Daily

How we use these messages of love is in part an individual thing. This simply reflects that we are at different places along the ladder of prayer. So someone near the top doesn't need them at all. Hence, this writing is about using these messages for we who are not yet near the top of the ladder of prayer.

Everyone needs some quiet time with God and a period early in the day or early in the evening has proved very helpful to many. We can begin the day, any day, with a communion focus. This prelude can be read/said silently before using the mighty force Communion.

• As you read the next paragraph to yourself, imagine the Holy Spirit is simultaneously reading it to you:

“O be at peace, beloved of the Lord! What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love? What is your purpose here but to recall into His loving Arms the Son He loves, who has forgotten Who his Father is? What is your only goal, your only hope, your only need, the only thing you want, but to allow the secret place of peace to burst upon the world in all its joy, and let the Voice within it speak of Him whose love shines out and in and in- between, through all the darkened places, to embrace all living things within its golden peace?”

• As you read this paragraph imagine yourself with your Creator, in gratitude:

I am your Child, grateful for Your presence, and remembering our Oneness. My heart is open to the light of Your Love, it illumines the world. I am Your light and dwelling place. I speak for You to those who have forgotten. I call them now to You, and remember You now, for all the world. I hear Your call of Love and answer with Love, the only language we know.

Communion

• Ask Jesus to help you and he be of one mind in the place of holy joining at God's altar to His Son.
• Recall that you and Jesus are part of God’s one Son and born of God's changeless Love.
• With gratitude, melt into God's ever presence, welcome His radiant Love.   
• Reflect this Love in the world and share it with your Creator.

Aside from the above quiet times, many are helped by devoting a few moments to God just before sleep.

Somewhere, A Quiet World

One of the messages offers this gift:

• "A quiet world, with gentle ordering and kindly thought, alive with hope and radiant in joy, without the smallest bitterness of fear upon its loveliness."

Many years earlier Helen dreamed of a quiet world, as a "happy dream". From her autobiography (circa pp 36)

• ...”a picture of a young girl who resembled me in many ways, although she could not have been more than 16 years old herself. Her head was slightly thrown back in happy laughter, and her arms were outstretched as if in universal welcome. She seemed to be wholly joyous, literally incapable of grief or pain.   She was standing on a lawn of bright green grass, but in her extraordinary happiness her bare feet hardly seemed to touch the ground at all. She was dressed in a light, loose dress not reminiscent of any particular time or place. There was, in fact, nothing suggesting the past about her, nor did she seem likely to be concerned about the future. I do not think she even regarded time as we do.” 

The nightmares of today can yield to your happy dream. Like Barbra Streisand singing "Somewhere", 

• your grasp of these messages awakens you to this quiet world, a welcome way-station on the prodigal son's homeward journey. 

Women/men, we make that same archetypal journey homeward ... just varied pathways.

Gone Fishing

Gone Fishing?

Centuries ago Jesus spoke to the disciples about The Wise Fisherman, Saying #8 in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus sometimes spoke in a cloaked way so that a Roman Centurian listening nearby might not report him as a rabble rouser (well at least that worked for awhile):

• “A wise fisherman cast his net into the sea. When he drew it up it was full of little fish. Among them he discovered a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and he chose the large  fish. Anyone here with two good ears should listen." 

Sounds innocent enough, but what if this is not about Tilapia in the Sea of Galilee. Jesus explains what happens when we are self-aware, observant of the ebb and flow of our thoughts. Every thought is  born of love or born of something else e.g. fear, guilt, anger. 

• These something else thoughts are deceptive and will lead us astray, away from peace.

When we observe the flow of our thoughts for awhile we may see an abundance of thoughts of the "something else" variety .... these are like the little fish. Amidst these will be a true thought, one whose genesis is Love, a gift from the Mind of God ... this is the large, fine fish.

• To toss all the little fish back means we only need the God thoughts, we can ignore all the other thoughts, just toss them away.