Hello…. I’ve just moved my blog here from another web host, so although my archives are full, my structure is pretty basic while I’m mastering wonderful WordPress. I’m looking forward to blogging more often on breaking news and issues….
My blog is a forum for discussion and an outlet where I can share my opinions, thoughts, feelings, analysis, observations, and creativity–usually in response to breaking news and current issues. My military-brat and academic backgrounds led me to compelling interests in (in no discernible order) spirituality, politics, art, ethics, war and peace, activism, justice and social issues, policy, humor, comparative religion, culture, education, philosophy, compassion, relationships, family, meditation/prayer, non-violence, movies and books and reviews, idealism, power, humanitarian causes, environmental causes, chaos, soldiers, love and fear, sustainability, A Course in Miracles, gardening, faith, values, global, racial and gender harmony, cartooning and watercolors, demagogues, diplomacy, bullying, immigration, diversity, competition, comparative governance, the golden rule, Christian ethics and history, global and local politics, prejudice, acceptance, veterans, forgiveness, sexuality, God, foreign policy, history, morals, violent extremism, leadership, humanism, education, ideals, weapons, judgment, division, oneness, solutions, bigotry, interfaith issues, poetry, inspiration, and many more… All are welcome to join the dialogue….
The tragic recent murders by Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood are part of an epidemic of suicides, violent crimes, and shooting sprees among active-duty and former soldiers which stem in great part from their understandable moral and ethical confusion about the nature of war and the uses of power and violence. Women soldiers newly serving in combat positions often struggle with their uncertainties about adopting formerly-despised “male” traditions of violence and dominance, especially since their use of such power—as male soldiers have always known—can and does often lead to a sense of separation from the human race, to feelings of isolation, aloneness, difference, wrongness, fear, inadequacy, failure, loss and rejection.
Add to these moral conundrums of conscience the fact that soldiers are expected to behave in uncivilized and dominating ways while “at work,” and then nimbly revert back to behaving civilly and helpfully at home, flexibly “getting back in touch with their feminine sides” and working in equitable partnerships, building family affection, connections and wholeness. Clearly, twenty-first century soldiers have their hands full to be all they can be.
Military trainers work very hard to try to turn selfless, idealistic, caring young recruits into good soldiers who can be both safe and effective in war zones, prepared to perform as knee-jerk killers, to instantly shoot down complete strangers—often innocents themselves who are protecting their own homes and families and comrades-in-arms—and to carry out the cold-blooded duties of snipers, bombers, interrogators and other executioners who must kill with no hesitation or trace of due process random members of any population demonized as “the enemy,” “others”—i.e., people it’s OK to treat as non-humans.
Good soldiers are offered a fuzzy kind of contextual logic to (temporarily) ethically “cover them” and their bloodiest actions, for at least as long as they can believe that their killing and dying serves a worthwhile purpose—that is, to protect their friends and families and fellow-citizens, or to serve their country in some way, or to further its noble ideals and purposes. Soldiers can often do their duty if they can cling to some hope that their “jobs” are generally positive ones, that they are necessary, valuable and moral, that their terrible personal losses and cruel sacrifices were not in vain, and that they wasted neither their own lives nor the lives of others.
Unfortunately—or perhaps, fortunately—it’s much harder nowadays in the age of media for us to continue to see complicated human instances of violence in simple black-and-white terms. The rapid pace of change, the continual clashing of conflicting old ideas and emerging new ones, our own American biggest-kid-on-the-block mentality, and our often-thoughtless, retributive, greedy habits of government policy-making with respect to war, empire and militarism—added to our too-violent and vengeful culture—together create a mentally and emotionally combustible, dangerous, crazy-making conundrum for even our best, most well-intentioned and professional soldiers.
“Schizophrenic behavior” is defined as behavior which is motivated by contradictory or conflicting principles, or which results from the co-existence of disparate or antagonistic activities. In other words, when your ideals frequently conflict with each other, and when your actions feel equally conflicted, it can drive you nuts. Fallible human attempts to live up to one’s ethics, values, standards and goals can make even the best soldiers feel schizophrenic.
Growing up on military posts, I believed, just as most citizens of most countries are taught to believe, that our military forces were always a force for good, an organization that helped people, supported peace, promoted freedom and democracy. Since then, I’ve learned that military forces everywhere—like violence of all kinds, from abuse to crime to terrorism—usually harm many more people than they help. I’ve also learned that peace, freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with war, because wherever war goes, anything resembling peace, freedom and democracy quickly disappear.
Even the best-trained soldiers—those convinced that military actions are all about duty, honor and country, taking care of one another, following orders, and serving with excellence, integrity and honor in order to further the protection and interests of loved ones and the best nation on earth—in the midst of war, wonder whether their actions are truly helping or hurting people, whether they are on the “giving” or on the “taking” “side.” Every soldier prays that he will someday look back and believe his life and work have served the best interests of humanity—and heaven forbid that they have served on the side of darkness, pain, grief, and cruelty. In the midst of actions far from their homes, all soldiers wonder at times whether their devotion to military ideals and country may not conceal larger, deeper, sadder contradictions about the nature and missions of militarism and war.
When soldiers from any nation come home from their wars, of course they have trouble rectifying all they've participated in, with their peacetime ethical, spiritual and religious beliefs about what it means to be humane, caring, good—all the many understandings parents and teachers carefully taught them about what makes relationships work, and what make life worth living. Many returning war veterans basically go insane for years. Others are unstable or crazy for the rest of their lives.
Everyone insists that training and fighting animals—cocks, dogs, bulls—is an outrage. We wouldn't, they say, we couldn’t, we shouldn’t do this to a dog! So why do we keep doing it to people?
Every soldier I have known, at one time entered the military with selfless ideals and the best intentions. Sadly, military training and war often work subtly against soldiers’ best interests, leaving them confused about what power and leadership really mean, as well as poorly-prepared for the peaceful, productive civilian relationships they spend years dreaming of forging, at war’s end.
Unfortunately, the many sad, lingering side-effects of military training and war include a heightened tendency to polarize even small conflicts into black-and-white situations requiring a quick, habitual adversarial or violent response to conflict—habits which later work insidiously against both the soldiers and their loved ones. Quickness to violence—while perhaps an asset in effective soldiering—is a terrible emotional burden in civilian life. Recent public-safety statistics indicate that too many soldiers attempting to re-enter civilian life—having spent their impressionable youth on high alert, in kill-or-be-killed situations—have become habituated to violent, lawless behavior, and continue to pay huge, never-ending psychic prices for their previous military involvements after their return to “civilization.”
The number and types of military resources America should maintain may be a matter of reasonable debate, but what is not arguable is our need to develop more thoughtful and deliberate processes for deciding when and why to send our soldiers into war.
The great writers and filmmakers who have told their stories of past wars have consistently described war as “insane.” Insanity is also the only word that most reasonably describes any future war, since humanity has the knowledge and the means now—if only we develop the will—to resolve conflicts peacefully and prevent the holocausts which the law of unintended consequences, along with our ghastly weaponry, inevitably spiral us into.
Ethical soldiers like my father relive the remembered insanity of war for the rest of their lives, alternating between waves of the deepest humane compassion, pride and camaraderie, to long periods of dark, impenetrable, self-protective anger, fear and cynicism.
The cruelly gruesome extremes of war sometimes contaminate and twist even the highest traditional military values into thuggery. Professionalism can be turned, at times, into barbarism. Selflessness can be turned into greed. Idealism can become cynicism. Courage can become savagery. Strength can become dominance. Love of country can turn to jingoism and chauvinism. Obedience, leadership and respect for authority can be warped by exigency into a numbed conscience and momentary group-think. Loyalty can become a destructive “us/them” mentality. Integrity can become a morally confusing paralysis, while duty can be pushed into rote obedience.
However admirably motivated, however morally unambiguous in the midst of a firefight, violent military actions still have the look and feel of chaotic lawlessness. No matter how patriotic or mentally-prepared soldiers may be, the act of killing complete strangers goes queasily against soldiers’ moral teachings about how to treat other people.
The ideal of freedom itself—the dream comprising healthy, productive human lives spent in peaceful pursuit of individual dreams—can feel, during war, quite unrelated to the specifics of what soldiers are often asked to do, because serving the freedom of one group often entails dominating and killing another, something which feels less noble in practice than what most soldiers hope for, particularly when their personal boots-on-the-ground experience has already offered clear evidence that many—perhaps most—of war’s victims are as innocent as the soldiers who kill them. Soldiers don’t sign up to defend moral ambiguities. And yet the first victim of war is truth, followed closely by moral clarity, and, too often, by despair.
However high-minded the justifications given during a soldier’s training, the actual waging of war—the killing, the maiming, the brutalizing—feels more “against” than “for” humans. Unless “the enemy” has successfully been completely dehumanized in the minds of soldiers by war propaganda, military fighting too often seems rather more against than for human value and worth, human liberty; love, individuality, uniqueness; against the highest religious and moral traditions, against human ideals, values, beliefs, against the teachings of history’s great moral teachers, against humanity itself.
