Mari’s Blog
There must be a better way
To proceed into each relationship as who you truly are is to bring everlasting change to each and every relationship, and thus to all. T2:7.12
It’s tax “season.”
I’ve been doing taxes. Unfortunately, I can’t just get on Turbo Tax and “get it done.” So this year, after having spent a week with paperwork spread across my dining room table, (and I know many of you go through the same ordeal) I am in a “there must be a better way” frame of mind. I got there partially because I found myself feeling resentful about the whole matter.
This feeling caused me to look up “resentment” in ACOL, and also to be ready to hear the “how to” sounding ideas put forth to get to “a better way.”
I found them in the multi-layered and revealing Treatise on Unity, Chapter 7, where Jesus is speaking of giving and receiving as one.
This is the most difficult belief of all to integrate into the living of your life. Each time another thwarts you, you will be tempted to believe that giving and receiving as one is not taking place. Your previous pattern of behavior will be quick to assert itself and you will feel resentment and claim that the situation is unfair. T2:7.7
Yes! That was me! The situation is unfair! That’s how I feel about taxes and other such complicated requirements! I feel it “shouldn’t” be so hard.
A bit later Jesus says: “Relationship is the only means through which interaction is real, the only source of your ability to change that which you would change.” T2:7.9
Oh, yeah, I tell myself. This is the treatise on “unity.” And of course he’s talking of bigger things than taxes or any of the peevish matters required of us in today’s world. He’s talking about life and relationships and the change from the old to the new.
In 7:10 Jesus asks, “What will prevent you from following the patterns of old as you go out into the world with your desire to effect change?” And in 7.11 he answers the question: “The only thing that will prevent this is your ability to go out into the world and remain who you are.”
Then he starts getting downright inspiring:
To proceed into each relationship as who you truly are
is to bring everlasting change to each and every relationship, and thus to all. T2:7.12
This new attitude, then, includes accepting that you have needs. That you are a being who exists in relationship is the same as saying you are a being who needs relationship. The only thing that keeps you, in this new pattern, from being needy and dependent in an unhealthy way, is that you believe in giving and receiving as one. You believe, in other words, that your needs will be provided for, thus ceasing to be needs. To deny that you are a being with needs is not the aim of this Course. To come to believe that your needs are provided for by a Creator and a creation that includes all “others” is to believe in giving and receiving being one in truth. T2:7.14
Giving is not only about choosing what good and helpful parts of yourself you will share with the world. It is also about giving the world the opportunity to give back. T2:7.15
Trusting is not a condition or state of being that you have heretofore seen as being an active one. Your attitude toward trust is one of waiting, as if an active stance toward trust would be distrustful. You thus will often say that you trust when what you are doing is hoping for a specific outcome. Real trust is not a trust that waits and hopes but a trust that acts from who you truly are. Real trust requires the discipline of being who you are in everycircumstance and in every relationship. Real trust begins with your Self. T2:7.16
Wow! But there’s more:
Who you are cannot be denied in favor of who you “will be.” Needs cannot be denied as a means of having them cease to be. You who are beginning to realize that you have much to give, realize that you have as much to receive and that receiving does not imply that you are lacking! T2:7.18
Here’s the “how to” part:
“Bring the thoughts and feelings that arise to the place within your heart that has been prepared for them,” he says. Don’t deny them. Bring them first to your Self, to the Self joined in unity at the place of your heart. … Then, with truth and illusion separated, develop the discipline to express your true Self, as you are now. This is the only way the Self you are now has to grow and change. This is the only means the Self you are now has of giving and receiving as one. This is the only means available to you to replace the old pattern with the new. (from T2:7.19)
And so, I called my tax preparer and said, “There must be a better way. Can you help me?” As mundane as this example is, it’s a powerful reminder (at least to me) to let the “new way” serve all areas of life.
The Covenant of the New . . . and resting
The power of the universe is given and received constantly in support of the creation of the new. This is what 
creation is! The entire universe, the All of All, giving and receiving as one. This is our power. And our power is needed for the creation of the Covenant of the New in this time of Christ. D:3.23
Since I’ve been home from Philadelphia, I’ve been tending to family needs and have felt myself to be “too tired” for anything else. But when I’m feeling too tired to do anything, I also begin to feel bored. Then, when I rest, the old tapes run. They tell me I “shouldn’t” be so tired. I have to catch these wayward demons and wrestle them down. This often starts in this way: “Well…I did this and that and this today…and so it is no wonder I need to rest. It’s okay.”
Sound familiar?
I admit it. I often “start out” with old thoughts, especially when I’m too tired even to read. The other side of that though, is that once I’ve done my wrestling hold on the thought(s), I’m also too tired to think.
Out of that blank place today, there came an idea I needed to explore and I’d like to share it with you. It began with me looking up “beyond desire” in ACOL. I looked up “beyond desire” because I was wondering about it. “What is going on,” I asked myself, “with this lack of desire? I have utterly no ambition.”
The words “beyond desire” are first spoken in The Dialogues where it is said that desire is replaced by reverence.
