Constant Change is Here to Stay

No man steps in the same river twice – Heraclitus

You Can’t Go Home Again– Thomas Wolfe

Many years ago, I did this exercise at a retreat in Ojai in which I described in detail a place I wanted to live.  It had four distinct seasons, lots of trees, few neighbors, and lots of space for a garden and animals.  I came across this description when I was cleaning out a file a few years ago, and realized I had described my house in Pine Top perfectly.  I was stunned when I reread the descriptions.  No wonder I’m finding it difficult to sell this house, even though I feel complete about my life in Pine Top.  It still fits a vision I once held of where I wanted to live.

So, now what?  How do I change my vision of my perfect house to match my present ‘reality’?  I feel relief when I remember that the most frequently used phrase in the Bible is, “And it came to pass,” not “It came to stay.”  Right here, right now, never stays the same. Life moves on.

Sometimes change is welcome.  Those brand new babies we bring home change almost before our eyes.  In only one year many are pulling up, walking, recognizing people, beginning to feed themselves, and letting us know what they want or don’t want.

Other times change is unwelcome — like the loss of a job or a house, the loss of a relationship through death or divorce. When change seems hard, I can choose to remember I am being presented with a growth opportunity.  Albert Einstein said, “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” The greater the difficulty, the greater the opportunity.

I can choose to remember that I am never a victim of the seeming whims of the Universe.  I can create the changes I desire in my life by being very specific about what I wish.  “Change your thinking, change your life” is not an empty platitude, but a statement of power and truth.

I can describe in glorious detail what I actually desire.  Then I can answer the hardest questions of all, “What do I need to let go of to have this? What will I feel like when this happens? And what else? And what else?”  When I have gotten clarity, I have moved mountains.

I have had marvelous success creating treasure maps using pictures, and words representing things or situations I want to create in my life.  I made one a few years ago, which had, among other things, pictures of two grand pianos.  What a lovely surprise several months later when we moved the second piano into my living room to store for our congregation until we discovered our own home for it.

I can create a very personal experience of the change I claim.  Emerson wrote, “Man surrounds himself with his own image.” I can ensure my new mental and physical space reflects my newly-reawakened sense of abundance, well-being, and order. My new space gives me room to stretch and breathe.

And I can be grateful for what I already have.  Eric Butterworth reminded us how lucky we are to have bills.  They represent the trust our creditors have in us.  It is never the situation, but how I choose to see it that continues to be the important.

I think it essential that I choose to unfurl my symbolic sails so that I can make use of the winds of change.  When I choose this, I come out on the other side healthier, stronger, more flexible, more abundant, and especially more confident in my ability to make good choices for myself.

Since I know it works for me, I know it works for you, too.

–Pat Masters

Only One Life, My Life Now

I find the philosophy of Ernest Holmes invaluable in the ways it supports my growth. Each week Rev Janis’ Reminders provide insights into how I can be mindful of my own thoughts and beliefs and more fully embody my Good. Certainly, the theme of Creating Anew for April was perfect for me. My new life as a retiree has presented me with the necessity of creating my self and my lifestyle anew.

Between the Sunday Reminders and the study of Victor Shamas’ book, Deep Creativity, I was gifted with a wealth of tools for creation. One of the topics of the month concerned transcendence, which in my definition means restructuring my worldview and beliefs, escaping even my previous self-identity and acting outside of my comfort zone to create a reality of Oneness. Last week Rev Janis mentioned that creating anew often involves “doing different things and doing other things differently”. These concepts helped me reorient myself in my own lifestyle.

On the first Monday of my retirement, I did something very different from my old routine. I went out into the desert under the sun and sky and just meditated. I experienced a beautiful moment of connection and transcendence of my own little ego. I relished each day afterward with gratitude. But as days passed, it also became glaringly apparent to me how neglectful I had been of self-care while trying to maintain a professional career. I saw so many things in my life that I wanted to change I immediately created a lengthy ‘To Do’ list.