Soldiers schooled in war fortify their emotions against moral confusion by coldly dehumanizing and demonizing their enemies, but such temporary moral adjustments don’t serve nearly as well at war’s end, when all the former “non-humans”—the Vietnamese, Germans, Irish, British, Russians, the terrorists, whomever—experience a miraculous rebirth, having been rediscovered somehow to be human beings after all. Soldiers who wisely shut down their feelings against tragically ambiguous memories unfortunately also become emotionally unavailable to their children, parents, and spouses. This happened in my family.
Soldiers who have followed orders to loose destruction and death upon “combatants” and “noncombatants” alike in someone else’s country, often become cynical later even about their own country, about the human capacity for goodness, and the worth of people in general.
“Human” values which specifically exclude certain portions of humanity—Muslims, for instance, or Christians, or certain races or ethnicities —ultimately prove uncomfortingly weak and useless. Nations claiming a constitutional and traditional embrace of “human ideals” and “human rights”—who then insist upon them only for their own citizens and at the expense of citizens of other countries—rapidly lose not only their allies, but also the loyalty and pride of their own citizens; while patriotism which rests shakily upon chauvinism and exceptionalism breaks down quickly into partisan bickering, and too-easily collapsing into division, bigotry, political hatred and violence, and even civil war.
Wars’ costs go far beyond blood and treasure.
All the war books and movies I’ve “enjoyed” shared similar conclusions about their experiences of war. Over and over, each artist expressed the point of view that their war had been insane, cruel, hard, sad, misguided and stupid, and created more problems than were resolved. The grisly killings aspects of war were consistently experienced as pointless, chaotic, numbing, unreasonable, inhumane, confusing, wrong—and sometimes thrilling, in that the pointy end of the sword went into the other guy, and not them. Soldiers throughout history have been urged by their leaders to keep such stories to themselves, or share them only with other soldiers who were there, so as to avoid bringing harm or shame to a unit, or turning the next generation against war itself.
In nearly every war book and movie, bleak, terrified, mutilated children emphasize the meaninglessness and human tragedy of war, while fear for oneself and one’s friends drives soldiers to acts of cruelty and immorality unimaginable during peacetime.
War never turns out to be at all what anyone expects when they join up, and not much like what they train for either. When at war, every soldier longed for home, and when finally back home, they missed having friends they could talk to, buddies who understood them and their experiences.
All these artists told how their necessary training in hate and fear had carved a black chasms into their psyche, changing them (and their families) forever in ways inexpressible to anyone who hadn’t shared such experience—so mixed are war’s memories with guilt, pride, and loyalty.
This anonymous post about anti-China perceptions in the West is viral on the internet. I found it fascinating and thought-provoking. I think you will too….
What Do You Really Want From Us?
When we were the sick man of Asia,
We were called the yellow peril.
When we are billed as the next superpower, we are called “the threat.”
When we closed our doors, you launched the Opium War to open our markets.
When we embraced free trade, you blamed us for stealing your jobs.
When we were falling apart, you marched in your troops and demanded your fair share.
When we tried to put the broken pieces back together again, Free Tibet, you screamed. It was an invasion!
When we tried communism, you hated us for being communist.
When we embraced capitalism, you hated us for being capitalist.
When we had a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abused human rights.
When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
When we lend you cash, you blame us for your national debts.
When we build our industries, you call us polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.
When we buy oil, you call it exploitation and genocide.
When you go to war for oil, you call it liberation.
When we were lost in chaos, you demanded the rule of law.
When we uphold law and order against violence, you call it a violation of human rights.
When we were silent, you said you wanted us to have free speech.
When we are silent no more, you say we are brainwashed xenophobes.
Why do you hate us so much? we asked.
No, you answered, we don't hate you.
We don't hate you either,
But do you understand us?
Of course we do, you said,
We have AFP, CNN and BBC….
What do you really want from us?
Think hard first, then answer…
Because you only get so many chances.
Enough is enough, enough hypocrisy for this one world.
We want one world, one dream, and peace on earth.
This big blue earth is big enough for all of us.
Please send your comments to njcpace@gmail.com. Thank you! 🙂
12/1/10 – Fearful dreams which have the purpose of getting “more” for oneself at others’ expense never satisfy. However, all dreams, when transformed to include goals of shared peace, love, appreciation, understanding, respect and support for all of life, do satisfy.
11/30/10 – Our rational, logical brains have indispensible but highly limited utility. All quality lives and human relations are inspired and supported by helpful, loving, appreciative, accepting, intuitive, spiritual motivations and intentions that arise within.
11/29/10 – When we stop struggling to “figure out,” analyze, intellectualize and speculate on the motives, goals and purposes of others and ourselves, but instead, listen to the wisdom within us, we will feel no need to fear, judge or attack ourselves and others.
11/28/10 – We are God’s expression of consciousness, creativity and love. We are God’s hands, feet, eyes and ears. All of God’s power and knowledge lies within us. We are inseparable from God, from his wholeness, presence and power throughout all creation.
11/27/10 – We can know ourselves and others as “one” only intuitively, through loving appreciation and healing acceptance. But when we try to analyze, figure out and predict ourselves and others, we forget this oneness, and begin separating, judging and attacking.
11/26/10 – When we are feeling lost, we can remind ourselves of the peaceful goals we want, seek within for guidance in creating and experiencing the perspectives, actions, feelings, outcomes and days we want, follow our inner guidance—and let all our fears go.
11/25/10 – We can safely turn our days over to God, who already knows our deepest questions and real desires, as well as our infinite potential for creating and spreading joy, and for supporting what is alive and eternal in ourselves and in all others everywhere.
11/24/10 – All the power of God, mankind and creation is accessible within each of us. We can ask and receive understanding, answers, insights, love, joy and wisdom. Within us is God’s home, where all are one. Nothing spiritual, true, real or eternal is outside us.
11/23/10 – Our self-protective, logical, rational, defensive illusions, images, concepts, arguments, explanations, excuses, justifications and projections offer us and others only guilt and pain. They offer us nothing we could ever want, and many things we don’t.
11/22/10 – Nothing good, peaceful, useful, happy, meaningful or worthy can ever come from creating defensive, guilty, judgmental images and concepts of ourselves or others, or from guessing, projecting or analyzing our own or others’ motives or intentions.
11/21/10 – Our defensive concepts, analyses, self-images and projections set up exhausting, judgmental, false rules and realities which produce only harmful fantasies and painful guilt. We can ask to replace them with an accepting, healing spiritual vision.
11/20/10 – When we let go of demands and expectations, we allow ourselves and others to be the perfect, unique, lovable, beloved eternal creations we all are. When we live and let live, and let guilt and judgment go, we rest in loving circles of giving and receiving.
11/19/10 – Until we respond to all errors and mistakes as requests for healing and help, rather than as unforgivable sins deserving of attacks, blame, anger, judgment and retribution, we cannot know God’s eternal benevolence, forgiveness, justice and love.
11/18/10 – A good way to relate well to anyone is to establish, in advance, a peaceful, loving purpose—toward everyone. All relationships go better when founded upon a goal such as the golden rule, which derives from the gentle facets and permutations of peace.
11/17/10 – Reality is not “out there,” but “in here.” Reality is not about our bodies or a world “outside” us, but instead, the eternal, spiritual truth within us, which creates and animates all things, is the source of all life and all love, and is that which never changes.
11/15/10 – We are all fellow-travelers upon a road that is often dark and difficult. Yet we can bring light and hope and love to one another when we decide to neither lead nor follow, but to walk with one another as beloved, lovable and loving friends.
11/14/10 – We’re “wrong” when we react judgmentally, defensively, adversarially or aggressively toward others who are doing the same, and feeling “right” about it. The only “right” (and effective) response to such “wrong” is healing and help.
11/14/10 – Since no person, group, party, religion, nation or leader knows all perspectives or has all the “right” answers, “wrong” arises, not just when we make mistakes, but when we attack others for their mistakes, and thus add to the sum of the world’s injustices.
11/13/10 – Satisfying, peaceful paths are those that serve us, God and all mankind, drawing us all closer in our awareness of spiritual oneness. Efforts that compete, divide and separate, or that serve one person at the expense of another, must always disappoint.
11/12/10 – A personal self-concept must be defended, lived up to, lived down, regretted, explained, built up, grieved, avenged, elaborated upon, and consistently maintained. With no self-image, we’re free to freshly recreate all our relationships, moment-to-moment.
11/11/10 – We are on our right path, doing our highest will and God’s. All spiritual paths are confusing, difficult, boulder-strewn, filled with pitfalls and detours—and unique. Our way feels sure, clear, peaceful and safe as we let our guiding inner spirit lighten our steps.
11/10/10 – We can’t know everything, so we can’t judge others fairly; and because we can’t judge fairly, the only effective, inspiring, motivating correction we can offer is one which we would want for ourselves and our own mistakes—to love, lift and let it go.
11/9/10 – Are we lost, separate, mortal creatures in brutal natural competition with each other for survival, or are we God’s single, beloved, sacred and eternal expression, his will and reflection, perfect in oneness, diversity, uniqueness, interdependence and holiness?
11/8/10 – Our seemingly insignificant contributions, stumbling steps, counterproductive setbacks and fumbling mis-directions are our perfect, unique and indispensably holy paths to awareness, sharing and celebration of God’s oneness, forgiveness and love.
