inspiration – Page 10 – Center for Spiritual Living Tucson

The Way It Is

October 24, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

“Life is not the way it is supposed to be. It is the way it is.

The way we choose to cope with it, is what makes the difference.” –Anonymous

I went to Ojai, California, recently to attend a memorial service for a dear friend. I had not been there for almost two years, and was concerned about how much damage remained from the Thomas Forest Fire that raged there last winter. Although the damage was evident in both the town and the surrounding areas, I was very surprised and pleased to see green growth sprouting up from groves of trees blackened by the flames, and wildflowers blooming in the meadows. Many homes and outbuildings that had been ravaged by the fires were being rebuilt.

In Native American culture, forest fires are welcomed as a natural cleansing of the forest where they occur. In fact, fire is necessary to heat the pinecones that release the seeds that create the new trees. I watched from my house in PineTop as members of the White Mountain Apache tribe used controlled burns to keep the undergrowth cleaned out so both the trees and the animals that live on the reservation could thrive.

Most of us view fire as a destructive force. I watched the news coverage of the fire, and felt afraid for my family, friends and other residents, when they were required to evacuate. No one was sure what they would find when they were allowed to return. Some did lose their homes; most were lucky, as the firefighters fought successfully to save their property.

On my drive back to Tucson, I thought about the difference in attitudes about forest fires in general. I found myself thinking that while the fears were very real about the possibility of lives and property being lost in the record-breaking fire that lasted so long and covered so much acreage, long-term damage was small in comparison to what could have happened. Most deservedly, the firefighters were hailed as heroes.

While I was in Ojai, most of my friends were glued to their television sets to watch the Senate hearings to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. I like to figure out what I can learn in any situation that might help me in another. I saw the parallels between the massive fire last winter and the political climate we are in right now. I heard friends lamenting, “This is the worst time our country has ever experienced. We are so divided.” Part of the reason I believe this seems true is because we know instantly when anything happens anywhere in the world. In our 24-7 cable news world we are bombarded by facts, opinions, hidden and obvious biases, and blatantly inflammatory vitriol. (Mary Morrissey calls CNN Constantly Negative News.)

While some see very little good that can come from this heated interaction, I believe that this is a cleansing time for us a nation. I see individuals getting involved politically who had never been involved before. More people are registering to vote for the first time, paying attention to party platforms, and women and minorities are running for office in record numbers. I see a firestorm of political change, and I believe that is healthy for us as a nation.

— Pat Masters

Steps On The Journey

October 24, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

One of my all-time favorite Zen-based lessons goes as follows. Two monks must travel together from their monastery to a distant place which involves crossing a fast-running river. Upon arriving at the river, they discover a woman standing on the banks unable to cross on her own. One monk simply picks her up and carries her across, depositing her on the other side. All go their separate ways. That evening, when their rule of silence is released – the second monk attacks the first for “touching that woman.” The first monk replies – “I only carried her across the river, you’ve carried her all day.”

Oh my. How much time is spent carrying (if not nurturing) events, exchanges, actions that have no need to be remembered, much less retained, as emotional traumas? I know that I do it way too often. And, I know as well, that not only is it not good for me, it is truly bad for me.

Retaining, remembering, and hoarding those emotional upsets prevents me from being present to the actual Truth of Now. The actual being aware and awake to my life as it is. And let’s not even visit what neuroscientists say about how much easier it is for us to go to those bad, unhappy, defensive places. Even without our practicing and reinforcing the choosing of unhappy. We can of course blame those Neanderthal ancestors for constantly being concerned with food, fight, flight, sleep, and then leaving those emotions as primary in the genetic memory pool. But, I digress.

One of my preventative measures is to write every morning. It started a year ago as an “assignment” I gave myself from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. It has become a must-do practice that allows me to discover, and frequently release, events both old and current that have lodged themselves in my state of being. Astounding how some long-ago (seeming) rejection feeds a current self-doubt. How a goal not met in the past, defines how freely, and how high, I let myself aim today.

