Mari’s Blog
Nothing commonplace about it
Douwe Van der Zee on the Mississippi River in St. Paul, Minnesota
“The Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.” Mark Twain
Like the Mississippi River, life is uncommon once A Course of Love has found its way into our lives.
Remarkable events have marked my recent travels, and those of Douwe Van der Zee, a friend from South Africa, He and I have marveled many times this week over being where we’ve been the last month as well as being together here in Minnesota. We met on A Course of Love USA’s Facebook page just a year or so ago. We met in person in Las Vegas a month ago at the ACIM Conference. Since Tuesday he’s been spending his nights in my cabin and much of his days visiting with me.
Although I knew that I would be attending and speaking at the ACIM Conference since last summer, the remainder of my travels came together much later, and Douwe’s visit here was a spur of the moment happening, as were almost the whole of his own weeks of travel since arriving here in the “new world” as he calls it. His visits with friends have taken him to both coasts and now this northern and middle state (usually referred to as the midwest) of Minnesota.
Yesterday, as we sat in my yard talking with my friend Mary Love, she and I laughed over my propensity to fall in love with beautiful writers. Oh, how wonderful it is to “read” as Mark Twain said, about anything that fills your heart or incites your imagination. I truly did “fall in love” with Douwe’s beautiful way of expressing himself, with his ability to share who he is in that way. I’ve found him to also have
this quiet elegance in his conversations. We recorded a Dialogue for ACOL’s Dialogue Series that I will share sometime soon, and I had the opportunity to introduce Douwe to my family and, in addition to Mary, my friend Christie Lord.
Uncommon conversation marked our visit. Other than walking with my grandson Henry at our neighborhood park, and along the Mississippi, he and I have mainly talked and rested.
How wonderful it is, I’ve told him several times, that we’re both in this sort of hazy place where we must rest in between things. I reminded him that Jesus often encourages rest. I can feel how much the quiet in between is necessary to integrate the inner and the outer, to let one incredible sharing settle before there is another. I know also that it is my way to have the impact grow so that a month from now I will be feeling this visit in an even deeper way.
In the Course, Jesus links our desire to rest to the energy we expend keeping the illusion in its place (C:12.6-7). But in The Dialogues, it is spoken of as part of the new way:
You simply want to rest and have whatever transformation is to come to you to come. If you could indeed give in to this desire fully, it would speed the transformation along quite nicely. So please, listen to your weariness and to your heart’s desire to rest. Listen to the call to peace and let yourself recline in the embrace of love, feeling the warm earth beneath you and the heat of the sun above you. Let languor enfold you and apply no effort to what you read here. Just accept what is given. All that is being given is the helpful hints you have desired from an older brother who has experienced what you, as yet, have not. D:Day5.20
Douwe and I have both been on a voyage into the new. In many distinct ways, the whole of the ACOL community is on this voyage too.
“We reached St. Paul at the head of navigation of the Mississippi, and there our voyage of 2000 miles from New Orleans ended….”
From “Life on the Mississippi” by Mark Twain.
The inward journey … responded to
Who you are now, what your desires are, and where your talents have been recognized, are as given as the goal you now desire to realize. Again I remind you that the sameness of union is not about becoming clones or one specific type of idealized holy person. Union is being fully who you are and expressing fully who you are. This is the miracle, the goal, the accomplishment that is achieved through the reign of love, the maintenance and finally the sustainability of union. D.Day5.17
I last posted this quote in January. It feels different after returning from my travels, after having the first gathering …the first official celebration of A Course of Love. It seems so delayed to talk of it now that I almost skipped over it to talk of what came after the event in Vegas…my conversations with smaller groups. But I can’t do that. It was too wonderful to let it pass uncelebrated here. It did something to my heart—leaving me early in tears that were so persistent I had to get up and turn my back in order to blow my nose and dry my eyes. There was something long-awaited about it, and in that way so in-keeping with one of the major themes of the talks that I gave, both in Vegas, and in smaller venues with groups like the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco and Spirit House in Fort Bragg. That theme, though minor, was of longing and desire. I spoke of this because it played such a major role in all that’s come to me. It seemed before each occasion of life-changing receptivity, my longing and desire was first taken to heights I felt I’d almost not survive.
The ACOL Gathering felt like desire and fulfillment coming together, something Jesus speaks of 
in The Dialogues.