11/7/10 – When we want to say or do the right thing, calm ourselves, make a decision, find new perspectives and insights, order our priorities, be happier, understand, be better—we can go within, ask our questions, and trust the loving, peaceful answers.
11/6/10 – Our hardest lesson is to let go of our own guilt, defensiveness, mistakes, struggles, wrong assumptions, misdirected efforts, incorrigibility, anger, jealousy, resentment, weariness, despair and self-condemnation—and live fully, freely, now.
11/5/10 – We can choose to experience agelessness or aging, timelessness or time, beauty or ugliness, delight or despair, spirituality or cynicism, positivity or negativity, joy or sorrow, freedom or guilt, goodness or evil, life or death, love or fear, truth or illusion.
11/4/10 – Our daily challenges, struggles and mistakes are opportunities: to ask specific questions; pray to see things differently; receive miraculous insights, wisdom and love; and become humbled, grateful, open, accepting lifters of our fellow-travelers’ burdens.
11/3/10 – We don’t have to resolve the past or know the future. All we can ever do is live fully in the present moment, and do our very best with now—the only time we ever have to give and receive love, create, heal, forgive, cherish, lift, learn, appreciate and inspire.
11/2/10 – Physical, spiritual, individual, interpersonal and planetary health and healing are inextricably interconnected and intertwined, and always miraculously support each other, as we ask for, receive, and offer forgiveness, acceptance, love, peace and gratitude.
11/1/10 – We can accept ourselves and all others as-is, without reference to the past; or we can suffer from guilt, judgment, separation, anger, blame and attack. Self and other-acceptance are interdependent keys to all healing, peace, and creative power for good.
10/31/10 – We can see, create and extend our guilt and fear outward toward a cultural delusion of division, hate and death, or we can see and heal ourselves and all others as one eternally perfect spiritual creation, by loving unconditionally in the present moment.
10/30/10 – When we pray for peaceful solutions, when we let go of a troubled past, when we trust God to work and speak and heal and love through us, nothing is impossible.
10/29/10 – We can experience the joy and peace of God once again as we let anger and judgment go. Our sense of injustice arises from a perception of temporal separation; yet God’s justice knows and expresses creation only as one, whole, perfect and eternal will.
10/28/10 – God judges his creation, not as divided and competing, but as one, whole, inseparable, timeless good. Only this holy, all-encompassing perspective of an unconditionally-loving, eternal justice can heal our perceptions of temporal injustices.
10/27/10 – We fear chaos, insanity and meaninglessness. Yet reality, truth, purpose and hope lie, not in any past mistakes, but in humankind’s capacity to see, accept, appreciate, celebrate and love, with God, his imperfect/perfect expression/creation, right now, as-is.
10/26/10 – When we put our trust in ourselves alone, we feel neither safety nor direction nor help. When we nourish, through daily spiritual practice, our safe reliance upon God, we find strength, comfort, insight, clarity, sustenance, purpose and joy everywhere.
10/25/10 – If we are not mere bodies, but instead, eternal spirits—the will and expression of a loving God—then all pain, loss, suffering and sin are mere temporal illusions. If God is love, then so are we—blameless, unconditionally loved, and safe, now and forever.
10/24/10 – When we are harshly judging ourselves, others and the world, we can ask God to judge instead, whose judgment urges us to look and see, at every moment and in each detail, the goodness, blamelessness and sacred wholeness of his perfect expression.
10/6/10 – Our eyes and brains analyze all that seems “outside” us in terms we’ve acquired from our experiences, thought and culture. It works better to see only positive, eternal, loving reality, and not react to all the rest, which is only negative illusion.
8/22/10 – God is the power, insight and comfort in which I now receive infinite gifts of present and eternal peace, acceptance and unconditional love, and return them joyfully and serenely to that-of-God, humankind, nature and self comprising the One Self of all.
8/13/10 – The most honest and meaningful truth we can communicate on any subject always reflects our highest spiritual perspectives on the unchangeable safety, innocence, value, goodness and holiness of every single one of God’s beloved eternal beings.
8/12/10 – We can use the creative power of universal mind shared by all God’s eternal expressions to build a world of truth, beauty, love, joy and healing, and not in support of destructive cultural myths of sin, fear, guilt, despair, weakness, vengeance and evil.
8/11/10 – In all our relationships, we have daily opportunities to teach through our own words and examples—and thus simultaneously to learn and to reinforce—trust, faith, honesty, gentleness, forbearance, joy, generosity, defenselessness, patience and peace.
8/10/10 – Each of us fulfills a unique, loving, peaceful work in life which is our shared will with God, who gives us what we need to accomplish it, along with trust in our own innocence, and a sense of freedom from guilt, fear, inadequacy and defensiveness.
8/9/10 – We can give only to ourselves. Exactly how best, what, when, why, to whom, and how, each of us uniquely balances our giving, is always different for each person—and always perfect. When we feel conflicted and defensive, we’ve forgotten this.
8/8/10 – What makes everything and everyone beautiful? Recognition of the sinless innocence of everything and everyone at every present moment of eternity. It is this bountiful, unconditional forgiveness which Jesus’ life teaches, exemplifies and clarifies.
8/7/10 – The most valuable, essential lesson we can teach others is our own example of joyous, guilt-free living, which holds up a mirror for the innocence of others. The most destructive, pernicious, persistent cultural myth is the belief that being human is wrong.
8/6/10 – I gratefully accept the abundant justice of an eternity of peace and oneness with God, his ever-available gifts of comfort, strength and unconditional love, and the blessings of teaching, learning from, sharing with, and loving my eternal fellow-travelers.
8/5/10 – In the sense that we are all eternal, time doesn’t matter. But thoughtful choices about our use of time can exponentially lessen suffering and add to joy. We can seek help within to spiritually order our lives and priorities, and to know the next right thing to do.
8/4/10 – What matters? Recognition of ourselves and “others” as God’s one beloved immortal perfect innocent equal creation. What doesn’t matter? Any/every/thing else— because nothing else lasts forever. We live best in time when we remember who we are.
8/3/10 – When we’re feeling unsure about how to juggle all our imagined “competing” priorities, our guiding spirit restores our trust in God, renews our courage, strength, positivity, love and peace, and reminds us that all things work together forever for good.
8/2/10 – We’re culturally programmed to react destructively, angrily, guiltily, defensively and vengefully, but we can instead go within and find the gentle, peaceful, loving, forgiving opposites to such conditioning which miraculously transform each moment.
8/1/10 – Our shared cultural judgments damn us all to a collective sense of wrongness, inadequacy, sinfulness and unworthiness, while recognition of our shared spiritual perfection, creativity, will, w/hol(i)eness and love offers all a saving release from fear.
7/31/10 – Cultural myths, like all words and symbols, are always relative. They can be rich, suggestive, poetic, powerful, helpful, revealing and inspiring, as well as confusingly and distractingly circuitous, contradictory, incoherent, destructive—and persistent.
7/30/10 – Words can usefully point to and hint at truth, but they can also obfuscate and complicate truth. Words are always relative, whereas truth is ineffable—inexpressible and incommunicable in words—as well as absolute, experiential, simple and self-evident.
7/29/10 – Words are mere human symbols, variously-defined in relation to one another, subject to arbitrary interpretation, misinterpretation, re-interpretation and twisting. Everything written and spoken is relative, whereas truth is always ineffable and absolute.
7/28/10 – Without a shared theology or belief system, we can still all joyfully join in accepting our beautiful, amazing selves, each other, and the world as-is, sensing our oneness with a timeless, powerful, loving source, and attending to our inner guide.
7/27/10 – We can buy the cultural illusion that we are deprived, cheated sufferers, cruelly and unfairly punished for unavoidable failures; or we can recognize that we are God’s one whole perfect creation, forever sharing the love and abundance of the universe.
7/26/10 – We can beneficially dedicate each day to asking our guiding spirit for loving, strengthening, helpful spiritual perspectives regarding the people, situations, questions and challenges we will encounter, pondering the answers we receive, and applying them.
7/25/10 – We can see humankind as our one self, recognize love’s shared abundance everywhere, and fulfill our only need—to extend acceptance, forgiveness and appreciation as required to gently heal all errors arising from fear of love’s insufficiency.
7/24/10 – When we ask for spiritual help in seeing any situation, issue or person differently, our limited, defensive, angry, skewed viewpoints are powerfully replaced with a helpful, peaceful, smart, thoughtful, intriguing insight which changes everything.
7/23/10 – Within us is a guiding light, a spark of divinity, that-of-God, a calm, soundless voice, a shining conscience, a comforter, sage and seer that strengthens, inspires and loves us, answers our questions, and understands all situations far better than we can.
7/22/10 – We can draw all we encounter into our circle of acceptance, appreciation, love and forgiveness for everything, past and present. As we gently welcome all who stand outside the circle, we will find ourselves drawn safely and peacefully inside it, with them.
7/21/10 – We can close our culturally-blinded, critical, defensive eyes, choose patient acceptance of our own and others’ gaps in understanding, and trust only in God’s quiet, loving judgment of our holiness (wholeness), and in the unity of our shared forgiveness.
7/20/10 – The single essential, motivating lesson we are challenged to teach, exemplify (and thus learn) is how wonderful we all are as-is—wholly lovable in our fallible human uniqueness, forever blameless, sufficient, worthy, indispensible, precious and holy.