Then, near the end of April, I stopped waking up each morning feeling giddy and grateful and began to feel restless. I could not identify what was bothering me, so I sat and simply noticed my thoughts as they arose. Eventually, it became clear to me that, while I had acknowledged the opportunity for a new lifestyle, I had unwittingly dragged into it my old competitive, results-oriented mindset and self-judgments that made my ‘To Do’ list a contest. I was behaving as if I still needed to win, just as if I were still in the courtroom. I had fallen prey to default thinking and was doing new things in the same old way, bringing a toxic attitude to my wonderful new freedom.

This is where my study and practice of Science of Mind came to my aid because I paid attention to my default conditioned thinking.  I reminded myself of the Truth that there is Only One Life – perfect, whole and complete – and remembered my primary mission as a practitioner to “practice the Presence” and embody that Life by BEING. I reminded myself that I have nothing to fight and nothing to prove. Seeing the All in all meant there was nothing to win. I again fell in love with the sky, the sun, the circling hawks and knew the Oneness of all life.

Embodying Spirit, to me, means being love. Now I have every minute of every day to see the Beauty and Perfection of Life and to love it all, starting with myself. Each experience of transcendence transforms everything I ultimately do and I know myself blessed. And So It Is.

By Leah Hamilton, RScP

For The Love of Tulips

“The mold of acceptance is the measure of our experience.  The Infinite fills all molds and forever flows into new and greater ones.  Within us is the unborn possibility of limitless experience.  Ours is the privilege of giving birth to it!”

The Science of Mind, Ernest Holmes, p.161.4

 

The first place I ever owned was in Seattle, a very small (402 sq. ft.) sweet condominium.  There was a common entry, then an elevator to my floor and a dozen doors leading into private units.  I loved my little home with a view of the Ship Canal and fishing boats.

 

Down the hall lived a quirky, bubbly woman whom I had met in an AA meeting then realized we were neighbors.  She was a light-filled, funny, adorable lawyer who saw the world as being one big amazing and exciting place.  I can’t picture her without her big, toothy grin.  I was used to her oddities, but she did one thing that I could never understand… she bought herself a big bouquet of fresh flowers every week.  Every week!  This action made no sense to me; the colorful foliage would begin to sag in a few days and then just die.  Right there on her table.  I saw this as an illogical use of money.  Why would anyone do that?  Why not buy a new cassette tape (this was 1993) or put the money in savings?  Something that would last, would count?  I even asked her about it and she said the flowers simply made her happy.  I didn’t get it.

 

Then two days ago, I was at Costco and saw the loveliest tulips I had ever seen in my whole life.  Giddiness washed through me and I effervesced all over everyone around me as I chose my favorite bouquet.  I felt so happy, like I had just witnessed magic happen!  In holding onto those perfect, beautiful, unnecessary tulips, I felt like I had a sweet spirit inside of me, a ‘daughter’ who never got to enjoy being a child, and she wanted the pretty tulips.  She wanted me to have them for Mother’s Day.

 

As I bounced up to the cashier, tulips lovingly embraced and a big, toothy grin on my face, I realized this would be the first Mother’s Day where I wouldn’t sit around in self-loathing for not being the daughter I thought I should’ve been for my mother.  In writing this, I have tears in my eyes, because it has become clear to me that I have finally forgiven myself my past.  I have moved from self-hatred, shame and rejection of my good to self-acceptance, appreciation and self-love.  I was exactly who I was meant to be, then, as now.  Truth.

 

I have had a change in consciousness that now allows me to see beauty, to love freely, toletbeauty and love into my life and to allow the flow of God, of grace, of wonder, of all things magnificent come through me and to me.   My only job is to stay the heck out of my own way and keep saying, “yes!”  Yes, yes, yes!!