Little can be had without desire. Desire, unlike want, asks for a response rather than a provision. Desire is a longing for, a stretching out for. Imagine yourself at the summit of this mountain we have climbed, standing with arms raised, hands wide open, gazing jubilantly into the heavens rather than toward the earth below. This is the stance of both desire and fulfillment. Of longing and attainment. Of having asked and having received. D:17.5
Desire asks for a response. From where is this response sought? You now must understand the fullness of the well of your heart, the interrelationship of desire and fulfillment. D:17.19
This whole adventure of mine felt like . . . response. All about me, from Vegas, to San Diego, to 
Sacramento, it was all about response. I cannot express how thankful I am or how moving was the gathering that started it all.
Being out talking to ACOL communities was just as wonderful as the big events. Some of the funniest things I said were the most liked. One was, “I don’t know.” Another was, “I’m not very spiritual.” People are absolutely such dear hearts about accepting honesty! After returning from my weeks away I would add to the opening quote above that the miracle, the goal, the accomplishment achieved through the reign of love, is the union found in connection—through the intimacy and acceptance of the heart.
Although I saw some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen, and although I had such a divine feeling of A Course of Love making its way into hearts the world over, the highlight of the trip, hands down, was the people. From friends who came to share at the Gathering, to Susan who housed me for two nights and laughed with me over aging and laundry, to a woman who began to question her “spiritual persona,” to a musician who recognized the necessity of giving his all, and a contemplative longing to accept his “not doing” ways, there was . . . connection. People “being real” breeds the union and relationship each of us so desire.
I’ve returned with a crook in my neck that I’m nursing with heat and with the exercise I did not get while I was gone. I’ve waded through three weeks of mail, and have thank you notes yet to be written. But this morning I’m sitting in my cabin, grateful for being here, and just as grateful for having been . . . there. Relishing in normalcy and change. Desire and fulfillment.
In The Dialogues, Jesus links desire and fulfillment to the inward journey, calling it “the only journey that is real in the only way that is real.” (D:17.25) This comes just before we enter the Forty Days and Nights. And although my outward journey led me to the top of the mountain in an almost literal way, it is so clear that the inward journey is where the depth and realness of our heart’s knowing arises. The amazing thing, the thing I am most grateful for, is being able to share the inner journey. This is what we do in this community.
This is who we are and what we do!
I could not be more thankful.
The marriage and the gifts
17 years of A Course of Love
Our hearts . . . go out to the world, to the suffering, to the weak of body and of mind. Our hearts are not so easily contained within the casing of our flesh and bone. Our hearts take wing with joy and break with sadness. Not so the brain that keeps on registering it all, a silent observer, soon to tell you that the feelings of your heart were foolishness indeed. It is to our hearts that we appeal for guidance, for there resides the one who truly guides. You who think this idea is rife with sentiment, sure to lead you to abandoning logic, and thereafter certainly to cause your ruin, I say to you again: take heart. Such foolishness as your heart’s desires will save you now. Remember it is your heart that yearns for home. Your heart that yearns for love remembered. Your heart that leads the way that, should you follow, will set you certainly on the path for home. C:17-18
My mom lives in a small townhome complex not far from me. So does one of the St. Paul Pioneer Press reporters, Molly Guthrey. Molly is a reporter and a columnist. As a columnist she represents the single-parent beat. The first column I recall seeing was one in which she reported on the artwork her children had created on the sidewalk with chalk—and the note she got from a neighbor that chalky footprints had been tracked into the building. She is not in my mom’s building, which is a good thing. Later, she took in a three-legged dog, to which my mother remarked, “We’re not supposed to have dogs here.” It’s always kind of fun to read her column, in one part because I was once a struggling single mom with three kids, as she is, and in part because of occasional reports about life amidst the mostly older residents that share lawn and asphalt with Mom.
But this morning Molly wrote about her anniversary at the newspaper, her 22nd. She wrote, “My relationship with newsprint has lasted longer than almost anything else in my life. In that way, it’s like a marriage.”
She got me thinking about A Course of Love. My marriage is older than my relationship with ACOL but I’ve been with it as long as I lived with my mother. That’s an odd thing to realize. And Molly’s right. When you’re with a “job” or a vocation you love for that long, it is like a marriage.
At the end of Molly’s column she says, “I once told one of my colleagues that I’d like my epitaph to read: “She died with newsprint on her hands.” I don’t if there will be newsprint when I die—.”