7/19/10 – How we see others, treat others, think of others, is how we will see, treat and think of ourselves. We can remember that we are all lovable, wonderful, fallible, forgivable and very human, and that we all have forever to live, learn and love.
7/18/10 – Communication can be honest, effective and true when we ask for spiritual help—in dropping our barriers, staying in the moment, letting go of fear, getting our ego out of the way, and allowing God to express, affirm and celebrate our holy connection.
7/17/10 – God can free us of our cruel cultural illusions—of conditional love, of our own guilt, helplessness and isolation, and of a too-brief interval between birth and death spent fighting over a few unsatisfying earthly rewards and pitilessly-limited slots into heaven.
7/16/10 – What if we live forever in an abundant universe and a timeless present—perfect, undivided, loving, loved, interdependent, innocent, one with God, each other and all creation—and eternally blessed with access to God’s guidance, strength and power?
7/15/10 – We are exactly as we were forever intended to be, uniquely indispensible to God and his creation, timelessly innocent, and capable of expressing one shared perfect love and will. Yet we dream a cultural nightmare of fear, difference, guilt and chaos.
7/14/10 – We can focus our faith, commitment, time, energies and talents on recognizing, creating and fulfilling at each present moment the truth that “what-is” is good; or we can limit and postpone awareness of our own power to creatively fulfill that beautiful reality.
7/13/10 – The justice of God comprises eternal innocence in a timeless present; the gift of an amazing and abundant universe; total access to God’s love, strength, guidance, and spirit; and an eternity in which to enjoy and equally contribute to loving interdependence.
7/12/10 – When we let go of the recent and ancient past—all mistakes and regrets, both ours’ and others’, remembering only good intentions, efforts and gifts—we once again feel light, open, positive, and free to love and give again in each shining new moment.
7/11/10 – We can ask for help in letting go of our cultural focus on harmful illusions, analyses and projections of a competitive, guilty, fearful reality, and instead see everyone and everything through loving, eternal eyes—beautifully, perfectly, spiritually “as-is.”
7/10/10 – We can’t feel and express both negative and positive emotions simultaneously, but we can ask for help in releasing those fearful feelings, so as to allow room for the miraculous healing power of accepting feelings to flow through us in the present moment.
7/9/10 – Anger is a sign of guilt pangs so bad that we attempt to foist them on others by focusing on their mistakes and shortcomings, all in a foolish attempt to redirect our imagined deserved punishments and retributions for an implacable past that is … gone.
7/8/10 – When we confidently and humbly offer our unique and invaluable lives and gifts to the completion of God and his creation, assured that our contributions are as important and indispensible as everyone else’s, God responds by offering us everything, forever.
7/7/10 – We gain what we give. We can offer God’s beloved children strength, light, hope, support, healing and peace as we walk hand-in-hand along our path with them and with God, and receive, multiplied and overflowing, all the gifts that we have extended.
7/6/10 – If we want a peaceful day, we can let go of fear, and share instead God’s eternal acceptance, appreciation and unconditional love with every each of his beloved children, treating all as infinitely worthy of our deepest respect and our most loving thoughts.
7/5/10 – To see only love in ourselves, everyone else, and everything, we can let go of our defenses against it—our fearful cultural lessons, strict personal experiential rules, and every barricade, wall and fortification separating us from offering and receiving it.
7/4/10 – Moment-to-moment, we choose between love and fear. Choosing love always makes sense, because love always works in the eternal now.Choosing fear (guilt, anger, injustice, separation, vengeance, sadness, despair…) never makes sense in any context.
7/3/10 – We cannot “fix” ourselves or anyone else, but we can choose to see everyone through loving, appreciative, forgiving eyes. When we choose to express peace, we will understand the power, vision, value, joy and clarity (for everyone) in loving choices.
7/2/10 – The body was never meant to last. Only universal mind remains forever in eternal communication with the love that is its self. Love is who we were created to be, who we are and will always be, one perfect love with God and his whole creation.
7/1/10 – When we’re afraid for others, we’re relating to them as to mere limited mortals, tragic figures bound within a brief life and a cruel death. Yet we can choose instead to joyfully communicate as peaceful eternal spirits boundlessly expressing the love of God.
6/30/10 – An instant of willingness to share God’s truth, inspiration, guidance, love, peace, light, forgiveness and joy clears away all nonsense about the past and all its guilty, angry, fearful, judgmental, divided, painful, stupid, useless “knowledge” and “lessons.”
365 Days of Spiritual Sharing – Nancy Pace
Every day that I can, I meditate/pray/ (or whatever word you might care to call it) as early as I can. Usually I have personal questions or issues that seem pressing that day, so I attempt to articulate them, along with any guilt and fear I might be repressing—both before and during my meditation. Then I do some reading from a variety of inspiring sources. Then I summarize my “sense” of what I felt or learned from that day’s meditations, questions and reading, in a brief “Spiritual Sharing.” The whole process usually averages about an hour, although sometimes it takes just a few minutes.
I don’t profess any knowledge at all other than my personal experience and insights—certainly no universal religious beliefs. I do try to follow the teachings and example of Jesus, and thus consider myself a Christian. But beyond Jesus’ teachings, I am a mystical agnostic, in the sense of not “knowing” anything except in an experiential, scientific, personally-mystical or spiritual sense. I do have a very personally-designed faith in certain practices, a faith which works for me. I make no claims that I “know” what is true for everyone or that I am “right” in any of my spiritual conclusions. I am a strong advocate of interfaith understanding, dialogue, respect and support, I believe that we can all profitably share our truths with one another, and that God awaits us in all contexts. I am also an admirer of the humanitarian work and spirit of all secular seekers.
I see my written daily “Spiritual Sharings” as personal expressions of mystical insights from/into a spiritual dimension; they come to me during my meditations and I write them down. However, all individual human attempts to express or channel any kinds of truth through language are necessarily limited, personal and fallible. Anyone who opens themselves to them receives them.
My daily spiritual practice strengthens my faith and has invaluable applications to my own daily life, and I do trust that sharing my results is sometimes useful to some others. But of course, please be assured that I come and go as humbly and fallibly as others do and as I have always done, continually forgetting, ignoring and not applying higher truths I have learned and intuitively understand. But sometimes I remember to apply them, and when I do, they work beautifully.
I hope you will feel free to substitute (for the term, “God,” in the following meditations) any personal word that best describes or names the Source of your own experience of spiritual power, insight and understanding—whether that source be “God,” guiding spirit, intuition, the unknowable, Nature, conscience, a higher power, Hashem, inner-knowing, Christ, Science, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, natural understanding, YHWH or Yahweh, Shiva, the Over-Soul, the Goddess, the divine, the Name, the Universe, Krishna, friend, G-d, light, Allah, Lord, Jehovah, Abba, the Ineffable, the One, Adonai, Creator, the name of your preferred deity, the ground of your being, I-Am-That-I-Am, or any other word(s) or name(s) that work(s) for you. Please also forgive the English language’s lack of a comfortable gender-neutral pronoun for a God/Spirit that/who expresses it/him/herself/themselves variably.
I find spiritual truth to be ultimately ineffable and uniquely personal. Our various expressions and explanations of universal spiritual truth/s seem limited because we are mentally and linguistically limited, and ultimately, only human. Like many others, I feel inspired to compose and share my personal and unique understandings, while yet feeling that human understanding of spiritual truth cannot be ultimately, finally, universally expressed, understood, known or agreed upon.
In this sense, all of our searches for understanding about and communion with “God,” through the multitude of faiths, belief systems, spiritual practices and secular searches for truth, human interdependence, conscience and service, seem to me to be interchangeably valuable, all adding to and enriching our higher shared human cultural understanding of the spiritual dimension of life.
The many different personal, linguistic, cultural, religious, experiential and explanatory names we assign to our various but uniquely individual religious, spiritual, humanist and philosophical experiences and understandings cannot change the nature and essence of the perhaps ineffable source of that spiritual power. Yet regardless of the conflicting beliefs, perspectives and practices of a world of diverse worshippers, seekers and non-believers, whatever, whoever and however our higher Source may be will never change. In this sense, we all share the same God.
The central message of all the world’s great religions is faith, hope, and love (in all their highest understandings and expressions) whether in nature, people, human culture or in our highest experiences of a spiritual dimension. In an eternal and spiritual sense, all human cultures and every human life has infinite, eternal value, even when humans and human culture seem temporally to be struggling with incredible burdens, or conversely, are enjoying disproportionate and inequitable benefits, enlightenment, privileges and support. From either an eternal or a temporal perspective, however, loving, accepting, forgiving and appreciating one another seem to me to be what works best, both in the present moment, and over time.
I embrace the interfaith movement, which supports the search for authentic worship, community, spirituality, faith and service through unique and various familiar traditions, while encouraging better understanding, respect and support for the faiths—or secular humanism—of others.
It’s possible that I may someday attempt to publish this year’s worth of meditations. Thank you for your help, and for your feedback too.
Daily Spiritual Sharing:
6/29/10 – Whenever I’m afraid, I can ask God to help me see each situation, person or challenge as he sees it, give him all my fear, calmly await his sure guidance, and trust and allow him to handle every situation, knowing he won’t let my fear get in the way of love.