For me, letting the pen go across the page has produced descriptions of sh*t that I thought I had long ago forgotten let alone released. So why retrieve those memories?

Because I’ve learned I have a decades long habit of saying – this doesn’t matter, just let it go – when it really does matter. Or I go to — I won’t think about it – or worse yet I stuff it into a dark storage space and never let myself feel the Truth. Every time I hide something, I add a layer to the walls blocking my growth, preventing my learning what I need to know, and I keep myself from being aware and present to the different choices I can make now.

Every time I do acknowledge something, historical or current, that hampers my focus on what’s happening now, I recognize that acknowledgement as the first step to releasing it. Every time that release happens, I open space in my being to allow choosing the good. I create the space to grow the opportunities – the options – to become more.

Our thought does not go out to influence persons or things. What it does is readjust our own consciousness, our own thinking, to include a larger and a more harmonious field of action. We learn that when we get our own consciousness straightened out, things in our external world adjust themselves to meet our new and better inward awareness.” Ernest Holmes, Living the Science of Mind 204.3

We can only be in charge of ourselves, but we can be in charge if/when we choose to be so. Peace.

by Mariann Moery

At The Effect Of ….

September 6, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

I’m writing this the morning of the March 1st full moon, after being awake an unusual amount last night … and also the night before. Common hour thinking, also known as collective consciousness, default thinking, or race tendency to those of us who study and strive to live into the precepts of the Science of Mind philosophy, would have me claiming that I was feeling the effects of the moon that becomes completely full at 5:51 MST tonight. Part of me knows this is simply what-everybody-believes-and-not-the-Truth, and part of me sure does seem to believe that I am at the effect of this particular experience.

When I was driving home from the CSL Convention in Irvine CA last Friday, I had 8 hours of drive time. One of the things I thought about while I drove was the number of labels that we accept for ourselves, defining the truth of who we are. As we know, if we believe those ideas and labels, they show up as the truth for us. I’m also very aware of the impact of default thinking during the on-line “Contemporary Applications of the Science of Mind” class that started last week. We get to decide how we are going to see our world, every single day.

I mean honestly, does my Enneagram type (with wing sub-types), my astrological sign (including rising sign and moon sign), my life path number (according to numerology, and/or Dan Millman’s The Life You Were Born To Live), my Chinese horoscope … define who I am, really? Clearly they can suggest potential tendencies, and biases that I could opt into, if I were operating unconsciously, or chose to accept as part of who I think I am.

Even such things as readings with divination cards, coins, tea leaves or I-Ching sticks, which I do enjoy playing with, because they often show me what I am unconsciously thinking, do I take them as the definitive truth? Not if I’m paying attention to my life, and my own experience of Reality. There’s a story told about Yogananda studying astrology in an ashram in India who, frustrated by the whole process, goes up to the guru and erupts with, “Master, the stars don’t control me.” The guru replied, “Very good, Yogananda, they don’t, when you are awake.”

So what do we know, as students of the Science of Mind? Simply, “It is done to us as we believe.” Again and again Holmes says this, in a hundred different ways. So, if I truly believe I am at the effect of any collectively held belief then I am most certainly entrapped by that belief, until I ‘wake up’ and change my mind about it.

We joke about the old superstitions about black cats crossing our paths, the dangers of walking under ladders, or spilling the salt. Do we hold our genetic pre-dispositions or family medical history as lightly? How about our precious beliefs that we are victims of someone else’s action, or some group’s action? Here’s the challenging bit. If we believe we are chained, then we truly and profoundly are chained. When we can clear our heads, our hearts and our minds, and we can deny that we are limited by anything outside of our own divine awareness, affirming out freedom, we have an opportunity to free ourselves from those limiting thoughts, and the guaranteed limited experiences. It’s not easy, necessarily, because those collectively held beliefs are … collectively held, and have a lot of perceived power, and a lot of historical precedent.

