Open Letter to My Loved Ones

My entire life I have tried to model love, forgiveness, oneness, light, etc. in the way Christ asked me to do. I've not always done it well, but I have always tried. I've learned a great deal in the process. If you still hold darkness in your heart, I urge you to turn it over & let it go. Anything less than unconditional love binds you in a place you don't want or need to be. The ugliness of resentments, fears, arrogance, judgments, etc. keeps the person entertaining such things in a special kind of prison.

Sometimes it has been with huge effort that I have swallowed hard & almost forced myself to let loose of the resentments & let God's Love in to heal.

This Christmas is such a time. I swallow hard as I move into a place of forgiveness for the one who falsely accuses me & shuns me. God is present, even in the darkness of such rage & hatred in this person's heart & words. Transformation is possible. The Christ Child can be born in the cradle of even such a dark spot. Then there will be light.

God, I stand back, releasing all to You. I watch for the unfoldment of Your miracle.

Also on Social Control

I was just thinking of the connection between creativity & critical thinking. Being able to sort through things & come up with a new solution, idea or way requires training of the mind in creativity. In creativity we are able to see outside of the box & find new ways of looking at things.

So what do schools take out of the curriculum the most often? Art, debate, music, home ec, woodshop & so forth. If the youth don't get this kind of creative experience at home, there is a deficit in the development of the ability to think creativity & therefore critically.

I have an idea about us offering creativity experiences -- will keep you posted.

Social Controls Amuck

Sometimes I get inspirations & insights in the shower, sometimes as I awaken, sometimes when walking, meditating, praying, etc. This morning I awoke with some clear insights re: Social Control, one of my most meaningful college classes, & what's going on in the world right now.

  

So I watched in amazement as people fought, pepper sprayed, shot guns, threw punches, camped out for days, etc. in order to shop for some material thing. First I got a funny picture of people so motivated that they behaved that way to get into church. Then I thought, what is the difference?

Church offers spiritual food. Church offers help with the big & real issues of our walk on earth. Church gives us places to serve & express. Church gives us friends that are also spiritual seekers. Church offers a place for spiritual conversation. Church asks of us to do & be in certain ways that may be challenging & even difficult.  Church deals with infinite & eternal things.

Shopping offers us things that will rust, rot, go out of style, go obsolete & are temporary, but relatively easy. Shopping gives us things that entertain for a minute or make us believe we belong because we have the latest or most in style thingamagidget. Shopping is a huge distraction, when it goes beyond intelligently providing our needs & starts controlling us.

So why the difference? Social Control. What controlled us when I was a child? There was TV only from the age of 12 on in my town. We were the 2nd family to get a TV & it was 1952. There was no internet. There were no computers, no portable phones let alone cell phones, etc. Tradition, family, church, school, home, friends, books were the main social controls - they informed us about what was important & how we ought to behave.

Today the media, including social media & especially TV & computers, has huge control over people. I was thinking about studying the mind years ago & learning that TV & computers are extremely hypnotic, gaining fairly direct access to  the sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious mind reasons deductively - that is, it can only reason from what is in it & cannot seek out new information to weigh & balance.

So today we are shown people camping out, interviewed, glorified. Special sales on various items that can only be gotten this week-end & of course no one can be without are presented with urgency. We see rag tag groups occupying various places, glorified by the media, yet having no seemingly coherent issue or plan. Entranced people learning how to blow themselves & others up as they stare into the computer screen. We are informed that smart people go into the streets to demonstrate or into the malls to shop or spend the day searching the internet for great deals. So they do. We are mindlessly controlled to do & be whatever the media decides & promotes.

Even many churches have switched to hype rather than deep spiritual practices. People go to be entertained, swept up in emotion & told the absolute "truth" from the new denomination's point of view. What was the original intent of the founder (I mean Founder such as Jesus), is ignored or twisted. So, for example, where is love in all of this? Where is awakening? Where is something with true meaning?

All of this is profoundly influenced & kept in place by critical thinking skills being absent, as they are no longer taught in schools. Students are mostly taught to pass a multiple choice test.

So we have a terrifyingly large amount of people who are hypnotized & have no skills in thinking themselves out of the fog.

I see it. I don't know if there is anything to do about it. I wonder how many are awake? How can we get at least most of our own Social Controls in our own hands?

Lord, show us the way out of the fog of others controlling us. Show us how to be mindful & walk as awakened people.

Prayer for this week

We are told we are children of the Light. We have the DNA, so to speak, of THE Light in us. We are children of the Most High.

Lord, help us to peel away all that we have placed upon Your  Light, so Light can shine through us & glorify You.