6/28/10 – We can ignore all impulses to judge, condemn, correct, see evil, or contribute to conflict, guilt or weakness, and instead align ourselves with the holy light that knows all of humankind, and all past and present reality, only as loving and forever innocent.
6/27/10 – When we ask to see God’s perspective on any challenge, situation or any relationship, we’ll always be reminded of our eternal oneness with all, and that there is nothing that God’s boundless, unconditional, eternal, perfect love cannot heal.
6/26/10 – When we turn over our conflicts, priorities and decisions to our higher power, who alone understands the needs of all and what matters most, we will be reminded to hear in every communication only one of two things: an offer of love, or a request for it.
6/25/10 – We are now and forever exactly as we were created to be, but we will see, enjoy and celebrate God’s one beloved, innocent, perfect, eternal creation more clearly when we ask him to free our spirits from limiting cultural blinders of guilt, sin and fear.
6/24/10 – Rather than try to fix ourselves and others, we can surrender to God’s guidance, inspiration and justice (love); let go of judgment, comparisons and guilt; accept, appreciate and forgive all; and see all as eternally unique, innocent, perfect.
6/23/10 – We have created the scary stuff “out there in the world” through our own fearful, judgmental personal and cultural projections and reactions. When we change our goal to love, and see with accepting, forgiving, appreciative eyes, our world will change.
6/22/10 – Shared cultural illusions of brief, fearful, competitive lives between birth and death limit us, while faith in the eternal, universal justice of unconditional love, abundance and forgiveness offers infinite patience yielding immediate miraculous results.
6/21/10 – With no fear of conflict or competition, we can release all our illusions of past, future and separation, and commit wholeheartedly to seeing and sharing only a present miraculous healing motivation of love with God’s one holy, eternally-beloved creation.
6/20/10 – It’s helpful to think, not in terms of “you” and “me” and “others,” but rather, of all as one creation, one self, joined even with God. Then we will remember the truth that we can give only to our self, attack only our self, forgive only our self, love only our Self.
6/19/10 – We can choose to treat everyone in our lives in the same loving, appreciative and forgiving way as we would wish to be welcomed by God. As we get better at warmly offering acceptance, we learn to let our own past go, too, and to live now, free of guilt.
6/18/10 – We are eternal spirits who relate best to God by sharing our love, acceptance, forgiveness and appreciation with one another now. We can change the past and the future only by being willing to see everything differently in the holy present moment.
6/17/10 – Quiet, confident humility comes from willingness to allow greatness, power, ideas, energy, productivity, humor, creativity and love to flow through us from our higher source now, while both egotism and insecurity come from thinking we’re on our own.
6/16/10 – We save ourselves much pain, confusion and misery when we refuse to be distracted from the truth that we are all the eternal and beloved children of God, forever innocent, healed, forgiven, safe, and free to live openly, joyously and peacefully now.
6/15/10 – No matter what happens, no matter how weary, angry, guilty, sad, frustrated, frightened, discouraged, weak or down we feel, we can always faithfully ask for and await God’s certain peace, understanding, love, strength, inspiration and hope.
6/14/10 – We are not our bodies, nor are we our past guilts or future fears. Our bodies are merely communication tools, to be used, if we choose, to together receive and express God’s guidance, inspiration, wisdom, strength, creativity, love, healing and peace, now.
6/13/10 – When we’re fearful, defensive, angry and judgmental, seeing only attack and injustice, we can accept God’s guidance and strength instead of pain and suffering, and remember our reality and our purpose of peace, healing, forgiveness, truth, holiness.
6/12/10 – When we choose spiritual vision over judgment, we can see ourselves and others only as innocence, holiness, love and light, accepting all humankind as equal hosts to God’s eternal spirit, and using that shared power to heal all separation and division.
6/11/10 – All healing comes through us, not from us. When we ask humbly, willingly and openly for the love of God to work unimpeded through us as one with him and all of creation, we will help. When we rely upon our own wisdom and strength, we won’t help.
6/10/10 – Every moment that we devote to peace, love, acceptance, appreciation and forgiveness adds creatively, exponentially and eternally to the sum of love. Nothing else but love matters, nothing else lasts, nothing else is real in any eternal or spiritual sense.
6/9/10 – What we see “outside” us is actually a judgment either by our guiding spirit or by our ego. Our ego sees everything and everyone in terms of separation, fear, guilt, division and mortality, while spirit’s vision is wholeness, love, innocence, immortality.
6/8/10 – There are only two (incompatible) states of mind—a state of grace or a state of fear. Spirit sees and extends only love and peace eternally, while ego knows only mortal separation, guilt and fear. Choosing the right guide for vision makes all the difference.
6/7/10 – When we attempt to analyze reality by ourselves alone, we project guilt and fear on everything. When we ask our guiding spirit for truth, we remember that the eternal, spiritual reality of nature, ourselves, others and God is always and only love.
6/6/10 – We can make no decisions, large or small, whose effects do not ripple out to a multitude whose needs and lives—including our own—we can neither know nor understand. God does. We can safely, wisely, lovingly entrust every choice to him.
6/5/10 – All situations shift towards peace, acceptance, forgiveness and appreciation when we open ourselves to simple willingness to see them differently. God’s love and wholeness (holiness) are his sure and safe answers to our requests for his higher vision.
6/4/10 – We are peaceful and powerful beyond measure when we willingly entrust our egos, bodies, agendas and perspectives to God, allowing each holy instant to be exactly what it is, and knowing it as the miraculous, perfect spiritual reality that it is to him.
6/3/10 – We can ask God to help us stay in the present, free to see only the changeless holy eternal truth in ourselves, others and all of God’s creation, free of judgment, sin, guilt, fear, and retribution for the past, free to accept and forgive and love and appreciate.
6/2/10 – Our deadline-filled days are those we most need to turn over to our inner guide, who knows our highest priorities, releases our fears, calms us into purposeful, loving productivity, and turns each moment into a miracle of peace, joy and appreciation.
6/1/10 – We can enjoy all of nature (including humankind) non-judgmentally, as-is, while working lightly and lovingly to make the world a happier, better place. Changes of minds and hearts spring not from fear, but from appreciation, forgiveness, acceptance and love.
5/31/10 – War profiteers on all sides of war use demonization propaganda to dehumanize “the enemy” and divide us. Our guiding spirit’s holiness, power and comfort will allow us to see only the sanity, truth and shared loving purpose in all of humankind.
5/30/10 – Hell is the sense that we are guilty mortals competing for miserly spiritual and natural portions. Heaven is the sense that we are innocent, eternal spirits, foreverblessed with oneness, and with infinite and unconditional spiritual and natural abundance.
5/29/10 – When we focus on mistakes and shortcomings, not only will we miss seeing the good in others, we’ll miss it in ourselves. To teach and learn, we can ask our guiding spirit to help us see each situation, person, issue—and even ourselves—the way he does.
5/28/10 – If we’ll look calmly at our fears, we’ll see hidden beneath them, the truth about God’s one perfect, beloved, loving, innocent, eternal spiritual creation, and about all of humankind as now and always fully deserving only of love, honor and appreciation.
5/27/10 – Guilt offers only pain. We can understand and heal when we’re willing to see, through loving, non-judgmental eyes, all our relationships with/in God’s one whole innocent perfect creation as facets and expressions of our eternal relationship with him.
5/26/10 – God is within us, and we are within God. We are unique, eternal spirits, one with all of creation and with God. Love is our purpose, our meaning, our joy, the glue that binds us to one another and to God our home, whose holy temple is our relationship.
5/25/10 – When we’ve learned not to judge anyone else, for anything, but instead to love, accept, forgive and appreciate everyone as-is, we will find ourselves finally free of guilt and fear, and as joyous and light and one with all as we were lovingly created to be.
I am polishing my fifteen-chapter memoirs about my life as a military brat…. Looking for an agent…. 🙂 Meanwhile….
Every day that I can, I meditate/pray/ (or whatever word you might care to call it) as early as I can. Usually I have personal questions or issues that seem pressing that day, so I attempt to articulate them, along with any fears I might be repressing—both before and during my meditation. Then I do some reading from a variety of inspiring sources. Then I summarize my “sense” of what I felt or learned from that day’s meditations, questions and reading, in a brief “Spiritual Sharing.” The whole process usually averages about an hour, although sometimes it takes just a few minutes.
I don’t profess any knowledge at all other than my personal experience and insights—certainly no universal religious beliefs. I do try to follow the teachings and example of Jesus, and thus consider myself a Christian. But beyond Jesus’ teachings, I am a mystical agnostic, in the sense of not-knowing anything except in a scientific or personally-mystical or spiritual sense. I do have a very personally-designed faith in certain practices which works for me. I make no claims that I know what is true for everyone or that I am “right” in any of my spiritual conclusions. I am a strong advocate of interfaith understanding, dialogue, respect and support, believe that we can all profitably share our truths with one another, and am also an admirer of the humanitarian work and spirit of all secular seekers.
I see my written daily “Spiritual Sharings” as personal expressions of mystical insights from/into to a spiritual dimension; they come to me during my meditations and I write them down. However, all individual human attempts to express any kinds of truth through language are necessarily limited, personal and fallible.