One of the workshops I attended at the Convention was lead by Dr David Alexander, spiritual leader and senior minister of the New Thought Center for Spiritual Living in Lake Oswego OR. He spoke about what it means to be for every individual to be a conscious leader. He included each individual, because we all lead in our own way, in our own lives. He spoke about a book he used in his Center, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer (and others). The first commitment: “I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life, and my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being. I commit to support others to take full responsibility for their lives.”

When I remember this, I can’t honestly blame the moon or ‘my stars’ for my life experience, can I?

— Rev Janis Farmer

Contemplating Freedom

August 14, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Except for a couple years when my mother was still alive and we had family get-togethers on holidays, my Fourth of July celebrations have been non-existent. It was just another day, except there was no mail delivery and the banks were closed. So when I realized my newsletter article would be published on the 4th of July, I decided to contemplate freedom and what it means to me, and now I’ll find out what I have to say about it.

‘Big picture’ freedoms are the ones that come with being born in the United States: Freedom to cast a vote; freedom to walk down the street with my head, face and limbs uncovered; freedom to marry anyone I want; freedom to support or protest anything or anyone; freedom to participate in any religious or spiritual teachings I choose; freedom to fly any flag I wish, be it the stars and stripes, the Seahawks, rainbow, or my freak flag… you get the picture. I admit, I take all of the above for granted and unless my freedom to do so is threatened, I seldom give those things a second thought. Certainly, I am grateful for all the ‘big picture’ freedoms I enjoy, I just haven’t spent much time beinggrateful. Most of the time I have just lounged in the shade…

“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, and all the time we are in bondage, the real freedom exists. It is there but we must awaken to it.” Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind,411.3

But my #1 freedom is this: When I step out of the shade into the light of my consciousness, nothing is more precious to me than my freedom to choose. What is currently on my plate presents to me a beautiful opportunity to choose the brightest sunshine imaginable: My beloved Aunt Von — soul sister, mother when I needed her to be, confidante and dearest friend — is fighting for her life… again… and she’s tired. Of course, I do treatments for her, but what I know for her isn’t what I would have ‘prayed for’ in the past, when prayer was ‘out there’. I don’t pray for her to get better or to get out of the hospital soon (she may not even want that!) I simply know wholeness, ease, and peace of mind as the Truth of her; this knowingness can be no other way because she/I/we all live and express in Divine Mind/God/Spirit as individualized sparks of the One Life. I know that regardless of any apparent disease, the life flame that fills Aunt Von can never be extinguished. Her body form will eventually relax and let go, as will everyone’s, but the Life that fills her will continue to shine brightly in a way totally unknown to me (yet)!

I feel so grateful that I can choose how to ‘be’ in this situation. I allow myself the freedom to get scared and cry and to not make myself wrong for doing so, and I allow myself to feel joyous even in the midst of her suffering (and, again, to not make myself wrong for doing so). My job is to remember that there is only God, and to look for the God/Good in everything. How could I stay fear-filled and sad as I remember and experience this truth? I just feel love – love for her, love for me, love for Omnipresent God which is radiant light and love everywhere, everywhen, always and forever without end… THIS is the freedom in which I live, in which we all live. God.

“If you can see God in everything, then God will look back at you through everything. When the time comes that nothing goes forth from you other than that which you would be glad to have return, then you will have reached your heaven.” Ernest Holmes, This Thing Called You, 24

Happy Independence Day, everyone! May we all be filled with a sense of sunshine-y freedom!

By Renee’ Mezzone

Standing in the Flow

June 30, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

I gained a lot from my participation in the book study of Eric Butterworth’s Spiritual Economics. It was an empowering and life-altering experience in confronting old attitudes of lack.

In his book on page 10, Butterworth says:

Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things.

Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.

My prosperity is an inside job because I am responsible for my own thoughts. It has nothing to do with my monetary income. Now, while I knew that in an academic way, I found it harder to apply that knowledge and stand in the positive stream of life when it came to my financial affairs.

