Light, Love, and Life

I see the soul as a glimmer of The Light that begins as soon as the new life is loved. I believe that all love is a part of The Almighty, and that we are all linked to The Light as long as we are loved. I believe that our challenge is to make sure that all humans receive love (which entails earthly responsibility) so that their Soul-Lights will grow and be able to multiply and connect with the other love energy in creation.

I believe that wherever there is love, there is The Light still connected to The Source of All Life and Love. Love connects us eternally to each other and to The Light. By giving of ourselves in love, we can create an aura of peace on earth as it was in the beginning, and it is in the hereafter.

Unless there is love-in-action, there is no life worth living. Many who conceive don't feel the presence of a love community in their lives. Many are conceived where there is no love even in the act of procreation. From where will the everyday acts of love come without a caring community?

Pleasure, Pain, and Peace

How are we to know when we are saints and when we are sinners in the lives of others? Is there any way other than to take the "temperature" of our interactions and ascertain whether our presence brings pain or peace?

I used to think that I was put on earth to bring people pleasure. I worked very hard at this, even becoming a caterer; thereby turning my natural tendency into a way to support my family. Then I became a publicist, raising funds for non-profit organizations by combining glowing words with party planning to promote various charitable causes.

I used these same devices to develop relationships, always attempting to soothe savage souls by conquering them with kindness and catering to their desires. I have come to realize that sometimes pleasure is the antithesis of peace. I have been an enabler, and I now have to deal with the monsters of my own making.

When we take off our old skins, we must accept that many will attempt to lay them back on our shoulders. Because they had learned to live with us in our old selves, our new skins cause many to itch. The pain of purging our souls can be scary, so we need hands to hold and people to protect us while we grow out of our old skins and into the new. How tightly we have to hold onto the new skins, and to those who support our growth, until the new become permanent parts of us!

When we are so busy filling ourselves and each other with pleasure and avoidance of pain, there's no room for The Light to grow. I cling to the belief that even the darkest night of the soul contains at least a flicker of The Light. When we open enough space in our souls, this Light will grow to fill the empty spaces. But how do we deal with the demons that dive into the void? We can't help fight each others personal demons unless we are invited in.

Sometimes it seems that the only way to honor a person or a relationship is to walk away and wait. If my very presence is a cause of anger and agitation to someone's soul, is it not better that I take my leave rather than to continue bringing about discord? Or, is the discord necessary to get to a better place, a place that may have less pleasure, but more peace?

The All Enveloping Light

Throughout my life, I've been told that there are certain people who have been declared to be saints. We really can't know what secret sins were in the hearts and lives of even the seemingly most holy people. Nor can we know what small sparks of goodness may have been left smoldering in the souls of those touched by those we consider to be most wicked.

We tend to want to put people in one or the other category, saint or sinner. I believe that we can't know what way the scales of life balance after we have died. A person who may have been a drain on the spirit of one person may have brought light into the soul of another.

Even saints are not gods; they too brought both pain and peace to those they left behind, and these influences may go on for generations to come. I cannot judge the goodness or badness of a person by what they do to or around me, but I can decide whether their presence in my life is a source of light or a source of sin to me. I believe that we are absolved of the shame of wrongs we inflicted in our lack of The Light, but that we are also admonished to help make right what we have set wrong.

Did Paul fully make amends to the families that followed his days of persecuting the Christians, or did the seeds of his destruction carry on for many generations, even until today? Are we fully at peace with all of creation simply because we have turned our new lives over to The Light? I don't think we can know.

We are the hands, hearts, and voices of The Holy Spirit on this earth. We must live to spread light into even the darkest places. For this, we must seek to infuse our lives with The Light so that it envelops all we encounter.

Spirit of Light,
Spirit so bright,
Holy Spirit,
On me alight.

Faith in the Face of Pharisees

I knew a woman once who was considered immoral by many in our neighborhood. She seemed to fly high as the sky one day, and the next she'd take to her bed and refuse to even feed her children. She was magical to me. When she was flying high, she was more fun than any adult woman I'd ever known and more glamorous than any movie star, all on a thrift store budget.

Men were allowed to be, do, and say anything they wanted because, "That's how men are." They were almost never declared insane or defective. They were just men being men. A woman was always held to a higher standard, especially if she was a mom. Any weakness in women was a moral failing. Weakness in males was to be expected, and they were still allowed to have all the moral authority. No wonder women rebelled.

I heard men expound on the nature of God as they themselves abused their authority. But one of the greatest spiritual lessons that I ever learned was from this supposedly fallen woman when she brought over to our house one of her favorite records to share with our rule-bound mother.