It’s nice not to have to worry about ACOL going out of print when I die. Not only are “paper” books not meeting their end, but A Course of Love is going to live on far beyond my life. I think I always knew that, but the last few years have made it a secure knowing. I was blessed seventeen years ago with this purpose, this vocation, and now it feels like I’m on my way to claiming it—and to letting it go. When we bring our gifts to the world we free them to announce more and more gifts and engender more and more life, getting more into the realm of birthing children than staying in a marriage, but what the heck. It all goes together.
This feels to be the gift giving portion of my life. Give the gift. Let it go. What will be will be. I’ll still have the marriage and the gift in my heart and hands and life. The gift will only expand and come back to me in ever increasing ways. This is the way it is for each of us: giving and receiving as one.
I’ll never lose the memories of the early days of falling in love, the intimacy, the one-on-one time. Even the years of struggle begin to fade into poignant memories that I understand all the more. Every marriage has its peaks and valleys, twists and turns.
I may not be posting in the next three weeks as I head off on my gift giving mission: to the ACIM Conference in Vegas, and then to visit with folks up the coast of California. I know I’ll receive as much as I give and that the great circle of knowing and being known, loving and being loved will find increase. This 21 day trip will be a challenge and an adventure. I’m going off into the unknown. But I take love with me.
(If you’re in California or Vegas, you may want to check-out the link to events on the ACOL website http://acourseoflove.com/events/)
…and they did not understand
You can only be who you are by sharing who you are. C:31.17
Today is Easter. It’s early evening and I sit looking out the window on greening grass (where only days ago was snow), on a backlit sky, glowing with light (that eluded the day), and on the treetops across the freeway fence that are autumn gold in the spring light.
Already memories of Easter 2016 are filling me. Already, I’m finding the peace and quiet of an evening after a day of noise rejuvenating, calling to mind more than two-year-old Jack’s highly emotive (dramatic) nature, table conversation of old favorite movies, and the pleasure of sharing my family with Kathy Scott Perry and having “after the family left” conversation at the kitchen table.
My mind harkens back to early Mass, full of Alleluias, and the folks who don’t usually come to church, some of whom are fifty-year-old men that my mother barely remembers as little boys, men who come by to pay their respects.
Yet what is stuck in my memory is…and they did not understand. It was said at the end of John’s gospel: “they did not yet under the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” During the “boring” parts of the Mass, I often read ahead. I saw the phrase “they did not understand” again…and again. Despite all the signs, it took a while, even for those closest to Jesus, to understand what had just happened. In his sermon, our priest told of being called to the bedside of a parishioner who was dying. He stood with the grieving family. The man who was father and husband and brother was pronounced dead. They went outside the hospital room and the family collapsed into tears. They held each other. Then they were told, “We have a heartbeat.” The priest didn’t say how much longer the man lived. What he was speaking of was the shock.
I look out the window again and improbably pink clouds have lined up over the far trees.
No matter what revelations we receive, it seems to me that we grow into our time of understanding. There is, at some point…perhaps…a fullness of understanding, but even though we seem to like to imagine revelation coming in a flash of light, it seldom does. This Easter event that “changed everything”…and that symbolizes so much…even to our own resurrection in form, is as shocking to our systems as would be, “We have a heartbeat,” following a death.
It calls for us to be kind and patient with ourselves as we come to understand what we already, in some way “know” to be the truth. Being shocked or befuddled is a part of the condition of accepting that which changes everything. There are events in every life that change life in an instant. Death is the harshest of these changes. Births profoundly shift life in an almost opposite direction. Job losses, accidents, and even stunning successes can confound us for a while. Why wouldn’t our revelations that concern who we are in truth, also have this effect?
…and they did not understand…until they did.
There is a “coming together of it all” that is part of why we literally “come together” in union and 
relationship. We help each other read the signs and find our way to understanding.
31.9 Thus your confusion is also your key to understanding. . . . Being part of the whole that is your known universe has made you and no other being less consequential. All over the world people of good faith fight to save even one life. Each life is irreplaceable and no one argues this point, yet you allow yourself to resist the whole idea of God because you believe that what is one cannot also be many.
31.17 My dear brothers and sisters, what you truly are cannot be improved upon. But because you are in a state of unremembering, you must relearn who you are. You can only relearn who you are by being who you are. You can only be who you are by sharing who you are.
To come together to be and share who we are is to remember who we are, to invite giving and receiving as one, to invite revelation.
These need not be the coming together of big events. This can happen anywhere, any time. But if you’re interested in upcoming ACOL events, please visit: http://acourseoflove.com/events/
Find yourself to lose yourself?