In the past, I was one of those people who experienced a lot of anxiety around looking closely at my financial state. I resolved to take Butterworth’s program to heart and change the way I do things around money. So, during our study I did something I had never done before. Instead of fearfully waiting until the last minute to pay my bills (and their accompanying late fees), I sat down and paid them all at the same time before their due dates. I continued my contributions to the Center and practiced a sense of gratitude for life. I could not imagine how there would be enough money to last the rest of the month, but I determined to believe in the flow of Good.

At the end of the month, I peeked at my bank account and was astounded to see the amount of money left! I could not fathom what happened. For years I had been living the belief that there was “not enough” and thereby blocking the flow of my good. I had unkinked the hose!

Similarly, over the Memorial Day weekend, I caught myself at a red light on the way to Best Buy with my credit card. I planned to charge an expensive electronic gizmo that had caught my eye and that was on sale. But as I waited in traffic I thought about Butterworth’s program and asked myself why I was buying this thing I wanted but did not need? And why was I willing to charge it on a credit card to boot? I needed furniture for my house and tires for my car, but I had rejected the idea of ever “affording” those with a knee-jerk attitude of poverty. That same attitude of lack was responsible for me trying to put a Band-aid on my feelings by going into debt for the momentary satisfaction of a new toy. I turned the car around and went home, choosing to live and believe that my abundance is assured, and that I stand in the positive stream of life.

I remind myself now of Butterworth’s image of prosperity as a faucet. I do not doubt water will come out of my kitchen faucet because I know it is connected to the city water supply. Now I trust that I constantly access my financial faucet for bills, donations and other life-affirming expenses, and rest assured that I remain in the flow of abundance from the one divine Source.

–Leah Hamilton

When Push Comes to Shove

June 13, 2018 Janis Leave a comment

Driving to the office on the Memorial Day Monday, aware that most people were taking the day off and enjoying themselves, I noticed I was thinking about the phrase, “When Push Comes to Shove” and I wondered that that phrase meant, and why it had come to mind. Apparently, I was feeling ‘put-upon’, squeezed or constrained in some way, and I pondered what had brought that feeling on, and what I could do about it. I started making lists to see what I could figure out what I might be feeling ‘bound up’ about.

1. The home study groups on Spiritual Economics complete this week, and have been pleasingly successful. Participants have enjoyed digging into the material and learning, and also getting to know their home-study-group-buddies more deeply. So that’s a joyous success, so that’s not it. Two different centers have asked if they can use the curriculum that I had compiled. One of the juicy bits from the fifth class that really caught my attention was the idea that living from a giving mentality (not expecting to get, so it’s not fostering codependency or martyrdom) makes more space for more good to show up. I’m thrilled to share it, so that’s not it.

2. The planning for the next class, How To Change Your Life, is coming along well. I’m enjoying working with one of my favorite ministers, Dr Linda McNamar from Laguna Woods CA, creating a juicy curriculum. And I’m getting to introduce her to the zoom videoconferencing platform, which is a double bonus. So that’s not it.

3. The sign-up sheets are out for Visioning, which starts June 9th. We had a good half-dozen folks say they were interested in taking it this summer and available on Tuesdays. And I’ve thought about a new way to introduce the topic, that may make it more accessible to people who haven’t been able to ‘get’ it before. So that’s not it.

4. I’m really jazzed about the June theme of Imagination. Carla has found some excellent quotes for us to use for our Spiritual Thoughts and has written some dynamite affirmations, and the Music Team is out-doing themselves with our own volunteer vocalists. So that’s not it.

5. Barbara and the leasing agents are digging in and removing potential obstacles around a possible interim location that Alana found for us. So far, so good. So that’s not it.

6. Gail from my Spiritual Economics group volunteered to come help out for a few hours in the office on Mondays to reduce my administrative workload. That’s awesome, and very welcome help. So that’s not it.