My daily spiritual practice strengthens my faith and has invaluable applications to my own daily life, and I do trust that sharing my results is sometimes useful to some others. But of course, please be assured that I come and go as humbly and fallibly as others do, and as I have always done, continually forgetting or not applying higher truths I have learned and intuitively understand.
I hope you will feel free to substitute (for the term, “God,” in the following meditations) any personal word that best describes or names the Source of your own experience of spiritual power, insight and understanding—whether that source be “God,” guiding spirit, intuition, the unknowable, Nature, conscience, a higher power, Hashem, inner-knowing, Christ, Science, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, natural understanding, YHWH or Yahweh, Shiva, the Over-Soul, the Goddess, the divine, the Name, the Universe, Krishna, friend, G-d, light, Allah, Lord, Jehovah, Abba, the Ineffable, the One, Adonai, Creator, the name of your preferred deity, the ground of your being, I-Am-That-I-Am, or any other word(s) or name(s) that work(s) for you.
I find spiritual truth to be ultimately ineffable and uniquely personal. Our various expressions and explanations of universal spiritual truth/s seem limited because we are mentally and linguistically limited, and ultimately—human. Like so many others, I feel inspired to compose and share my personal and unique understandings, knowing that spiritual truth cannot be ultimately, finally, universally expressed, understood, known or agreed upon.
In this sense, all of our searches for understanding about and communion with “God,” through the multitude of faiths, belief systems, spiritual practices and secular searches for truth, human interdependence, conscience and service are interchangeably valuable, adding to a our higher shared human cultural understanding of the spiritual dimension of life.
The many different personal, linguistic, cultural, religious, experiential and explanatory names we assign to our various but uniquely individual religious, spiritual, humanist and philosophical experiences and understandings cannot change the nature and essence of the source of that spiritual power. Regardless of the conflicting beliefs, perspectives and practices of a world of diverse worshippers, seekers and non-believers, whatever, whoever and however our higher Source may be will never change. In this sense, we all share the same God.
The central message of all the world’s great religions in their highest forms is faith, hope, and love (in all their highest understandings and expressions) whether in human culture or in our highest experiences of a spiritual dimension. In an eternal and spiritual sense, all human cultures and every human life has infinite and even perhaps eternal value, even when those cultures and those humans seem temporally to be struggling with incredible burdens, or conversely, are enjoying disproportionate and inequitable benefits, enlightenment, privileges and support. From an eternal or temporal perspective, however, loving, accepting, forgiving and appreciating one another works best.
I embrace the interfaith movement, which supports the search for authentic worship, community, spirituality, faith and service through familiar traditions, while encouraging better understanding, respect and support for the faiths of others.
It’s possible that I may someday attempt to publish this year’s worth of meditations. Thank you for your help, and for feedback too.
Daily Spiritual Sharing:
5/24/10 – When we’re feeling fearful or awkward about how to react to a situation or person, we can turn the moment over to the guidance, perspective and insights of our higher power—and then relax, knowing the best healing response for all will come to us.
5/23/10 – We can bow to the world’s cultural dream of fear, sin, judgment, suffering, guilt, depression and death, or we can awaken now to the beauty, peace, love and joy of beloved and loving spirits, eternally celebrating God’s one perfect, abundant creation.
5/22/10 – When I’m feeling negative about any situation, person or issue, and ask to see things differently, the helpful insight I receive encompasses all interests, and reveals my eternal oneness, and loving communication now, with all that is—man, nature, and God.
5/21/10 – God’s forgiveness, and our own, release us from our dreams of retribution and penance for our unjust pasts, and free us to focus now, with God, on acceptance, appreciation and love for all things, the only purposes which assure peace and happiness.
5/20, 2010 – When we remind ourselves that we don’t have to do anything, we will also remember that some of the things we think we have to do are often things we really want to do—which is a happier place to come from.
5/19, 2010 – When we feel weak, beleaguered, hopeless, despairing, angry, guilty, resentful and defiant, we can surrender all to faith, let go, and trust God’s order, purpose, strength, peace, love, innocence and oneness to miraculously transform chaos into peace.
5/18/10 – We can struggle to protect, affirm and aggrandize our illusions of separate, guilty, competing bodies alone in a threatening world; or we can know only one beloved eternal spiritual creation sharing one holy purpose and one peaceful loving home in God.
5/17/10 – When we judge the world and try to fix it, we will see only chaos and error. When we relax, judge not, and see, think and be only love, we will find in ourselves and in all the inner peace and love that gives the world the only meaning it will ever have.
5/16/10 – We can focus on fearful and unsolvable mortal problems, shortcomings and mistakes in a futile attempt to correct and change ourselves and others, or we can let our guiding spirit help us focus on only what is good, true and eternal in ourselves and others.
5/15/10 – “Being” is oneness, wholeness, and the shared loving purpose of a diverse and holy self. This simple truth of one love, one creation and one eternal time of now can be hidden by false, frightening, complex cultural concepts and assumptions, but never lost.
5/14/10 – God’s perfect strength, guidance, and good, holy, beautiful will and eternal love for each of us is expressed and assured—with no conflicts of interest and no divisions—as we choose to love, forgive, accept and appreciate one another now.
5/13/10 – When we see life as a zero-sum game of competing interests, we see nothing but deprivation, scarcity and competition. When we realize that spiritual abundance is equal, universal and eternal, we see only common challenges and cooperative solutions.
5/12/10 – Peace, certainty, sanity and sense in a world of apparent cruelty, chaos and meaninglessness lie in recognizing and practicing only eternal, unified, holy, loving values, attitudes, actions and purposes—which (despite their various names) are all one.
5/11/10 – The opposite of analysis is acceptance. We can’t “figure out” or “make sense” of evil, hate or chaos, because these are meaningless concepts. The beginning of wisdom and understanding comes from a focus upon only that which is good, loving and eternal.
5/10/10 – Our will and God’s will are unchangingly and forever one and the same. We are creations of love itself, eternally open channels through which his love flows. We are co-creators, co-extenders and co-receivers of God’s perfect and endless cycle of love.
5/9/10 – We are always sufficient to each moment’s need, because all of God’s meaning, strength and power lie behind each and every one of even our smallest loving thoughts, gentle touches, healing gestures, and words of acceptance, appreciation and forgiveness.
5/8/10 – We are not separate, unlovable, inadequate, competing, doomed bodies, nor are we—as our human culture tells us—broken pieces of creation. We are one interdependent spiritual self, forever individually, uniquely and creatively expressing the love of God.
5/7/10 – When we are feeling weak and challenged, we can offer up our heartfelt willingness to see each person and situation now as God does; humbly turn over to him each fear, shame and sorrow; and confidently await his miraculous, healing vision.
5/6/10 – I am not guilty, nor is anyone else. We are here and now only to love. As we focus upon this innocent present-purpose, we free ourselves and one another, moment-to-moment, from our sad, angry illusions of an inadequate, unloving, unfair, shared past.
5/5/10 – What and how and whom we choose to love today has nothing at all to do with making up for or changing shared false illusions of a sad, guilty past, which is, after all, gone. Love is what we are now and forever, the only “time” there is to love and be loved.
5/4/10 – We can’t prepare ourselves in advance to know how best to handle each new situation, but we can be ready and willing to turn over each challenging moment trustingly to God, and then to quietly, peacefully and confidently await his sure answers.
5/3/10 – All love, all wholeness, all healing, all relationship, heaven itself, is within—where we share one knowing of our eternal oneness with God, humankind and all of creation.
5/2/10 – We are thoughts in the mind of God, innocent and beloved and one with another and God, as we were created. The illusion which our bodies represent is the imagined gap between us and each other, between us and the universe, between us and God.
5/1/10 – We can see everything differently, lovingly, peacefully, helpfully—from a spiritual, eternal perspective—if, when we are afraid, we ask God for his vision and insight, and then wait in trust, knowing we will receive it.
4/30/10 – We are all unique, innocent, indispensable expressions of one beloved creation, all equal heirs to eternal justice, spiritual abundance and unconditional love, all learning love, forgiveness, acceptance and appreciation for one another, ourselves and God.
4/29/10 – When we add the suffering of guilt and worry to pain, see ourselves and others as unfairly treated, think life brief and unjust and God very-conditionally loving, we’ll feel alienated, guilty and angry, having (mis)judged God’s one eternal, perfect creation.
4/28/10 – Our “self” is an eternal whole, one with God and his beloved creation, forever extending, communicating and expressing love, oneness and connection personally and irreplaceably, through unique, temporary bodies, personalities, experiences and talents.
4/27/10 – We can make no decisions based on small ideas of weakness, and give no power to imagined individual limitations, but remember instead that we are open, guided, beloved, strengthened media through whom God uniquely expresses his love.
4/26/10 – In the midst of our daily human dramas, we forget our nature as eternal beings in a spiritual dimension with no past or future, no place or time, but rather always and forever everywhere in an eternal now, sharing all creation, all understanding, all love.
4/25/10 – When we determinedly let go of all judgment, anger, blame, attack and retribution toward someone else, all our own defensiveness about our own illusions of our own guilt will fall away simultaneously and miraculously, leaving behind only love.
