Great Retreat, Crappy Homecoming

Coming home from the SLCA retreat this past weekend I felt on top of the world. I had met new friends, bonded with old ones and had been inspired by the wisdom of Paul, David and Joyce. Driving through the torrential rains Sunday afternoon, I happily hummed the songs I had enjoyed from our guest musicians.

Once home, I didn’t even allow the discovery that our two doggies had caught fleas while staying with our pet sitter to disturb my new spiritual equilibrium. Wrestling our 4.5 pound pick-a-poo, who can morph into a Tasmanian devil at the smell of flea soap, I told myself that I was joy riding the universal flow of energy.

The next morning as I went to turn on my lap top and found that it had once again been attacked by a virus, my smile and hum were becoming a little more strained. Driving over to my computer repair shop, my smile became more of a forced grimace when I realized my car AC had suddenly died. And finally, all my new found enlightenment completely disappeared when I noticed that my car was running hot. Letting losse a blue streak of cussing, I pulled over on the 900 block of Ponce de Leon Place to call a tow truck.

Sitting on the hood of my car, mad with the world, I remembered that at one time, 30 years ago, I had actually lived on Ponce De Leon Place. Looking around I discovered, in fact, my car had died almost directly in front of the house I rented shortly after graduating from college.

At that time our nation was experiencing a terrible recession and a new president. Jobs, particularly for recent college grads, were difficult to come by. I had gone to work for a company that provided data transfer for banks. I couldn’t have picked a situation that was more poorly suited to my interest. I was convinced that I was stuck in a boring and dead-end position.

During this period, I also learned that my best friend from high school, Claire Moxley, had suddenly died. Claire was funny, smart and tried her best to be a Christian in the most loving sense of the word. She stood over six feet tall and was a dead ringer for Eleanor Roosevelt. She died of heart failure three months into her first job.

When I learned of Claire’s death I was devastated. Up until that time I was a self-confessed atheist and my intellectual honesty could not allow me to believe that my wonderful friend was anything more than dust.

Lying in bed, in my sad little apartment tossing and turning in pain a thought popped into my head, “Bring a joyful noise unto the Lord.” It wasn’t a voice and it didn’t come with a beam of light, but it was so alien to my consciousness that I knew it had to come from other than myself. At the time I attributed it to Claire. Now it didn’t turn me into a Christian, but it did start me on a journey. One that would allow me to cast off much of the nonsense I had been taught about an angry and judgmental God, and lead me to a belief that we are alive to experience God as love and joy.

Sitting in front of my old apartment, I thought that Claire would be proud of the journey I had taken. And I hope that she would be willing to take some credit in it. And miracles of miracles, that idea made me grateful for a computer full of viruses and a car bellowing steam.

Ken Wilcox

Ordinary Miracles

Last summer, during the worst of the heat, a friend of mine called for a favor. He’s without health insurance, doesn’t have a car and also has a serious health issue. He needed a lift to the free health clinic. Now the good new is that there is a place for him to go. The bad news is they seldom build free clinics next to a Target or Starbucks.

No, they’re more often in places like the Pet Shop Boys’ song, Where the Streets Have No Names. After getting lost a time or two, we found the clinic which turned out to be nice and clean. My friend got to his doctor and soon we were on our way.

The next morning, I left the house to run a few errands and when I cranked the car up I noticed it was running roughly.

I told myself that it needed to warm up. It was ninety degrees out with eighty percent humidity, but — it needed to warm up.

I got out of my driveway but it didn’t seem to be doing any better. I didn’t even make it to the end of our block, before I realized that I needed to pull over and walk back and call my mechanic.

Back at the house, I called my mechanic to complain about my luck. As I’m told him what’s going on, he just happened to mention how lucky I was that it died close to my house.

And then I thought back on how it could have just as easily stalled the day before with my sick friend in August, in Atlanta, in a really bad section of town.

At that point I wanted to go out and kiss the car.

I think all of us have daily experiences in our lives that we often over look or ascribe to luck, which just as easily could be called miracles, ordinary miracles.

Now just because they’re ordinary doesn’t mean that they can’t be extremely powerful. Sometimes they can change the very course of our lives.

Long ago, I was working in D.C. and was so miserable with my life that one day walking down a busy street I contemplated throwing myself under a bus.

Strangely, the idea didn’t frighten me; if anything it gave me a sense of comfort. At that moment, I happened to look up and in the crowd was a woman who quite deliberately caught my eyes and smiled.

Now that smile lasted only the few seconds — we didn’t speak. It was just a brief encounter on a busy city street, but it renewed my faith that there were kind people in the world. And for me at that junction of my life, that one idea was, if nothing else, miraculous.

When we focus our attention on the ordinary miracles of our experience, we can turn our lives into extraordinary miracles.

The Metaphysics of Emerson, with David Barrett

When studying for the oral exam boards to become a Minister of Religious Science, I remember one practice question was, “What were the three main influences on Ernest Holmes?.” The answer is: the Bible, Emerson, and Troward. Therefore, to start off the 200 series of classes, we will begin the first semester with The Metaphysics of Emerson, and the second semester with a Metaphysical Interpretation of the Bible: New Testament series.

