Category: connection

Livingness and More Light

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As we *stroll* into this season of light, maybe we are joyfully sprinting into the season, and maybe we are dragging our feet. Regardless, the season of light is upon us again. What those words mean for each of us is unique to each of us. There are some things that I know as universally true.

What I know:
There are as many ways to express and experience light and livingness as there are individuals. Perhaps even more ways than that. At times, two or more contradictory opinions wrestle for first position in my mind, and I am sure this also happens for others. That recognition does not diminish the fact that I live, and each one of us lives, as the Divine Essence at every moment, at our own personal level of awareness and understanding in this moment.

It’s OK to be completely satisfied with our lives exactly as they are. In fact, if we don’t accept what is, it is hard to move forward, but that’s a different conversation. It’s also OK to want to learn and grow. It’s even OK to be asleep on purpose. (That one is a hard one for me personally to grasp, but it is still OK.) There’s no big-mean-daddy-god-in-the-sky judging us for our choices and punishing us by sending us to our room without supper for misbehaving. There’s not really even any misbehaving, we simply make choices and experience the consequences of our choices. It’s also OK to not know, or not believe, that we can choose a different life than we have. It’s personally sad to me, but it’s OK.

Two of the statements Ernest Holmes made in the Declaration of Principles: We believe in the eternal Goodness, the eternal Loving-kindness and the eternal Givingness of Life to all. We believe in our own soul, our own spirit and our own destiny; for we understand that the life of all is God.

Master Teacher Jesus is quoted as saying, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) Religious Science doesn’t interpret this to say that we depend on the individual personage of Jesus to give us this life, since the gift of our divine sonships and daughterships has already been given, but that he showed us, by his example, how to live an abundant life. What example did he give us to emulate? Love. Blessing. Kindness. Compassion. Inclusion. Acceptance. Appreciation of the All Good in every moment. Joy. Celebration. Generosity. Presence. Poise. Power to become. Peace.

Two additional statements Holmes made in the Declaration of Principles: We believe that heaven is within us, and that we experience it as we become conscious of it. We believe the ultimate goal of life to be a complete freedom from discord of every nature, and that this goal is sure to be attained by all.

Heaven is within us already, and we have the delicious and delightful opportunity to become aware of this gift of life and light, unwrap the beautiful package, and explore the contents. If I believe I am trapped by any condition or circumstance, then I am not able to experience heaven now. Even if I can’t see a way out, I can feel comforted in knowing that at some point in time I will attain this goal of complete freedom. The gift has already been given. I get to receive it, and I get to decide how I want to experience and express it.

Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, Wanderer, your footprints are the path, and nothing else; wanderer, there is no path, the path is made by walking. Walking makes the path…

We get to walk our own paths, following them wherever they lead. I think it is more fun to do it in the company of our beloved community. That’s a personal choice we each get to make, too. Blessings to you.

— Rev Janis Farmer

In The Tree of Life, Everything is Interrelated

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Last weekend, it was my turn to write the lead newsletter article, and for a double handful of ‘reasons’, Monday rolled around, and I hadn’t had the time or the available brainpower to create something. I wasn’t terribly happy about that, and it was the situation I found myself in. So when Marya Wheeler, who thought it was her turn to write, popped up in my e-mails with an article, I was absolutely thrilled. Obviously, we ran her article, and I gratefully breathed a sigh of relief. If you missed last week’s newsletter for any reason, and you want to read Marya’s article, Maria Schuchardt has already posted it on the blog on the website. If you haven’t seen our new website, please take a look. Mariann Moery worked extensively with our webmaster Graeme Hunt on it. The results are quite pleasing and inviting… and there’s always more that can be done, and will be done, eventually.

There are two related ideas that I’m going to meander around today. One, everything is interconnected, and two, the connections may not be visible unless you know where and how to look. This is not a unique feature of human civilization, but is actually implicit in all biological organisms, including us.

I’m going to geek out as a scientist for a minute. This image from Nature (Microbiology), published in 2016 shows a new phylogenetic tree, which visually represents the relatedness of all identified life forms on earth. Almost everything we tend to identify as ‘alive’ (plants, animals, fungi, even one-celled protists… every organism with defined nuclei and defined organelles) can be found in the pale green spiky bit at the bottom right corner. Most of the rest of the diagram, most of the rest of life on earth, is made up of simpler life forms without such internal structural definition.

So everything is automatically, inherently connected, because we all come from the same stuff, and are made of the same stuff. Another website showed the percentages of genes that humans share with each other (99.9+%) and with other life forms (chimps, 98%, mice, 92%, fruit flies, 44%, yeast, 26% and a weedy plant, about 18%). (Source: Koshland Science Museum).

Ok, I’m done being a science geek. So what? This week, I realized I had been thinking about a couple people that I hadn’t seen in a while, and they showed up at Sunday services. Who called who? I dunno. Doesn’t matter. Ernest Holmes wrote in The Science of Mind 77.2-3 “It is almost certain that between friends there is at all times a silent communication, a sort of unconscious mental conversation, going on.” No doubt, you’ve had the same thing happen for you. Friends you haven’t heard from in ages suddenly call, or write, and the first words that are said are something like, “I was just thinking about you!” What is that? Nothing more or less than the completely natural, profound and deep (unconscious) mental connection that always exists.

So why do I bring this up today? Some folks feel disturbed that Sunday attendance isn’t “what we think it should be.” Personally, I would love to see more people gathering on Sundays, because I acknowledge the intrinsic value gained by being regularly present in spiritual community. I also remember we are profoundly connected anyway, all the time. When someone chooses to intentionally gather, not out of duty or obligation, they express an intentional, personal decision to participate, engage and belong. I love that even more.

— Rev Janis Farmer

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