 

Oh!  I am so grateful, so happy…

 

“Expose yourself to the success of learning and growing.  Take a step forward right now, even if you don’t have the right shoes on.  Stop thinking about it and shrinking inside.  Your gifts are real.  Your love is real.  The wildflowers sing to you from the hillside.  Everything you do will strengthen you.  You cannot fail by moving forward.  You will get to where you need to go.”

Inspired and Unstoppable, Tama Kieves, p. 69

By Renee’ Mezzone

The Center

The other Sunday I was driving to Sunday Services and I passed a new building in a medical complex. The name of the building was “The Center”.  Then yesterday, I was driving down Pima in Tucson and saw another new sign on a building.  It also was called, simply, “The Center”.  Why am I seeing this now?

I was reminded of a story I’d heard about an idea that had been held by a Board President long before I came to CSL Tucson.  He thought we should rebrand ourselves as The Center, a clever triple play on words.  The Center where people learn about their own divine center (or nature), the central hub where people come together to experience the joy and aliveness of life in community, and the quote from Ernest Holmes describing the Infinite (The Science of Mind 330.2-3), “The Infinite is, therefore indivisible and consequently a Perfect Unit… That Whose Center is everywhere and Whose Circumference is nowhere.  All of It is present at any and every point within Itself.  It is not approaching a point, nor receding from it, but it is always at the point.  The whole of God is present at any and every point within God.  It was to this Indwelling Spirit that Jesus prayed, for God is within man as well as throughout all creation.”

This notion that each of us already is a center of divinity can sometimes feel like a tough pill to swallow, because we tend to think of ourselves as less than perfect expressions of the Divine.  But what if we are not “less than”?  What if we actually live, move and have our being as the perfect expression of Divinity Itself, as we understand it?  Our beliefs about ourselves, and how our world works, color our life experience to such an extent that we have to have a limited experience, because we have limiting beliefs.

The facilitators and I are working through the curriculum for the exciting upcoming home group book study of Eric Butterworth’s Spiritual Economics.  I forgot how splendidly lovely this material is, until I cracked the book open again and re-read it.  Butterworth is consistently very clear.  On p. 23 he wrote, “Claim your entitlement. I am a child of the Universe, richly endowed with the fullness of the All Good.”  He continues on the same page, “You are an expression of the infinite creative flow, entitled to as constant a support as the lilies of the field.   You see, the basis of entitlement is the startling assertion: The Universe owes you a living!  Yes, we are saying owes you a living.  Note: We are not saying the world owes you a living.  Actually, the world owes you nothing.  You are a creative expression of the Universe, with the responsibility to let your light shine.  Thus you owe the world a life.”

Oh, there’s the rub. We have all the support of the Universe standing with us, in us, and as us, and we have the responsibility to own that authority and act/live/move from that place.  So yes, we already are the center of our own wheel, the individualized hub of our own interactions and life expression, and we choose from our point of view.

And yet, I am encouraged by Butterworth’s words, because he gives us a roadmap that we can choose to use to guide us on this path.  On p. 19 he wrote, “A person who keeps conscious that the divine flow is ever centered (there’s that word again… centered) within one, has faith that limitless substance will find expression through him or her in the form of creative ideas, ingenuity, the will to work, and a security of work opportunities.  It could be said that when you realize your relationship to the dynamic Universe, you are forever in a field where you can drill for oil and bring in a gusher every time.”

Every time.  I totally like those odds.  Pick a host home location that works for you and join us in this awesome city-wide Spiritual Economics home group book study that starts next week, won’t you?

By Rev Janis Farmer

Visiting Washington DC

A week ago, I was in the middle of an incredible visit to Washington D.C.  Having never been there, I had high expectations about what I would be seeing.  I had no idea that these expectations were miniscule in comparison to what I actually would experience.  My trip to the various monuments and memorial sites were such a shot in the arm, boosting both my pride in our country and admiration at the skill with which our Founding Fathers created this great nation of ours.  The Grand Experiment indeed!

