Everyone knows, in this time of Christ, that the end of the old way is near and that the new is coming. They are thus moving toward anticipation rather than adaptation, and evolution moves with them. D:7.23
It’s 5:41 a.m. with a storm brewing. Thunder woke me. Or I awoke wondering, Is that thunder? It is a low sound, distant and mistakable. I arrive in the cabin in anticipation of the storm.
I am sitting. I am looking out the window. The memories arise. They are memories of anticipation and arrival. First, of that moment when I no longer needed faith because I’d experienced that which I had faith in. The first starts a cavalcade of such remembrances. One is of riding my bike. I do not remember learning to ride a bike, but I do remember the anticipation and the experience of joy in the riding, and of the wind rushing past. My first airplane ride: the memory of getting ready to go, being late, the run down the departure gate in my sea-green dress and patent leather shoes, my mom running too, her purse slapping against her hip.
Memories arise in scenes.
Ah, those first days going off by myself, heading to Cherokee Park with keen excitement, maybe ten years old, meandering there with no task and no direction. What would it be like? No one supervising. Heaven . . . and moments of risk.
Oh, the memory of it all. Standing in my wedding gown begging my sister-in-law to let me go pee one more time before walking down the aisle.
We say, “The anticipation is killing me.” It . . . anticipation, surely does . . . something. It is like that moment before what we’ve imagined comes true. The anticipation of the experience, and then the experience. That moment or hour or day of arrival. The creative flow of a book being written and then, ah, the moment of its going out. It has been birthed. It has its own life. The irrevocable, no turning back moments. Something has begun. And before that, something began even before it was begun.
Out my window it is still lovely and dark. The storm did not come. The parade of memories has passed by and I put my fingers to the keys, knowing I am anticipating the New, and that I notice it as it arrives.
Janet Berkowitz and Mari
This past week I was visited by Janet, a friend from New Jersey. We shared a dialogue and recorded it for the Dialogue Series. It was anticipated and it arrived. It was experienced and it lives now in a reality not only caught on video, but in her heart and mine. (Our dialogue will become part of the on-going Dialogue Series in coming weeks.
(centerforacourseoflove.org/dialogue)
In memory—people, as well as experiences—live with you, take up residence within you, become part of you. They “cross your mind,” yet live in your heart, the memory’s retrieval happening quite apart from conscious volition. Arising.
Every living being has a heart. Let us define heart as the center of being, that place from which all feeling arises. C:1.1
This “arising” is the beauty that Jesus draws us toward in A Course of Love. I’m convinced that the New “arises” in this way. It is the reason for all the reminders not to try, apply effort, or seek to achieve anything. We do not know that which we are heading toward until it comes. It is forever coming on, never abating, as constant as the rising and setting of the sun, but with textures as mysterious as the waxing and waning of the moon. All of life prepares us for the coming of the New!
You and I really can exist in delicious anticipation for the arrival of the New, appreciating the heightened state that anticipation brings, the tingling and the wonder and the slow and steady revelation. And . . . each of us can announce the arrival of the New.
In the passages below, Jesus speaks of those who awaited his arrival, and his own witness to ours:
Let me speak briefly of the role I played so that you can better understand the role that waits for you. I came in the fulfillment of scripture. All this really means is that a certain community had been led to expect my arrival. They awaited me with expectation and so found in me what they hoped to find. What my brothers and sisters saw in me allowed me to be who I was, even while in human form. I tell you truly if you were to see any of your brothers and sisters today as those who awaited my birth saw me, they too would remember who they are. This is the role I ask you to accept so that you can provide for others what was provided for me. C:19.8
My testimony witnessed to your arrival just as the scriptures witnessed to mine. Even while some of my words were distorted or misinterpreted, you can still revisit them and see that this is so. I did not proclaim myself to be above or different from the rest, but called each of you brother and sister and reminded you of our Father’s love and of our union with Him. C:19.11
I’m following the example of one of our ACOL Facebook group members and capitalizing the New for emphasis. And by speaking of the ordinary to get to the extraordinary, I am following my gut away from the lofty and toward all that is available to us, right within our ordinary lives, to lead us to the extraordinary Newness we’re called to:
To sustain Christ-consciousness in form is creation of the new. My one example life could not sustain Christ-consciousness for those who came after me but could only be an example. What you are called to do is to, through your multitude, sustain Christ-consciousness, and thus create the union of the human and the divine as a new state of being. T4:4.18