4/24/10 – When we show up at any moment as guilt-ridden and inadequate, unforgivable and unlovable, we tell the world that they, too, are worthless and bad, deserving of condemnation and death, and hopelessly divided from man and from God.
4/23/10 – Love isn’t difficult, but removing our many barriers to it requires real commitment and effort. Everything that blocks love—all our guilt, attack, fear, anger, envy and judgment—can be brought to God to be healed, released and transformed.
4/22/10 – When we let go of our cultural dream of judgment, guilt and sin, when we realize that separation of God and his beloved creation was never possible, then we will know we never left his garden of oneness, forgiveness, love, acceptance and appreciation.
4/21/10 – The best change we can make is to let go of guilt. Jesus’ whole life was about teaching us that we are forgiven, beloved and free, now and eternally—to live in peace, innocence and love. Would we refuse to hear his message? Let him teach and die in vain?
4/20/10 – Certainty, purpose and present-focus come from seeing ourselves and all others as lovable, as-is. When we accept others’ choices, thoughts and actions mercifully and gently, we receive in return the gifts of peace, acceptance and freedom from judgment.
4/19/10 – Love cannot co-exist with guilt, fear, judgment and attack. Let these go, and recognize instead, in yourself and in all others, the accepting, free, joyous, loved and loving eternal spirit ready to be born again at each new moment, now and always.
4/18/10 – Relationships are about unlimited opportunities to love and be loved, to serve and heal, and not about fear, guilt and disappointment. When we forgive, accept and appreciate ourselves and others as perfect, innocent, eternal spirits, we share one mind.
4/17/10 – Everyone, without exception, makes mistakes, big and small. We can drag our past miseries into our darkened, miserable presents and bitter futures, or we can let go of guilt—and discover and share with others, lives of innocence, lightheartedness and joy.
4/16/10 – Shall we cling to an old, tired cultural vision of an evil, fallen, unlovable, unforgivable humankind caught in a world of fear, judgment, guilt, sin, condemnation and judgment? Or embrace a joyous new vision of forgiveness and unconditional love?
4/15/10 – The feelings of guilt, fear, condemnation, aloneness and inadequacy written clearly upon our faces announce to everyone else that they too are unforgivable, doomed, irredeemable—and as hopeless as we. Is this the mirror we want to hold up to others?
4/14/10 – If we are God’s eternally beloved creation, then there is no death, time has no direction, and the past has no meaning. We are always and forever with God in the present, now, which is the only time there is, and where all healing, love and joy occur.
4/13/10 – Loving relationships are not about fear, guilt, comparisons or sacrifices. They enhance forgiveness, acceptance, love and appreciation for all, support recognition of the changeless innocence and perfection of all, and thus infinitely and sufficiently bless all.
4/12/10 – Why would we waste our lives defending and making up for yesterdays that are gone? God’s peace lies in recognizing and appreciating, now, that we are all innocent, unique, indispensable facets of one eternally loved, loving and lovable spiritual creation.
4/11/10 – What kind of God would create an impossible world, and then ask his children to briefly compete for a limited number of exalted or miserable eternal slots? Why would we spend our lives feeling—and thus making others feel—guilty and inadequate?
4/10/10 – Truth is total, and can be understood only when we are peacefully aware of our loved, lovable and loving oneness with God, nature, and all humankind. Condemnation, conflict and guilt are meaningless, senseless and irrational, and cannot be understood.
4/9/10 – Truth, knowledge and understanding do not lie in extremes, separation, polarity, division or opposition, nor in anger, self-righteousness or conflict. They can only be recognized in unity, harmony, acceptance, forgiveness, oneness, reconciliation and peace.
4/8/10 – When we see ourselves and others merely as flesh-and-blood human mortals, separated from each other and doomed to die, we lose sight of our mutual eternal reality as spirit—forever loved and loving, forever innocent, forever reborn in an eternal present.
4/7/10 – Who are we? We are the eternal love that created us. We are the love that expresses creatively through our unique experiences, learning and talents. We are the love which together forgives, comforts, enlightens, empowers—and moves mountains.
4/6/10 – Love created us by a loving thought, and we continue creation through our own loving thoughts. Life itself is a cycle of creation of love through a multitude of unique forms and expressions. Nothing else is real, nothing else matters, nothing else lasts.
4/5/10 – Shall we spend our lives guiltily groveling, defending ourselves, and rebelling against feeling judged? Or shall we joyously recognize, accept, and celebrate each moment of a life that is not about judging or being judged, but about eternal innocence?
4/4/10 – Together we are God’s one strong, loving, confident, eternal, diverse creation, an irresistibly loving, lovable force, no “part” of which ever needs defending. Defending our illusions of separate, uncertain, inadequate, imagined “selves” only weakens us.
4/3/10 – We are powerful and loving beyond our imaginations, but we can’t recognize or fulfill our own unique and infinite potential until we respect, support and appreciate all others’ potential—as equally, eternally and uniquely amazing, infinite and wonderful.
4/2/10 – We can focus on goodness—seek it, appreciate it, offer it—because it’s pointless to try to understand or fix goodness’ senseless opposites—all errors, sins, evil, mistakes and wrongs. Instead, we can forgive, accept, love, (ourselves too), and let the rest go.
4/1/10 – We are eternal spirits, living life now as one innocent, valuable, beloved, diverse creation, sharing the same interests, and longing for the oneness of loving and being loved. Such awareness offers surrender, peace, forgiveness, acceptance and appreciation.
3/31/10 – Acceptance that we are forever unique, innocent and diverse, as we were created by an unconditionally and eternally loving God to be, helps us let go of the guilt and judgment we project onto others and ourselves, that causes most of the world’s pain.
3/30/10 – When we remember to respond to everyone, every time, with acceptance, forgiveness and appreciation—they like it! J
3/29/10 – Did God create us to drag along feeling guilty, weak and inadequate, or to recognize our capacity to be his loving, joyous, glorious children? If we ask, he will affirm all our ambitions to be our best selves in each moment.
3/28/10 – When we doubt and fear others, we can rely upon God’s inspiration, perspective and strength to help us live out our faith in the inextinguishable spark of divinity and love which is that-of-God eternally present in everyone’s essential nature.
3/27/10 – God created us with the goal of sharing his love and joy with us. We can share in his purpose and achieve his goal by sharing his love and joy with everyone else. The love and joy which then returns to him completes an infinitely loving, joyful cycle.
3/26/10 – We don’t need to learn love, which we all recognize, feel, and intuitively understand. But we do need to get rid of all our wrong-minded cultural ideas which cover, hide and bury our loving natures beneath their burden of guilt, fear and judgment.
3/25/10 – Instead of using anger in a futile attempt to push onto others our own present guilt feelings about the past, we can surrender all guilt entirely to an infinitely patient, understanding, forgiving God, and share his healing, motivating love, grace and peace.
3/24/10 – Each time we take a moment to request, receive and allow God’s unexpected, surprising, miraculous perspectives and inspiration, we will see, accept, appreciate, encourage and lift ourselves and others in incalculable, unforeseeable ways.
3/23/10 – When we finally realize that we don’t know anything, we may be more willing to learn everything from one who does understand, and who teaches by gently offering healing insight, inspiration and perspective to each question we humbly surrender to him.
3/22/10 – Perfect peacefulness (comprising love, forgiveness, joy, and acceptance of all-that-is, all others, and oneself) is both cause and effect of spiritual wisdom, and vice-versa. Neither peace nor spiritual understanding is ever found apart from the other.
3/21/10 – When we ask our guiding spirit for another way to see all that is troubling us, and attentively await his answer, we can be sure we will always receive a brand-new, unexpected, surprising perception which will miraculously change everything.
3/20/10 – Power lies in all of us working peacefully together, and in none of us alone, because opposition weakens power, and weak power is a contradiction in terms. All that’s ever missing in any situation is our own willingness to share our love with all.
3/19/10 – Whatever thought, activity or task we do mindfully, joyfully, and in a spirit of love is a right choice, blessed by God, because we were created as one, to together create and extend love, learn and teach love, give and receive love, in all its forms.
3/18/10 – When we ask to know God’s will for us, we realize that what he wants for us is what we want—to lean upon his strength, grace and guidance, to be free from sacrifice, guilt, fear and weakness, and to be his own unique, powerful, loving expressions.
3/17/10 – When we’re feeling discouraged, we can give each one of our challenges over to God, remember that he celebrates, appreciates, loves, accepts and forgives us all unconditionally now, and begin again to faithfully accept, express and extend his love.
3/16/10 – We can give, receive, be and do more, when we seek and trust God’s guidance and miraculous outcomes, let go of guilt and fear, see only love or requests for it, and then surrender to God’s strength and healing as it works powerfully through us now.
3/15/10 – The term, “good,” comprises every expression of having, giving or receiving love, while the term, “evil,” comprises every expression of the fear of not having, giving or receiving love.
3/14/10- We can choose to joyfully contribute to God’s eternal process of creating, extending and expanding a loving spiritual reality, or stray temporarily into fearful, preoccupations; but we can change neither his outcomes nor his infinite patience.
3/13/10 – False humility is the illusion that we are weak and alone. True humility is the realization that we are powerful to the extent that we remember to ask for and rely upon God’s love, guidance and strength.