For the past several years I have grown quite weary of the pervasive negative attitudes that permeate our national discourse.  As a former teacher and therapist, I thought I should be an “informed citizen,” taking that role very seriously.  I developed an anxiety that, at first, I could not identify.   I felt I was being bombarded by negativity coming at me from all directions, left and right, up and down. When I realized the cause of the angst, I made a conscious choice to stop watching news.  I also posted a sign on my front door:  “You are entering a politics-free zone.”    I took a vacation from news!!!  (I also knew that if there were some monumentally important events I needed to know about, someone would call and let me know.)

As I stood at the base of the Lincoln Memorial and studied the expression on his very familiar face, I was struck both by the look of strength and compassion it exhibited.  I read the powerful words excerpted from various writings, and was moved to surprising tears.  All of the pictures I had seen of this very familiar icon of American history did not prepare me for the power of the actual memorial.  I felt both humble to be in this place, and proud that our country had such a giant as a loving, competent leader.

That was the first of many surprising reactions to familiar words from familiar, diverse Americans. After three days, I saw the pattern of language that at first eluded me:  Jefferson, Lincoln, F.D.R. (Roosevelt), Martin Luther King, J.F.K. (Kennedy), and so many others used the same language as Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ernest Holmes.  It is a language of positivity: love, accept, encourage, inspire, embrace, move forward, learn, find a way, succeed.

My daughter-in-law told me she wants to organize a compulsive field trip for all persons holding office in government.  She believes that if they will stand in these places of honor and respect, and ponder the words of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, and so many others, they will remember that they are about the business of the people, and not the various special interest groups. She is sure this could heal the political chasm that so permeates Washington politics today.   We become the change we wish to see.

I visited the Pentagon, the National Library, the National Cathedral, the many monuments, museums, and memorials; and of course, the iconic cherry blossoms, just days short of their peak explosion of color.  As we walked beneath them, I appreciated how Mother Nature and Man conspired together to create this awesome tableau.

Home now, I feel reinvigorated by my experience, confident that we are a great nation based on sound principles.  As a (still) young nation, we learnas we go.  As Abraham Lincoln said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”  I choose to remember my kinship with all my fellow Americans … and all citizens of the world.  Will you join me?

by Pat Masters

Happy isn’t just a song by Pharrell Williams

Yesterday I caught myself sabotaging my joy and declining the very happiness that has eluded me in the past.  The good news? – I caught myself and changed my mind.  Here’s how I busted myself:

Before church started yesterday morning, I was in the lobby and a woman who is very dear to me walked in.  She is in Tucson only four months out of the year and I hadn’t had a conversation with her all season, so we hugged, and she asked me if I was available for lunch after the service. I said I really shouldn’t as I had a newsletter article due and I didn’t even have a topic yet, so I needed to go home and write it.  What?  I couldn’t make time for lunch with this beautiful, kind, insightful, loving person whom I hadn’t seen in months?

Mind you, I am in Foundations (for the third time) to go deeper.  When old ways of thinking and doing have become so ingrained that I don’t seem to be able to find my way out, I do something about it – eventually.  My presence in Foundations class is the result of becoming sick and tired of feeling periodically depressed, going into isolation and despair, and never feeling truly happy.  When class began, we were asked to set a goal, something that we saw no way of attaining, and to begin spiritual mind treatment for it.   I boldly declared, “I want to experience happiness.”

So, after I said ‘no’ to my friend, I sat down to listen to the warmth and wisdom of Rev. Janis.  From Ernest Holmes book, It’s Up to Youshe shared a list of ten points for living life.  One of these made me gasp: ‘Learn to forgive myself and others for real’.  I had a huge ‘aha’ moment, realizing how much I let guilt and shame from my past sabotage my happiness, because though I have forgiven others, I had not yet forgiven myself.  I also realized how much I operate on the system of punishment and reward; i.e., I can’t have fun with my friend because I haven’t written my paper.  Seriously?  I wasn’t even disciplined as a child, so why have I become so hard on myself as an adult?  The answer is guilt, shame, and lack of self-forgiveness.