The backbone of Religious Science will be studied by reading several essays by Emerson. Just a few of the essays we will read are “The Oversoul,” “Compensation,” and “Self-Reliance.” There will be many more, and we will end with Holmes on “Finding the Christ.” This has been said of Emerson, “To him the world about us is the visible appearance of what is invisible; things in time are symbols of essences in eternity; the life, the vitality, the soul in us is the life, the soul of the Universe.”

The International Centers for Spiritual Living has made this a mandatory class to become a Licensed Religious Science Practitioner…. this is how important this class is to the basics of understanding Religious Science. Come join the class to see why Emerson inspired Holmes so much!

Click here to register to this class!

The Revenge of Mount Vesuvius

 

I have a confession to make; I was a weird kid. I’m certain that if I had an adult in my life that cared enough to actually talk with me that I would have been quickly shipped off to a “Special Place.”

One adult in particular who didn’t have time or concern was my seventh grade history teacher, Mrs. Robinson. She was a teacher from the old school. She clearly favored the kids that came from the established families of Macon. This meant that she didn’t particularly care for me and most certainly didn’t think much of my potential. I’m certain that she never, in her wildest dreams, thought that she was having an impact on me.

On occasions when we had finished our work early she would read from an old travel book of hers. The writer and explorer had traveled the world having great adventures.

I was fascinated and determined that one day I would see these amazing sites for myself. I kept this dream along with many other of my notions to myself since my family thought of Atlanta as an exotic destination.

Of all the places that fired my imagination the descriptions of Pompeii stood out. I was thrilled by the dramatic story of the destruction of the city. Mrs. Robinson had visited the site herself and would editorialize that it was her belief that the pornography in the houses of the city had caused God’s wrath to befall the populous.

In Mrs. Robinson’s world view even pagans didn’t catch a break.

It took many years for me to save up the money to make my first European trip. Actually, I could have gone much sooner if I hadn’t wasted so much of my time and money in sleazy bars. The morning I woke up in my Naples hotel I was feeling not only excited about seeing the ancient treasures, but also vindicated in my self-worth.

The day was set to be perfect, until I reached the mirror in the bathroom. There pulsating on my upper lip was a fever blister the size of Mount Vesuvius.

I remembered thinking my day was ruined. Twenty years of planning down the tubes. If left to my own devices, I would have taken a Benadryl and crawled back under the covers.

Fortunately, my partner, Tom, wouldn’t hear of it and pushed me on the tour bus. Soon the sight of the ruins overwhelmed any pain or embarrassment.

We all hope to make life perfect, but as Gilda Radner’s character on “Saturday Night Live” Roseanne Roseannadanna use to say, “It’s always something.”

We have a choice to either focus our attention on those things which annoy us or look toward that which we find lovely, beautiful or inspiring. In whichever direction we gaze, our consciousness multiplies our ability to see more of what we’re seeking. A throbbing fever blister or a day spent surrounded by beauty. The choice is powerful and always our own.

Frozen Fish Sticks

 

I have a wonderful friend who lives in D.C. I have known Lynn for over twenty years. She is intelligent and caring. She’s one of first persons I call when I need level-headed advice.

I have absolutely nothing negative to say about Lynn except for the fact that she lives in fear.

Now of all the things that keep Lynn up at night, nothing terrifies her more than the possibility of retiring without enough money. For Lynn, the site of an older worker standing behind the counter of a Burger King or McDonalds is as fearful as it would be for me to find myself seated next to Pat Robinson on an overseas flight.

Retirement for Lynn has always been a major priority. In her very first job, she worked for a small radio station for meager wages. Even with limited funds, she was determined to fund her IRA with $2,000.00.

Working with a budget she realized the only way she could save the $2,000.00 would be to eat frozen fish sticks for the entire year! So for a year she ate them, every night, frozen fish sticks – the generic store brand.

Lynn has traveled a long way from her early start. She has had a very successful career. Her house is almost paid for. She’s set to inherit a large sum from her mother, and Lynn herself as been a very smart investor. While I’m not privilege to the details of her balance sheet, I suspect that her net worth is well into the millions.

Now you would think with those assets she would finally be free of her fears.

Last summer I got a call from her. She works out of her home and she was complaining that it was too hot to work. When I asked her why she didn’t turn her thermostat down, she replied that with the cost of electricity she kept her thermostat on the first floor set on eighty-five. She was trying to work on the third floor where the temperature was well over ninety degrees.

So, after all her hard work and accumulated resources, she’s still eating frozen fish sticks.

Dr. Holmes wrote that a problem of consciousness cannot be solved with a material answer.

When we feel unsupported no amount of IRAs will save us. But when we know we are a loved and valued member of creation, we will live in wealth and abundance in whatever circumstance we may find ourselves.

The Gift of Prayer

 

When I was a kid and was dragged kicking and screaming to the fundamentalist Church my parents attended, I was always confused by the way the minister prayed. He always spoke to God using old English. God was Thee and Thou. It was as if God had dropped out of human development sometime right after the Pilgrims. 