You have placed in each of us talents that await use. As we move into living as Light, we ask You help  us re-discover the talents within that wait to be expressed. We have come to the moment that we no longer wish to bury the gifts that You seeded in us.

As we look out into our families, our church, our community, our nation & our world, we see that much has to be done to create the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

I come this day ready & willing to participate in a larger way. I come ready & willing to shine Your Light, to be the best I can be, to make a difference with my life. Lead me Lord.

What joy floods my soul as the glittering truth of these words filter into the very center of me. Thankfulness dances in me. I realize that You have heard my prayer. In the name of Christ I ask for it to be accomplished. I seal this with the ancient seal of faith as I say Amen, Amen & Amen

Prayer for the Week

Each Sunday I write a prayer as an insert in our bulletin. I write them relative to one of the scriptures for the week.  I felt guided to share some of them here. This is last week's prayer.

Lord, you tell me two simple actions that are our bottom-line. I seek guidance on how to fulfill them more fully.

I do love God, but I know I can love more. Show me how to love God more completely & open my life without reserve to God.

I do not always love all of my neighbors. Cleanse my heart so that I may truly love each & every neighbor as You ask me to do. I ask that You also cleanse my heart about myself. You tell me to love my neighbor as myself, so clearly a key is to love myself. Help me forgive myself for those things that linger as hurt & pain & self-attack. Lead me to embrace what I am &what I am not. Help me have a generous heart towards myself & toward all others & be at peace.

I know that compassion is one of the signs of a spiritually mature person. I ask that You open a deeper, fuller compassion in my heart. Just as You love me, accept me, encourage me,  & guide me without judgment, help me to accept & do the same for myself & others.

I humbly surrender all that is unloving, judgmental or unlike the call to love that Jesus has given us. I walk onto a higher path as I become willing to be the love You call me to be.

Thank You, God, for hearing my prayer. Thank You for Your action in my life, leading me more fully to You & the life You ask me to live. I ask this in the name of Christ and seal it with the ancient seal of faith as I say Amen. Amen & Amen

Time

The month is whirling by. The year is on hyperspeed. I have a theory about the relativity of time. Einstein said all is relative to the reference point. So here I am at 71 & so a day or a week are a small part of all of those years. When I was 5, a day or a week were a larger portion of those 5 years -- so they seemed longer then than they do now.

In the speeded up life I now live, each moment is even more precious & important to live well. It all goes by so quickly that I have to stay focused to be fully present so as not to miss the gift present in each moment.

I'd like to live the rest of my life without regrets -- I came to that conclusion quite a few years ago. But what I find is now the regrets I suffer are mostly from the actions of others. I have missed some precious moments as they whizzed by because of choices of others to be absent from my life. The heart ache is a different one from the one caused by more direct regrets, but it is still heart ache. The frustration inherent is different too. When the heart ache is from the choices of others, & there is nothing I can do, I feel a certain helplessness. 

Now helplessness is not usual for me. I usually can find something to do or say to move a situation. I am a doer by nature. I am not only an observer of life; I am a person who participates. When someone vanishes from my life, the helplessness is very strange & also very painful. I cannot do what I am good at. I cannot take action.

A significant part of my life has disappeared. They are gone to some unknown place doing some unknown things. They are out of my reach. I have done all I can think of doing, short of hiring a private eye. The only place they are not out of reach is my prayers.

If those who have gone, ever read this, please know I have never stopped loving you for a moment. You are constantly in my heart. The tears that fill my eyes are longings for you. The choice I have is to release you to God over & over again. There seems nothing more for me to do. 

I regret the memories we won't be making & haven't made this past year or so. I pray you are making other happy memories wherever you are.

Dear God, I am thankful to know that You are everywhere, always. You are where my loved ones are. Surround them with Your Light & Love. Protect them. Guide them. Heal them. If it is Your will, bring them back to me.

More on Mercy

As I prepare for my forgiveness class that begins this Sunday after church, I am contemplating mercy once again. 

The model I am developing includes this: 

• In a box on the left are resentment, judgment, fear, upset, anger, imprisonment - these are imposter values
• In the center is forgiveness, mercy - the exchange - the genuine values
• To the right is freedom, & there is the possibility of spiritual awakening, letting the mind be in you that was in Christ, as Paul said.

Or another way to say it might be: Cosmic trade in program - trade in bondage for peace of mind, cost = forgiveness.

We are free to choose what kind of person we will be. I choose freedom, peace of mind, Christ.

I exercise mercy. I exchange all that is unlike Christ in me with forgiveness. I accept a new freedom.