Ernest Holmes defines freedom thus: “To live in a space without guilt, shame and blame.”  If I truly want to be happy, it is time to forgive myself for real.  I thought I had, and to some degree, I’m sure that’s true.  But my life doesn’t look like I want it to, and for that, ONLY I am responsible.  And I know of only one way to change it – change my consciousness, because that’s where Cause lives.  My task is to be willing to change, and this isn’t something that just happens to me because I want it to.  It is mine to show up, remain teachable, tell the truth to, about and on myself, and be willing to give my attention to faith rather than to fear.

“Just keep right on knocking on the door of your consciousness until every ‘no’ becomes a ‘yes’, every negation an affirmation, every fear a faith.  You cannot fail if you remain steadfast.”

… and

“The only thing that can hinder you is yourself.  The only thing that can help you is yourself. Because it is you who reflects the image in the mirror.” — Ernest Holmes from This Thing Called You, pg. 45 and 46

Freedom lives in my consciousness, and I call freedom Heaven.  So I’m going to keep on knocking on Heaven’s door…

by Renee’ Mezzone

Ride That Pony!

I remember learning in Foundations class that everything that happens in our lives is ultimately for our good. I think it was phrased like “when the brown stuff starts to pile up around you look for the pony”. I have had ample opportunity to work with this aphorism of late. Upon my 30-year anniversary at my job I received the shocking and unsubtle hint that it was time to leave. I began the stumbling transition into retirement.

At first, I confess I saw this situation as a pile of poo and I was mighty angry about it. All the conditioning from subjective mind rushed into my brain telling me I was now obsolete, powerless, likely to become a bag lady, and get sick and die if I retired. Whoa, I had to rein in that thinking! As a metaphysician I know I get to choose my thoughts and my story and I really did not want to be a victim.

Not long ago, near the end of my practitioner training, I had a meditation in which I saw myself climb out of a dumpster. I knew it meant I was leaving behind my small life of limitation based on old beliefs. At that same time, I found myself chafing more and more at the constant battling in my legal job in which the goal is to “win”. I knew I had outgrown that paradigm and I started wishing I could do something different. As Reverend Janis pointed out a few weeks ago, the Law acts to manifest what we really want and believe more than what we think on the surface. Did the Universe just give me what I secretly wanted?

As I ponder my future, I understand my situation in a new way. I have found that pony in my situation of retirement! I have been gifted a new vista of opportunity. I get to choose how to spend my time! I am not being stripped of identity, power or purpose. I know my identity: I am a unique expression of Spirit! I know my power does not lie in the trials won, the committees chaired or the legal knowledge in my head. My true power is always in BEING my authentic divine Self and my true purpose is bringing my light to the world. I know I am always supported by Spirit. There is no way I will be a bag lady!

I like to remind myself of this quote by Ernest Holmes, “When we learn to trust the Universe, we shall be happy, prosperous and well.” I am going to ride that pony on my new path. I think I will celebrate by adopting a new name!

–Leah Hamilton (for now)

Connections

I drove home a new way on Sunday after services and noticed the bright blue sign of a Napa Auto Parts Store. It was the first one I actually remember seeing in Tucson. Part of me doubted that it could possibly be the only one, so I googled it to see how many there are in town. One. There’s only one. Huh.

The reason it caught my eye, I think, is because my mom worked in one for nearly a decade while my brother attended the lower grades of public school. She was of the generation who fiercely believed that moms needed to be home when their kids got home from school, so she wanted a part-time job where she could do that. I never could figure out how my mom worked in an auto parts store, since her interest in car parts was negligible.   Honestly, it was non-existent.

