LSB pages 168-170
The chemistry of your bodies, affected as it is by emotional states, is very delicate, very sensitive; this is true of the strongest person.
You are subject to thousands of influences, some of which you are completely unaware. If you could see what some people react to, you would be astonished.
Climate, … , changes in temperature, old resentments, fear of cats, rainy days, depressing influences from strangers, noises and even smells are constantly affecting your bodily health, not to mention maladjustments.
The greatest thing to help you is the habit of being in the presence of G*d. You wish is for it, but as someone has said, the proof of a desire is found in the habit of response.
When you become more secure in this great habit, you will find that an orderly faith is a controlling and rejuvenating brightness; your weak, defenseless, awkward, and too-solid body will at last know what it means to find fulfillment in the highest health.
Oh, fill yourself with light! Try every kind of way not to slide off the beautiful smooth path where, if you could but stay, or no arches or unease or sadness or pain or tiredness.
Yes, you will find a health more wonderful than any athletes, for it will be a vibrating faith.
But you must do it. The alert, industrious in the habit of being in the indwelling presence of G*D’s Spirit.
The flight is inch by inch, never swerving.
Learned that by these thorny struggles to keep what you get and be strong in the holding of it, you’ll be safe from having to go back to learn your lessons all over again. All that is ask of you is to be gloriously happy and it seems such a painful process! Watch every idle word, for you will find joy in this wonderful game.
It is true the successes seem frail and delicate, but they are stronger than you can have any conception of, for because of your intent you are being filled with healing, vitalizing, Sustaining truth and eternal love; it is all on such a grand scale. You will astonished yourself, and if you can see the simplicity of this – the victory is yours.
Delay delay Dash stop it right now! Watch your every responsive thought and bring it to yourself a day a fraction of a day when you have kept the divine presence in your heart and your heart present In the spirit of God. For this is the good news of which the prophet spoke, this is what it is all about. This is what they meant when they said “rejoice!“, For there is little from which we cannot be defended, and there is much that we can overcome magnificently by learning not to sync down in the darkness as a result of not being awake and alert.
Here he is now. But we humans hate to think. We hate the effort of thinking and are always seeking escape in the senses, and anything to get away from that which will make us free. Take the dear Dash for this is no foolish thing. Snatch moments, and vent reminders, until this divine have it becomes constant.
It is really as if you were in a place which is overcrowded, like a tenement Street and dark, and you knew a secret door that opened into a garden where there was quiet and everything had a friendly feeling; even the flowers and the leaves turn towards you and the sky was a glow with infinite refreshment, that feeling of complete Renewal of your mind you’re tired mind, you’re very flesh, and your clock spirit. Walker she would enjoy in the Rose garden, here the fountains of goodness and the birds of Joy singing.
Faith’s Note ~ I recently attended women’s religious retreat and read this Letter to the Scattered Brotherhood on the first morning.
It was so beautiful outside that I decided to do my daily contemplative reading while sitting on a park bench directly in front of a large beautiful water fountain. Immediately after sitting down, my eyes was down to three hummingbirds perched that were darting back and worth over a tall water fountain. I watched in fascination as they sat perched on edge of fountain and drank the water as it cascaded over the side and fell to the a larger pool on the bottom. This was very first time I’d ever seen a hummingbird sit still, which made it something of a surreal moment.
But even more extraordinary and surreal was what occupied the rest of the park bench. I was sitting on the corner — a space of only 13 or 14 inches — of the bench that held a famous life-sized sculpture by the Roberta Monroe Young of Jesus as a homeless man. From a distance of 20 or 30 feet, this was a shocking sight, as it really looks like a living homeless person who’d fallen asleep on a park bench.
As the thirsty hummingbirds drank their fill and filtered away, mind came back to the lifeless form that lay on the bench next to me — Jesus as a homeless person — and the dismissive way we generally treat our homeless population.
Sitting next to the sculpture feet of Jesus, this compelling work of art made me realize just how much our culture has missed the mark when it comes to clothing and feeding the needy and caring about strangers.
Many people assume homelessness must be the result of personal a character flaw — drug use, alcoholism, unwillingness to get a job or refusal to be treated for a mental illness. Many others think of homelessness as such a complicated and difficult problem that nothing can be done,. Thoughts of this hopeless situation are so anxiety provoking that people react by closing their eyes, their minds and often their wallets to the obvious misery that is right in front of them.
This was the work of a woman sculpture born the same year as me — 1943.
We seem to believe that if a person is somehow “special” — formerly famous, those with a special talent or the luck to have wealthy parents or politically influential patrons, it’s OK to be helpful as possible.
But the Judeo-Christian bible teaches that each and every person is a gift from G*D, and therefore deserving of our help.
Jesus was speaking for that tradition when he instructed his followers to “clothe the naked and feed the hungry” and care for the “stranger in your midst”.
This was not a new idea for a first century Jew. The Jewish bible (refer to by Christians as the “Old Testament”) tells us we that all life comes from G*D. As members of the human species, we all have a moral obligation to to love our neighbors as ourselves, care for widows, orphans and strangers. It also tells us to “love our neighbors” and to “love our neighbor as ourselves”. This applies to all human beings regardless of race, religion, gender, age, skin color, ethnicity, economic status, or political affiliation.
Return to text of this LSB letter
There, that is a clumsy idea of what you will find when you slip through that door into God‘s presence, but the mind of man is so constituted that he hast to be told and retold and reminded that there is a door all the time every hour of the 24.
Finally be not afflicted or discouraged to see those cell faint hearted; he returns to quietly, that still he may stir the; because this divine Lord will be alone with the eclipse eclipse eclipse that they mayest look for silence in tumult, solitude and Company, light in darkness, forgetfulness and pressures, vigor and despondency, courage in fear, resistance in temptation, peace in war, and quiet and tribulation.
Miguel Molinos, 1640 to 1697
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