7. I’m in the middle of working on a quilt, and haven’t finished painting my house. Painting had begun to feel like drudgery, so I realized I’d be better off taking a break from painting and do something fun. Then I can go back and finish the painting with renewed interest and enthusiasm. And if I finish two quilts before I feel like painting some more, who cares? So that’s not it.

Coming up with nothing, but feeling much better after having made the list, I decided to ask Google.

This is what I found. It’s a colloquialism that probably originated in black America. It was first formally recorded by Thomas De Witt Talmage in 1873, in the United Methodist Free Churches’ Magazine: “The proposed improvement is about to fail, when Push comes up behind it and gives it a shove, and Pull goes in front and lays into the traces; lo! the enterprise advances, the goal reached!”

So, the original intention of the phrase seems to be something that wants to be created, and it just needs a little impetus or ‘shove’ to make it happen. I especially love the phrase that isn’t part of the idiom, “Pull goes in front and lays the traces (track) … the enterprise advances. The Goal is reached”.

Perhaps just examining possible areas of concern allows me to reframe my thoughts, not as troubles, but as things in gestation, in process, and just waiting for “Pull to show up and lay the track”? It’s a little bit like setting intention and then waiting to take delivery from Divine Mind/Spirit/The Universe when the product is ready. I’m so very good with that.

I love this philosophy… how it shows up and helps me make sense of my life.

— Rev Janis Farmer

For The Love of Tulips

May 17, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

“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

May 2, 2018 Janis Leave a comment

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

April 11, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

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

Remembering to Be Love

March 7, 2018 CSLT-Faces Leave a comment

When I started ruminating about this article, I knew I wanted to follow our Theme for the Month of February: Love.

In doing our community prayer, Rev. Janis will often remind us that we swim in the Cosmic Soup of Divine Love. We access all of the Love that we can by our knowing the Truth of who and where we are. Sometimes we make a conscious decision to tap into this power; other times we tap into it on a subconscious level. Other times it filters into us by osmosis. In whatever manner we choose to access it, it always says, “Yes” to us.

I think of my own life as a continuing series of love events as I swim within the Big Ocean of Love. Some of them are fabulous, some of them are so-so, and a few, now and then, are downright hideous.

When I was younger, I could get very angry because someone had done something to me. Or I could get very insecure because I thought I was not enough and deserved whatever negative stuff was showing up for me. I had not yet learned that most of the “stuff” was a product of my own thinking.

As I grew older, I changed my mind about what might be happening to me. When anyone in my life showed up as someone I labeled as mean, snarky, rude, thoughtless, or insincere, I would climb up on my horse of Self Righteousness and ride by them with my Sword of Better-Than-Youness (new word). When I climbed down from my saddle of Superiority, I could see the truth of who they truly were: a perfect person, ACTING in an unloving way. What a relief to realize that “Being” and “Acting” are not the same. I can always love you, even while I am not happy with the way you are acting. Wow.

Many decades ago, I was standing in an early-morning line at the airport in Hilo, Hawaii. Standing behind me was a young mother whose whining, crying toddler was tugging on her skirt, demanding to be picked up and soothed. An older, much wiser, friend of mind looked down at the crying child and said, “He is exhausted. When children act the worst is when they need the most.” WHAM. That one sentence, delivered so casually, became one of the best life lessons I ever learned. Not only children, but all of us, do not act our best when we are tired, scared, or worried.

When I see someone acting in their not-so-best manner, and I am in my Right Mind (The Divine shows up as me, too), I ask myself what they might need. Then I can love them unconditionally, even if I do not always love their actions or attitudes. I don’t know about you, but there are times that I am afraid if I give up my own need to be right, I might “lose” — lose face, lose position, or lose respect. After a round of self-talk, I come into the knowledge that I do not always act in perfect way (GASP!) And that is very ok, too.

But I am Perfect, because I was designed so. I am almost always able to swim in my Attitude of Gratitude for the loving world in which I find myself. I remember and bless my own experience and expression of the Spirit of Love.