As I pondered this, driving across town, what came to me was an awareness of what her expertise actually was. She was the undeniably, unstoppably, irreplaceably queen of customer service. People mattered to her. After my brother was old enough to drive himself home from football practice, my mom got a job working full-time at the photo lab on the airbase near where they lived. She served as the film librarian; her primary job was to interact with the customers and make sure they got exactly the service or the product they needed. People would stop by her desk all the time for hugs, and to take a piece of candy out of the candy dish on the corner of her desk that was always full. She kept that job for the next 40+ years and was still happily working when she became terminally ill; she could not imagine not being there to take care of ‘her people’.

I retired from my technical career at 52. She and I would often talk about how odd it was that her daughter retired before she did. I kept telling her that it was really obvious to me when it was time for me to stop working (at that job) and that she would know when it was time, and to retire any sooner would be silly. That seemed to satisfy her, mostly. There were times that she wished she could be a retired grandma and do the craft activities, the outings, or the book studies, with the old, retired ladies. When it got right down to it, she didn’t believe that she would feel as vital and alive if she didn’t have to answer to an alarm clock 5 days a week. So she kept doing what she loved – connecting with people.

There’s something about pleasant human interactions that adds brightness and liveliness to our days. Social scientists say we need a certain number of hugs each day to be emotionally healthy – four at a minimum. When I was working on last Wednesday night’s class on Mysticism, I was reminded that the need to connect with others is a basic human survival need. On Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it ranks just slightly above the need to feel safe, and just below the need to feel respected or esteemed.

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.” — James Baldwin

When I first saw this quote by James Baldwin, I thought of it as a negative commentary, but the more that I pondered the lifestyle that my mom chose, this idea remained quite valid and uplifting. She was the undisputed queen of making people feel important, no matter who, and no matter what. Even on Sundays and with the youth ministry at church, she was the first of the women to be given a plaque that read, “Mother of Our Youth”. I always thought the plaque was a little disconcerting, but it recognized the identity she had created for herself, and how she wanted to be seen in her world.

It seems I picked up just a smidge of that connecting mindset myself. I’m OK with that.

— Rev Janis

Birth of the Light

Today I had the experience of awakening suddenly to the faint light of predawn in my room. My alarm had not rung but I was wide awake. Panic set in. What day was it? What time was it? Why didn’t the alarm ring? What was I supposed to be doing? Going to work? Attending Saturday court? Taking up Board or practitioner duties at CSLT? Just then the alarm rang, and I finally tumbled to the conclusion that it was Sunday and I was going to CSLT. My new day, however, was already marred by anxiety over things I needed to accomplish.

This is the season of the winter solstice, the rebirth of the sun. I considered the anxiety my forebears felt during the long winter nights wondering if they had preserved enough food, so the elders and children would survive until spring. The return of the sun at solstice was, for them, a literal celebration of life. In my life I may not depend literally upon the sun for my survival, but I asked whether I was celebrating my life day by day. Was I living from my core or was I simply “doing”?

With divine synchronicity, Rev. Janis’ reminder talk addressed this very topic. She spoke about how we can accept our own magnificence, acknowledge our light and find our own unique way of shining that light. Thinking back to my experience of the morning, I realized that I spend a lot of time stressing about things I should be doing and not a lot about just being present for my life. The things I stress about are not even necessarily things I chose for myself. Many times they are “shoulds” I inherited from other people and from that nasty bullying voice in my head that is always ready to berate me.

In her talk, Rev Janis asked, “how do we become self-aware?” How do we find our unique light and expression apart from the “shoulds”? She said the answer would be different for everyone. As I sat with the idea I realized the answer, for me, was self-love. I am very skilled at bullying myself about what I should be doing. I hide the ball from myself about what I want. I build defenses. In so doing, I shutter my own light. In a moment of radical acceptance, I broke open to my own lack of self-love. I saw a way to live more authentically.