"I Believe"
Words and music by Erwin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, Al Stillman

I believe for every drop of rain that falls
A flower grows
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night
A candle glows
I believe for everyone who goes astray, someone will come
To show the way
I believe, I believe

I believe above a storm the smallest prayer
Can still be heard
I believe that someone in the great somewhere
Hears every word

Every time I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf or see the sky
Then I know why, I believe

I still marvel at her faith in the face of so many Pharisees.

Greed and Grief

Everybody has an agenda,
Whether we know it or not.
All of us want to protect our turf,
So unwelcome change, we stop.

It takes time to listen to others,
And it takes much energy
To ask myself what is better,
The ways of you or the ways of me.

It takes a lot of wisdom
To sort these questions out,
But few of us have the patience,
And the wisdom of others, we doubt.

Fairness is the basis of wisdom,
And few believe in this truth.
This seems to be why our earth
Is caught in an endless loop

Of jealousy, greed, and hatred
From the time of Adam and Eve
Because we feel ourselves powerless,
We continue to grieve.

A question isn't always accusation;
Silence may, or may not be, consent.
Perhaps we'd have more peace
If we asked others what they meant.

Healing Hearts and Heads

I believe that our inherited weaknesses are often what lead us to sin. If I can face my individual weakness and address it, I may be able to avoid turning the this weakness into sin. Sometimes the weakness presents in the form of sickness before it manifests itself as sin. There are many psychiatric illnesses that I think we use as excuses for sin, rather than as warning signs of weaknesses that need to be addressed before we turn to sin to make us "feel better".

The New Covenant made it impossible for us to blame our sins on the weaknesses of our parents. We are taught that salvation is not inherited; neither is sin. We can choose The Way or not. We also must choose a support group for The Way. Sadly, many who call themselves Christian, including many parents, are following paths that don't seem to be consistent with The Way of Christ.

As children, we are unable to follow any path but that set out for us by those who control our very survival. The way I was brought up, this authority over my life was transferred from my father, through my mother, to my pastor, to my husband. It wasn't until recently that I became aware that this was a great stumbling block to my being able to hear the voice of The Spirit inside my own soul.

I read scripture and often "hear" a different interpretation than what has been taught to me throughout my life. There are also many writings that I feel are sacred which are not contained in what we consider the totality of sacred scripture for now and for the future.

The Almighty's voice has always been available to anyone who seeks The Spirit of Holiness (Wholeness). We must stop believing that only the anointed few are privy to The Voice.

Holy Spirit Heal our hearts;
Holy Spirit heal our heads;
Holy Spirit take our tongues,
And have us speak Your words instead.

Sickness of the Soul

Sickness of the soul has long been called sin, but how often is it really sadness for the sin inflicted on our souls. So much is done to our spirits even before we're given birth, and when we're pre-verbal. How can we know when the seeds of the abscesses were planted? How can we name what was done to us before we had words?

We call so many afflictions genetic simply because they appear before birth. These are the same weaknesses that we used to blame on the sins of the fathers and/or demonic possession. At least we seem to be getting closer to discontinuation of blaming the afflicted for their own afflictions.

There are still those who practice spells and incantations over sick people, attempting to exorcise the demons. We are still afraid to hold those who are writhing in the greatest pain, afraid that what they have may be contagious. It is contagious. Psychologists say that one way to tell if a person is depressed is that the psychologist feels somewhat depressed after the patient leaves.

To love is to absorb some of the pain of the loved. We are told that Jesus felt "the energy go out" of him when he was touched by someone in need of healing. Even as grounded in goodness as was Jesus, he needed to retreat to the desert to exorcise the negative energy he had collected before he could enter the most challenging part of his ministry. What hubris to think that we can appoint confessors who absorb all the evil without falling ill themselves.

Sickness of the soul can only be healed with loving kindness in word and deed. Unfortunately, we often can't get at the root of the problem because we don't know the source of the "infection". How can we begin to peel the layers of dead "tissue" off the wounds if we don't know the history of the afflicted?

Perhaps this is where we can use the admonition that the weaknesses of the fathers are passed down to the children. If we assume this to be true, we can, hopefully, put ourselves in place of the parents and help to heal what we can't see. Laying of hands is not the same as holding.

Pills and incantations may open the wounds, but the only thing that will heal them is a new skin of love. We must keep ourselves strong so that we are able to absorb some of the pain without ourselves becoming infected. The only way to keep the healing going is to build a network of like-minded lovers to support one another in their ministries. We are all called to minister to one another; it's not a job. It's a vocation.