The second thing which caused me doubt was the fact that the minister always described those he was praying for as worthless and totally undeserving of mercy. 

It was not until I found this Center and attended Kennedy Shultz’s seminar Dare to Pray Effectively that the whole concept of prayer made sense.

Gone was the begging and pleading on bended knees. Kennedy taught that we should pray standing in our full measure of dignity announcing our desires to a Universe that was willing to grant them.

 “Take your mind off the problem and put it on God,” Kennedy told us.

 My problem was I only identified God with judgment and punishment. I had never been able to warm up to an old man in the sky who required the sacrifice of his only son for a sin which I had nothing to do with.

 It took me a long time to realize that the joy and love in my life were not gifts from God, but were in fact God. Now that was a God I could work with.

 Slowly, I began to turn my life around. In the beginning, I prayed as part of my spiritual practice. Then I began to incorporate prayer into my life at certain moments during the day, when I brush my teeth, sat down at a meal, was stopped at a traffic light or heard my wind chime outside my office window. Later on, I began to use prayer not to get things, but to help me with my reactions to life. Some of my most fervent prayers have been silently given in an excessively slow check out line at the grocery store.

 My whole concept of prayer had changed. I no longer prayed for things, but delighted in my commune with Spirit as a refuge from the world.

 More and more I find my prayers of today just a simple yet powerful, “Thank-you.”

 We are instructed to pray believing, if we are to receive. Holmes wrote that the, “Results of any payer will always be equal to the inner belief of the one giving the prayer.”

 Each of us has come into this physical plane to demonstrate for ourselves the love and support of God for our dreams and desires. God has simply given us the parameters to explore. It is up to us to decide to do it with joy and ease.

 Our healing is never a process it is always a revelation — a revelation of our worthiness. Prayer can change our lives in fact it is the only thing which can bring real change to our world.

 

A New Face in the Mirror

 

A couple of years ago, I read about a really interesting program. The Governor’s wife of Kentucky created a course to move mothers off welfare roles. The program didn’t provide the usual job training, but instead it tried to give the women a new self-image. To accomplish this goal the participants were required to develop a resume, give a public talk, acquire business attire, read a book of classic literature and visit a museum or cultural event.

The results were astonishing. Many of the women not only got off public assistance, but some of them went back to school and even completed advanced degrees.

When asked about what had happened, the women said that they we’re able to see themselves in a different light. For many, going to a museum or play or seeing themselves in a business suit was enough to shake their old beliefs about themselves.

Kennedy Shultz often said that it was a good exercise to look yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, “You’re the biggest problem I have.”

I think the problem he was talking about was our self-limiting beliefs.

Many of us have a collection of limiting beliefs we received from parents, teachers, bosses, lovers and friends. But these ideas were never about us, they were only a reflection of the fears these individuals had for themselves.

The truth of the matter is that we get to decide what we see in the mirror.

Holmes said, “I do not believe there is any God that knows you beyond your ability to know yourself in God.”

Since God is truth, then it’s time to know yourself in truth.

The next time you stand in front of a mirror, tell yourself that you are a Divine Idea in the mind of God.

The very best in your life is yet to be, and when you begin to recognize Divine Mind reflecting itself back to you in the mirror, you will speed the best along its way to you.

Less News, More Faith

I have a terrible habit I’d like to confess – I watch too much news.

If you don’t think watching news can’t be bad for you, just pay attention to who advertises on it – who makes the money from it. It’s the insurance companies who want you worried about the future and the pharmaceutical companies that tell you that they can help you cope with the present.

Normally, I can keep myself under check but starting sometime after New Years’, I began to mainline hours of the financial news channel. I tried telling myself that their daily reports of catastrophe wouldn’t have an impact on me.

Now regardless of what I was hearing, I had been doing fairly well. For the past year, I was the only person in my company who didn’t have a drop in his billings.

So you would think I would be comfortable in knowing that my supply comes from the universe, not my hard work. Well, you’d be wrong.

Within a few weeks of listening to the financial experts, I became convinced that I was going to have to start working much harder to keep myself afloat. I approached my new work regimen with the enthusiasm of getting ready for a root canal.

Now here’s the funny thing, as soon as I started my regimen, my billings began to drop.

Of course, as they dropped I considered it only more evidence of the ailing economy.

Around this time a friend of mine was trying to convince me to register for the Religious Science minister’s conference in March. I really wanted to go, but my fear kept me from making the decision. Finally, my friend had enough of it and just told me to get over myself and register for the conference.

Late one Friday afternoon, when almost no one calls in for work, I decided to signup. Just as I had completed the form, I got a call from a client wanting to do a large project. It was the first such call I had had in weeks and I almost hung up on him before he could tell me that he needed to transfer me to a colleague who had a project for me as well.

I had a good laugh at myself as I hung up and turned off the financial news channel. Their reporters might be expert when it comes to the national economy, but when it comes to my personal economy; I’m the one in the know.