My authentic Self wants to express It’s unique light. With a self-loving intention, I can be my own friend, be on my own side and tell the bullying voice in my head to shut up. Being there for myself I can discover who I am at my core and exercise sovereignty in my own life. I can be honest about what I want.

As a Practitioner, I already see the light in others with love. For these last long nights of winter, I am doing the same for myself. I hold my own hand, drop my barriers and defenses and walk open and unafraid into the light, my own and the light of the reborn sun.

— Leah Hamilton, RScP

Interconnected

Seldom am I truly surprised. That’s not quite true. I wasn’t truly surprised on Wednesday night with Victor Shamas’ class on Deep Creativity.   In fact, I was totally delighted and thrilled that he had come to the same understanding of the unity of all things, the Oneness of It All, from a completely different (academic!) perspective and point-of-view. As I was sitting in the back of the room, watching his presentation, I kept nodding and smiling at his conclusions. The words he used were different, but he was speaking Science of Mind without knowing it. That awareness thrills me, because it reinforces the idea that there is only one originator, or Source, a.k.a. Divine Mind, with billions of individualized expressions. In his language, there is only one aquifer and we each, whether we are fortunate enough to know it or not, are individual wells tapping into that great aquifer. I love that. I’ll probably use it one of these days.

I was talking with my acupuncturist late last week about something that she and her business partner had noticed with their acupuncture business. When she gets complacent about the business, it just trundles along like it is running on autopilot. It certainly doesn’t grow. It’s adequate, but not stunning, or stellar. But when she ‘wakes up’ (her words) and starts paying attention to the business, the phone starts ringing and people walk in off the streets wanting to see if acupuncture will help them. When she and her son are in the office together, and they are both attentive to the business, they can barely schedule in everyone who wants to come in for services. Her partner says he has noticed this pattern at least five times. At some intellectual level we know this is true, because this is the way the Law delivers on our intentions.

In The Science of Mind 37.2-3, Holmes wrote, “The Thing, then, works for us by working through us and is us, always. It cannot work for us in any other way. It spreads Itself over the whole universe and shouts at us from every angle, but It can become powerful to us ONLY WHEN WE RECOGNIZE IT AS POWER. (yes, he’s yelling). We cannot recognize that It is, while we are believing that It is not.”

When the Board spoke their personal covenant on November 26th, these were some of the things they affirmed:

  • I demonstrate my commitment through active involvement in the activities of the Center for Spiritual Living Tucson, and demonstrate, to the best of my ability, a spiritually principled lifestyle.
  • I regularly attend Center for Spiritual Living Tucson’s Sunday Celebrations, and its other activities and functions.
  • I warmly greet all who enter CSL Tucson’s doors.
  • I consistently and fully tithe my time, talent and treasure.
  • I attract new members to our congregation and encourage others to bring new people.
  • I regularly acknowledge the loving service of CSL Tucson’s staff and volunteers.
  • I actively engage in my own spiritual growth, take classes at CSL Tucson and do my spiritual practices.
  • I enthusiastically participate in, and encourage others in, voluntary service.

Since we are all connected at a level beyond our human understanding, what do you think would happen if everyone who chooses to be part of CSL Tucson decided to affirm even a few of these statements? This is not ‘my’ Center, nor is it your ‘Board’s’ Center, this Center belongs to every single individualized Divine Spark who chooses to walk through our doors and participate with us. Each of us is integral to the full functioning of this Center.   We’d hardly have enough space to accommodate the people clamoring to join with us each Sunday morning in the auditorium at The Gregory School, the Wednesday night classes would be overflowing, and the small groups would be buzzing with excitement and verve.

What shall we do with this All Power that lives as us, in and through us, All Together?   What should we do with this magnificent engine of All Good? I think we should do something wonderful, heart-expanding and amazing. How about we share this tremendous quality of life that we know as already ours?  You in?

— Rev Janis Farmer

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