Dear Spiritual Family,
Why wait for Heaven? This question is asked repeatedly in Lesson 188 in A Course in Miracles. It is also the title of a song composed by Oman and Shanti in the 1980s. “Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. The peace of God is shining in you now.”
Mary and I have sung this song to many of you over the years. It is a favorite of ours, I think, because it reminds us of such a deep truth – that each of us carries this light with us wherever we go. It never leaves us, never.
In the video message for this week, we focus on peace. Mary, with a writing from the late, very remarkable Unity minister, Eric Butterworth, encourages us to celebrate ourselves as an expression of God. And I use the wonderful book, Be the SPARK! by our friend, John Davidson, as a backdrop for the subject of peace.
SPARK is an acronym for: Spiritualty, Positivity, Acceptance, Receptivity and Knowing (or Loving.)
“Spirituality” John writes, “is being present. This means recognizing that wherever we are, we are in a divine moment in time. Everything is in divine order and God is omnipresent.” I encourage you to sit with this statement and allow the peace of God to be felt deeply in your Being.
“Positivity, or happiness, represents the adoption of an energetically positive mind-set that we share and release enthusiastically.” (If you know John, you know how powerfully he models this statement.) A grounded sense of peace of course, prompts us to walk the earth happier and seeing through the lens of a bright attitude.
“Acceptance is meeting others where they are instead of expecting them to adopt our views.” Here, we are reminded of Rumi’s “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” We cannot have true peace and be in judgement at the same time.
“Receptivity means to open our hearts and minds to feeling and learning like never before.” I’m reminded here of our willingness to shift our peace paradigm in such a way that we leave behind our littleness in order to more fully embrace our divinity and that of our sisters and brothers.
“Knowing, or loving is all about love” John writes. “Unconditional love is at the seat of our essence and the message Jesus Christ delivered as the ‘Good News.’”
“Good News” indeed dear Family. At the core of God’s Peace which is our birthright, is Love. It is that Light that came with us and stayed with us because it is our home. Why wait for Heaven? If we are willing to simply recognize it, we will find it here inside our hearts, ready to be experienced and expressed now.
We love you,
Rev. Steve and Mary