What about my own personality?

I’m still learning how to worship God.

It helps for me to observe and think about how other people worship God, especially people who lived or live spiritual lives. But I remind myself not to get absorbed in their personalities because that would blur my own worshipfulness of God.

For example, the personality of Christ Jesus, which is only hear-say, appears to be calm. And so I try to be calm, and then worship God. But, I’m sort of a hyper-person, so it really doesn’t work. And that’s okay. Because I can’t really worship God through a specific human personality, calm or hyper.

I caught this idea when reading this from 21st Century Science and Health:

“We worship spiritually only as we cease to worship materially. The devotion to Spirit is the soul of spirituality. Worshipping through the medium of human personalities is not productive. Human-made rituals are but types and shadows of true worship. “The true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” (John)

Now, I watch my efforts to worship God, a bit closer. Am I doing it through my human personality? Or, am I worshipping God through spirit and truth?

 

 

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What did God create?

If I played a card game and believed a 7 was a king, the game wouldn’t go well.

If I played piano and believed a key-flat was a sharp, the music wouldn’t sound right.

If I ran a race in the opposite direction, I wouldn’t come in first or last.

If I drove my car and believe north was east, I’d get lost.

If I believed God created the world as it’s known today, with physical creations and human beings, I’d lose understanding.

As amazing and complicated as this world is, it’s incomplete knowledge. We don’t understand this world hardly at all. And most of the time our knowledge changes.

God didn’t and couldn’t create incomplete knowledge.

If our spiritual journey thinks to start with God but automatically jumps to what is described by physical senses, it’s no wonder the journey gets difficult.

Thankfully, we have soul-sense. We can sense the beauty of the sky, the honesty of the game, the harmony of the music, the strength of the race, the purpose of spirit guidance. God created joy, confidence in goodness, courage, and health. God created us to image forth all that is good.

“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”—Gen 1:31

 

“Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

“The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only—that is, the eternal truth and unity of God and spiritual being, including the universe. The creative Principle—Life, Truth, and Love—is God. The universe reflects God. There is but one creator and one creation. The one creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God.”—21^st Century Science and Health

 

 

Don’t remember stress during the holidays

Holiday hoopla keeps many people over-the-top-busy. Others feel idle, maybe lonely. As a young mother, I experienced both extremes within a few years and struggled to find a sense of balance. Oddly, I came down with holiday amnesia. It started with birthday blank-outs.

Our daughters reconciled my forgetfulness by writing on the “shopping list” the items so desired for their birthdays, allowing time to wrap the present themselves. They’d unwarp the gifts and act surprised and delighted, asking, how did I know exactly what to get.

Sometimes my husband shopped for the girls’ birthdays, but I think my amnesia was contagious to him. Or maybe I caught it from him. Either way, it seeped into the holidays.

My forgetting to run around and find perfect gifts during the holidays, however, hasn’t made me forget the meaning of the holidays. It’s the same as every day. It’s the meaning of building trust, family, and community. I talk in my memoir, I Am My Father-Mother’s Daughter, about a power higher than myself and some of the people who gave me the gift of building a trust in a goodness that knows no bounds.

Stress isn’t a gift from God. Neither is forgetfulness. But forgetting to be stressed isn’t forgetfulness, it’s remembering God’s goodness.

The Forgotten Prayer

Wake up, pray, wash laundry, get children to school, cook, pay a bill, wipe down the bathroom, interview an official and write an article, call to make a dentist appointment, care for the cats and dog, change a lightbulb, errands, get children from school, help with homework, chat with husband, more laundry, pray, fall into bed at 10:45 p.m. Rats, I forgot to pull the garbage can out to the curb.

The can will stink all week and overflow with more garbage.

Before sleeping, I wonder: is there a prayer I’m forgetting? Or not even thinking of?

The question of a forgotten prayer stays with me. For days. Weeks. Months.

As for the unforgotten prayers to love God and my neighbor, and for healing of sickness and sin, they bear fruit. Faith grows into understanding and I see God as reality. I see anything unlike God as unreality, illusion. God didn’t make hate or sickness and I pray that my human mind yields to reality.

It’s easier to yield to reality when confirming the unreality of decline, loss, aging, chaos, and forgetfulness. I practice expanding love, expressing gratitude for all I have, and maturing wisdom, order, and knowledge-with-no-end.

Then I read a prayer championed by Mary Baker Eddy about health-illusion. What is a health-illusion?

The illusion of healthy physical bodies. The illusion of a strong mind. The illusion of a healthy bank account. The illusion of successful human beings.

We read in 21^st Century Science and Health, “Bear in mind, it is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the spiritual understanding of what constitutes health.”

Remember to pray the prayer that transcends healthy measurable units. For example, notice the uncomplaining organs and admit the illusion of uncomplaining physical organs. But don’t stop there. Confirm and understand Soul-sense, a sense of uncomplaining forgiveness and spiritual courage.

Remember to pray the prayer that transcends a healthy bank account. For instance, deny the comfort that comes from money. Confirm and share the riches of open-mindedness, spiritual comfort, and unbiased actions.

Remember to pray the prayer that transcends successful human beings. Avoid the tendency to adore a human. Stop living in past successes. Worship God, Truth. Practice truthfulness.

Too often, prayers are only directed at sickness, loss and fear, which is fine, but those prayers are more effective when also directed at health-illusions.

Health is spiritual. Universal. A force. Sustained by God, Spirit. Health is made of honesty, mercifulness, integrity, and joy.

From Romans 12:  ^“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. ¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Inheritance

My husband and I moved. From one house to another. From one county to another. About 100 miles. The major portion of our “stuff” was hauled in one day. A long, tiring day.

Last weekend, with a uhaul rental, we moved the remainder of our stuff.

I couldn’t believe how much stuff we had. Stuff I’d forgotten.

When reading Galatians last night, I came across this verse:

“Because you are God’s children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into us to call out, “Abba! Father!” ⁷ So you are no longer slaves but God’s children. Since you are God’s children, God has also made you heirs.” (God’s Word)

A heir of God?

What a provocative thought.

I don’t think God’s legacy to us is stuff.

My parents died too young. Dad died in the 1990s and Mom died a few years afterward. I think she missed her identity with Dad, but they were good parents. And I still carry visions of their expressions of love and integrity, unforgotten. The visions aren’t a burden to haul around, but are uplifting.

I’m not an heir of hate, weakness, and death.

If God is eternal Life, I must be an heir of vitality.

If God is love, I must be an heir of loving kindness.

If God is Mind, I must be an heir of intelligence.

 

 

Reading from my book

Moments of insight and love