They are also heavily represented in Tucson’s All Souls Procession.

Grieving the loss of her father, Susan Johnson sought a way to gather with others in a similar situation to “remember together”. In 1990, she and several of her artist friends got together and the first All Souls Procession made its way through downtown Tucson. Starting with a few hundred that first year, the celebration has drawn over 150,000 participants and spectators in years past.

I have been part of this crowd several times, particularly in years when I had lost a loved one. While I have not walked the parade route, I have painted my face and included symbols to represent those whose lives I was remembering. I have laughed and cried while watching the individuals and groups march down the street. It has been very moving and cathartic to know that I was certainly not alone in my process.

The most significant part of the procession each time I have participated has been the Burning of the Urn. A very large steel urn leads the procession. Throughout the parade, attendants will distribute and collect strips of paper on which you can write a prayer or message to your deceased loved one. At the finale, the urn is set on fire. Watching the energy of the messages turn into fuel for the fire has always brought a great sense of release for me.

This year’s procession will begin at 6pm on Sunday, November 7. Visit their website for more info All Souls Procession – Remembering together. If you are not able to attend in person, you can participate virtually through a livestream All Souls Procession 2021 Livestream – All Souls Procession. You can submit your message to be included in the urn through their website Restoration of Care and Burning of The Urn Ceremony – All Souls Procession. You can watch previous years’ processions Videos – All Souls Procession.

–Janet Salese

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