3/12/10 – Our purpose here is to share unconditional love in all its forms with all others. What should others’ purpose toward us be? We won’t ask that question anymore, when we learn to fulfill our own purpose perfectly, since we’ll already know the answer.
3/11/10 – We can’t solve our problems alone, because we’re feeling guilty, separate, inadequate, unlovable and unloving. But when we bring them openly to God, he solves them by freeing us to love ourselves and others unconditionally, as he loves all.
3/10/10 – Heaven is mindfulness, awareness and appreciation of the bountiful creation and eternal justice and love we all are and share; while hell is the misery of obliviousness to our one eternal, rich, abundant, innocent life and love, so generously given to all.
3/9/10 – We want to feel safe and loved, so we hurry to learn; but then we want to be right about what we’ve learned. Better to accept humbly how little we know, keep learning and loving, cherish our truths and welcome others’, and love the questions.
3/8/10 – Our bodies are useless for any purpose other than communicating love in all its forms. When we realize this, and when we have learned to use them only for loving, we’ll discover that we can communicate love just as freely and completely without them.
3/7/10 – To know what we “believe,” we can consider how we spend our lives. Beliefs which divide us from God and man mostly serve to depress, limit and harm us, while beliefs that draw us closer to love of God and all creation inspire joy, power and freedom.
3/6/10 – Our beliefs limit us to endure angry, fearful, separate lives weighted with guilt, resentment, hurry, competition, division, frustration, dread, suffering and despair, or they free us to celebrate joy, wholeness and peace, as one perfect, eternally-lovable creation.
3/5/10 – The eternal holy present is all there is, our only time to know God’s calming guidance, perspective and strength, our only time to live faithfully and fearlessly as innocent, loving, invaluable, beloved equals sharing peace, joy, purpose and oneness.
3/4/10 – Happiness is a choice about who we are. We can remind ourselves and others of our reality as joyful, peaceful, powerful, loving, beloved, eternal, innocent children of God, or suffer and die as hurried, vicious, vulnerable, sinful, guilty, punished mortals.
3/3/10 – We have no needs, changes or corrections to make, except to ask that God’s changeless, eternal peace and love might continuously see, greet, bless and give through us to that same changeless, eternal peace and love in others, in a limitless, endless cycle.
3/2/10 – Did a judgmental God create unequal, inadequate, guilty, helpless, miserable, doomed sinners, forever cast away from him? Or did a loving God create equal, innocent, lovable, beloved, loving, powerful, eternally joyous spirits, forever one with him?
3/1/10 – Meaning and peace always come from sharing our own unique, loving gifts with others—unless we use our gifts to gratify our egos, to inflate our little separate sense of self, or to build false concepts of superiority, specialness, difference or vindication.
2/28/10 – When we’re feeling afraid, defensive, confused, judgmental and alone, we can ask God to shine away the nothingness of our fears, and give us instead the loving, unifying perspectives which alone bring understanding and meaning to our relationships.
2/27/10 – Instead of seeing fearful, guilty, sorrowful bodies struggling toward death, we can ask to see now only the goodness, purity, innocence and eternal perfection in all, and thus remember with joy that we too are exactly as we were created and meant to be.
2/26/10 – We are boundlessly empowered when we use our unique talents, interests and abilities to support peace, healing and unity, to give and receive love and joy, and to encourage everyone else’s equal power to do the same.
2/25/10 – Relationships thrive when we recognize and appreciate one another as equally loved, innocent, eternal brothers and sisters, with no needs but to walk together in the holy present, joyfully learning, giving and receiving God’s boundless love.
2/24/10 – We are God’s expression, invulnerable in our eternal innocence and perfection, as we were meant to be. We witness our oneness when we entrust our problems, the instant they arise, to him who solves them, not with everyday illusions, but with truth.
2/23/10 – When I ask my guiding spirit to “decide for me,” I can then relax, confident that my priorities and energies will be directed thoughtfully and lovingly, and that I will have a busy, productive, peaceful day, keeping the highest interests of all in mind.
2/22/10 – Spiritual health, like physical health, thrives on discipline and vigilance. We can share God’s peace when we practice his presence, accept his love and grace, seek understanding and inspiration, and fully appreciate ourselves and all his beloved children.
2/21/10 – Peace, joy and love come to us when we share it. We can act out our cultural delusions of separation, lack, competition, pain, guilt, loss, death and retribution, or we can lovingly appreciate and enjoy our eternal oneness with God and his beloved creation.
2/20/10 – When we put all needs and all gifts under God’s guidance, and let go of everything but love—all guilt, fear, sacrifice, resentment, doubt, confusion—we can see and appreciate God in all his perfect, beloved children, and know all things are possible.
2/19/10 – At any moment, we can ask for and receive our guiding spirit’s help to see and accept ourselves and others with love, understanding and appreciation.
2/18/10 – God is one truth, one love, one meaning, one joy, one answer to all things. When we give, see, accept and love all things as he does, we will also understand and appreciate ourselves.
2/17/10 – When we ask our guiding spirit to help us stay lovingly in each present moment, we can let go of all our fears, and all negative thoughts about yesterdays and tomorrows.
2/16/10 – Our lives, as they unfold in all their beauty, complexity, pain, glory and tragedy, are God’s will, even when things seem to go wrong. Our job is to love and let-love. Our guilt and fear add nothing to life, but our love, acceptance and joy add a lot.
2/15/10 – God is the love in which I see everyone with full appreciation. I can let go of my fearful imaginings, and choose to see only through his loving, accepting, forgiving eyes all the beauty, purity and holiness that is his own beloved, eternal, perfect creation.
2/14/10 – I am God’s completion. His will and mine are the same—to share his joy and peace, not suffer pain. When I surrender to his guidance, and let him teach me to forgive, help, trust and appreciate every person in my life, I am choosing his peace and joy.
2/13/10 – God created us to learn about his love, communicate his love and extend his love, Nothing else matters or lasts. When we lose our way, God merely waits patiently for our return, saving all his love for us all, eternally.
2/12/10 – When we feel separated from others—attacked, unappreciated, resentful—we can remember to seek within the calm, certain reassurance of our shared spiritual reality as one eternal creation, one gift, one mind, one truth, one purpose, one love.
2/11/10 – There is never a shortage of love in any person or situation, but sometimes we let fear, guilt and judgment crowd love out. We can look at, and then surrender, all such concerns to God, who remembers that nothing except love matters, or means anything.
Wallowing in winter’s woes is so addictive. Sometimes it seems life will never change, things will never get better, we won’t ever improve. March lions look back at us ominously as they depart, tails lashing, mouths dripping with blood. As we grope for ways to ease past losses, our bleary eyes may see only the faded evidence of passing winter, only bare black branches crossing dirty snow, too-recent reminders that there is a time for dying, and the Lord indeed taketh away.
But babbling and burbling, surging and burgeoning, importunate idiot spring insists we wake up now to springtime’s morning, that we set about now to recycle new selves from old. Kicking us out of hibernation, spring slaps us silly, shakes off our inertia and bad habits, wakes up our slushy sap, pulls us up out of past muck by our own muddy bootstraps, and stirs our clods to go outside and just do it.
“Triumph Tulips” really do triumph over Old Man Winter, while old irritating Mister Smiley-Sun lingers longer, warming us to new energy, new meanings and purpose. Frozen sloughs of mental and emotional despond thaw in spring, clarifying into watery resolution. Spring has the audacity to demand we dive back into the cold waters of life that cleanse and replenish, and splash around.
Spring offers us a mustard-seed faith that can’t quite remember what it knows or why it knows it, that isn’t even sure it does know, but acts instinctively as if it did. Spring is that swelling, blooming seed rising, blossoming into I-can-do-it, I can learn it, achieve it, move past it, live life again.
Spring forces us to see, if only from the corners of sleepy eyes, the first fine frills of coreopsis feathering up through bare sticks; baby buds of lilacs, magnolias, forsythia, pussy willows, and dogwood; the fat impertinent baby-grapes of hyacinths, the raspberry popsicles of promised peonies poking us to wake up too. Spring’s heavy-lifting builds up our faith, stone by stone, strengthening our belief in new hope, new opportunities, and new forgiveness.
Spring flatly refuses to allow anyone to miss twitterpation’s anticipation of the first robins, bunnies, crocuses, daffodils, and witch hazel. A whisper…then a hum…then a chorus of celebration, and a great hallelujah spring-shout–Look at me! Look at me!
Spring is so profligate we can’t help finally remembering that the Lord also giveth abundantly and eternally.
We know again in spring that our loved ones will come home safely, God will bless America, we will find manna to feed the hungry. For there is a time for living too, even in war-torn Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine/Israel, where Christians celebrate resurrection's promise while Muslim's spring holiday of Noruz affirms once again that neither earthquakes nor explosions nor tsunamis nor terrorism nor war nor hate nor fear can ever separate any of God’s eternal children from their bountiful Creator’s love.
Spring tells us to watch and wait, and have faith, for joy has come again, though winter has been long and it’s been dark in the long night of the garden, dark waiting beside the tomb. Watch for, wait for the faint first signs of the promised rebirth, for the return of the light, the resurrection of earth’s yearly lyrical miracle.
Watch and wait, and have faith.