Realize that I love your smile, your teeth, the hair upon your head, the warm, smooth shape of your skull. Realize that I love your hands and that as you take another’s hand, you hold my own, and that I am with you as well as within you. Realize that I love all that you are, and that as you snarl in anger, cry in despair, hang your head in weariness, howl with laughter, I am with you and within you. . . . You will realize as you enter union by means of the bridge of our direct relationship that you will not leave your humanity behind. D:Day39:43-44
It seems impossible that a week has passed since the ACOL Gathering in St. Louis. What a wonder that was. Like going into the new, and returning new. Going to a new place as a new self, and returning home as a new self. The people I met were the shining stars of the experience. They graced me with their presence and an uncommon eloquence about their experience of A Course of Love.
I failed to find eloquence in at least one place, and a place so dear to my heart that I feel a bit embarrassed by it.
I was asked about the Way of Mary and I turned to the book. The book! I could not recall what Jesus says about the Way of Mary. To be honest, I thought what he said was confusing. Yet I’ve always “known it” as something that you . . . just know. You don’t know it till you know it and then it’s like you’ve always known it. That’s how I felt it about it—until last weekend when I drew a blank! What can account for such things? Today it felt like something bursting to come clear in me, and led me to a rather bizarre thought:
Lose yourself to find yourself could almost be rephrased into “find yourself to lose yourself.”
As I reflected on it this morning, it seems there are as many ways we are asked to find our Selves as to lose ourselves. Maybe this could be a sort of reverse order to ACOL. In other teachings, perhaps it’s more about losing than finding. I’m not sure, as this is a new idea. But there’s not much if any loss. We hear a lot – “there is no loss but only gain.” But what I’m thinking of us is how we continue to be who we are. This is where the major challenges of this new way arise, actually. You don’t lose “you”…you keep “yourself” and you change at the same time. And
it shows the truth of this passage:
In developing the confidence of the self of form, we work with what has been in a new way, and as you all know from the time of learning, it is often more difficult to become adept in doing something in a way different than you have done it before than to do something completely new. D:Day 10.12
Day 10 of the Dialogues addresses this most clearly, and I’m going to share a passage from it. This is the day in which Jesus asks us to quit hearing his voice as the man Jesus, in order that we may expand our confidence in our own elevated Self of form:
Part of the difficulty you find in accepting reliance on your Self is what you have “learned” within this Course. As you “learned” to remove the ego and deny the personal self, you transferred your reliance to me and to the state of unity. This was purposeful. Now, however, you are asked to return to wholeness, a state in which you are not separate from me or from the state of union. You have “learned” the distinction between Christ-consciousness and the man Jesus. You have “learned” the distinction between your Self and the man or woman you are. Now you are called to forget what you have “learned” and to let all distinctions slip away. You are called to forget what you have learned and to realize what you know. D:Day10:17-18
To continue to identify this voice with that man is to be unable to recognize this voice as the voice of your own true consciousness—the voice of Christ-consciousness. Yet to realize that this is the same voice that animated the man Jesus two thousand years ago will aide you in realizing that this is the voice that will now animate the elevated Self of form, or in other words, you. I have spoken with you throughout this time as the man Jesus so that you realize that man and Christ-consciousness can be joined. That you, as man or woman, existing in this particular time and space, can join with Christ-consciousness. You can be both/and, rather than either/or. D:Day10.20-21
Leading back to the way of Mary:
The way of Jesus represented full-scale interaction with the world, demonstrating the myth of duality, the death of form, the resurrection of spirit. The way of Mary represented incarnation through relationship, demonstrating the truth of union, the birth of form, and the ascension of the body. D:Day17.10
We have entered Holy Week. Even the non-religious follow this season and this recorded history. Jesus’ death and resurrection could be seen as a classic “lose yourself to find yourself story,” a classic example of the Way of Jesus as described in ACOL: Jesus as example life. What of the Way of Mary? We are told the time of Jesus and the time of Mary might be thought of as two intertwined circles. . . both going on right now. In these two ways it feels like we have the two sides of the “losing/finding ourselves” equation.
We are to be both/and: true to our Self as created in form, and true to our Self of union. I like this way, even while I fumble once in a while. I like it because I so love experiencing the beauty and diversity of people finding their both/and way.
The next meeting place will be at the ACIM Conference in Las Vegas. Amidst all the often chaotic feeling energy that comes with large gatherings, I trust that we will also feel the energy of unity. I look forward to it all, especially the one-on-one interactions and dialogues that reveal our humanity and our divinity as one. http://acourseoflove.com/mari-perron-in-las-vegas/
