For Sunday May 27th, 2018

Hello everyone, one of the guide posts for assessing spiritual development is observing the occurrence of conflict. Does conflict increase in your presence or does it tend toward resolution? With appropriate self-honesty we can discern our progression.

By examining our thoughts and justifications for conflicts which may exist we often find a trove of opportunities for releasing.

May we sit this Sunday for that self-honesty, for the humility to reconsider, and for the Light which pushes us from within that we may confront our fears.

Thank you all,

Richard

For Sunday May 20th, 2018

Hello to everyone, the 'source of all things' is not out there somewhere distantly waiting to be found; it is in-erasably within. We have covered it over with rituals, traditions, cultures, ideologies, political isms, and belief systems of every imagined kind. Every child of creation on earth has a different concept of what is essential - Oneness.

The long-sought spiritual transformation of earth depends upon each of us seeing beyond the layers of our personal obfuscation. As we see through our own distracting layers we can more easily see through that of others, and reach the connective tissue within.

May we sit this Sunday to find the greater reality which rests beneath our thinking, deep within our hearts, closer than breath itself.

Thank you all,

Richard

For Sunday May 13th, 2018

Hello everyone, here's a story. A 92 year old man enters a nursing home and gives up on life. He had been abandoned by his mother at age three. At age four his father left him in an orphanage. At 17 he entered the military. By 24 he was in a challenging marriage with children. He soon moved on to other difficult marriages. And over the years his spotty connection with his children became even more tenuous, not seeing one for 30 years.

Now, laying in the nursing home, he wrote his military record on a tissue box. It looked like a monument, a cry for help, "Someone please notice I was here."

Over the course of a few months the children he had abandoned gathered around him, no longer constrained by other wives. They visited, they joked, they teased, and went through old pictures of days gone by as if they had never stopped loving him, and they told him so.

It worked. 

In a group hug around his wheelchair as they were saying 'I love you' his ancient, battered heart opened. Through tears he finally replied, "I realize that now. I didn't know before."

He may pass at any time. He may hold on a while. But when his time comes, if all goes well, perhaps he'll be open and willing to reconnect with the mother he hasn't seen in nearly 90 years.

May we sit this evening for the power of applied love, for the miraculous changes it can bring, and for the future of us all.

Thank you,

Richard

For Sunday May 6th, 2018

Hello to all, looking outward at our strongly opinionated and weakly connected society we must realize this; that connections are vastly more important than opinions. Opinions are easy to have and hold. Since they are things of the mind, all it takes is a steadfast refusal to acknowledge anything beyond our own thoughts. Opinions can be dead, stagnant, and amazingly divisive; while connections are living things which, at their best, are nurtured and maintained from the heart where they become the building blocks of Oneness.

And what is it that humanity is to move toward?

May we look around at those we meet and those we already know. May we honor the connective tissues which bind us. May we find a clear path through the tumult.

Thank you all,

Richard