I knew this to be true with the receiving of A Course of Love and have often spoken of it. I give an elevated place to the desire that grew in me to “work for God” and even the near despair it led me to before the receiving of ACOL finally began. I felt that the almost excruciating desire I experienced had a very central place in the coming of the Course. I knew I had to feel that desire fully before the revelation could come. And . . . when my “work for God” came in this way, desire was replaced with reverence.
But then desire returned. Desire for ACOL to find its place in the world. The desire to continue to create. Desires to live newly. Desire to share.
I found the words “beyond desire” in Chapter 3 of the Dialogues: The Covenant of the New. Strangely enough, this was the very chapter I shared at the initial meeting of my recent Philadelphia trip. This “meet and greet” was hosted in a private home and I’m guessing attended by close to twenty women and men involved in ACOL groups. I’d been drawn to the chapter the night before, and because of this, I asked if we could share it during our time together.
What a surprise to find beyond desire there! Now I get to remind you, as well, of this phenomenal chapter.
The idea of a Covenant of the New is first introduced in Chapter 2:
This is the agreement God asks of you, your part of the shared agreement that will fulfill the promises of your inheritance. This is the Covenant of the New in which you honor your agreement to bring heaven to earth and to usher in the reign of Christ. To usher in is to show the way, to cast your palms upon the path of your brothers and sisters. D:2.23
Covenant comes from the word convene: com: together, + venire: come, and then covenant is about agreement: so…to come together in agreement.
I found “beyond desire” again in Chapter 17, where Jesus speaks of the interrelationship between desire and fulfillment and says, “Desire asks for a response.” (D17.19) And one more time in Day 3: I do not ask you to give up what you desire, but to expect and accept a response to what you desire. Remember that we are headed even beyond desire, and know that desire must first be met before you can be taken beyond it. D:Day3.27
There is so much more that could be said, but for now I’m taking these ideas that “came to me” and I’m going to rest with them for a while. The wonderful Chapter 3 also seems to give abundant permission to accept the needs of the body:
[T]here is a difference in form between the Self and the elevated Self of form. The Self was and will always remain more than the body. The body, however, is also newly the Self. The body is also, newly, one body, one Christ. D:3.18
Perhaps in resting when we need to rest, we fulfill our desire and are met with response.
It’s a windy day full of movement and sound and new bird tweets and whistles. The flag pole lines are flapping. A dog barks off in the distance. The motion and engine and muffler noises of vehicles rise over the fence and blend with the moaning of the wind. The furnace ticks in the corner trying to decide whether to come back on or not—then decides to blow—with a preamble that is all sound, sound like a motor revving up, the prelude to heat and the air that carries it.
I’m settling in. Then . . .
Oh my gosh, there are buds! I can see them from the cabin window, peaking out between two big trees. New growth. Suddenly, I notice that there’s green moss here and there. Now it’s the feel of the day. It is a “sudden” sort of day.
“All of a sudden,” we say. All of a sudden . . . the long awaited is here.
This day reminds me of those things that are “all of a sudden” . . . and yet not. Like a new baby. Like an idea. Like inspiration. Like feelings that well up. Like certainty. There is an arising of all these states of being, an arising that starts before they’re noticed, before they erupt, before they . . . arrive.
We begin A Course of Love with a call for “willingness:”
Willingness does not arise from conviction but brings conviction. Willingness is your declaration of openness, not 
necessarily of firm belief. C11.7
Willingness leads to conviction:
As was said within A Course of Love, willingness does not require conviction but leads to conviction. The apostles had no faith in their ability to perform miracles. The faith they showed was in their willingness to try. This little willingness gave way to conviction as miracles flowed through them as the blessings that they are. T1:3.10
Conviction leads to reliance:
We have talked before of conviction and your willingness to, like the apostles, let your conviction spring from your willingness to experience its cause and its effect. I am asking you now to be willing to move from conviction to reliance. I am not asking you to do this today … I am merely making you aware of this difference. . . . I am giving you cause for movement, the effect of which will be the movement from conviction to reliance. D:Day10.3
When I call you to replace conviction with reliance, I call you to replace belief in an outside source with reliance upon your Self. D:Day10.16
Most of our major Aha! moments start long before they arrive. They don’t seem to at first, but at some point, you and I can become aware of the movement that has taken us to where we are. When this happens to me I love to see this very movement described in A Course of Love. I don’t see this movement as meant to be followed like a roadmap, but as one that does exactly as it says it does: leads from willingness, to conviction, to reliance (and these words could be replaced by many other words that convey our many and varied movements). Maybe they are steps along the way, but they are not laid out in a way meant to be taken as steps. They are like ideas planted, ideas that “all of a sudden” come into their time of fullness. And then, as is said in A Treatise on Unity and its Recognition, what has been gained “becomes simply an aspect of your identity and accepted as the nature of who you are in truth.” (T2:7.21)
Reaching the nature of who we are in truth is our dream, our solace. It is our recognition that there is no outside source. It is a recognition that can come “all of a sudden,” and still be one that has grown like new buds, from all that has been planted within us. These are the fruits we reap for having taken the truths of this course deep within us and having surrendered to their power.
“All of a sudden,” is the surprise and delight of our Aha moments.
The New will be birthed
We dwell in the reality of the One Heart, creation’s birthplace, birthplace of the new. The new is not that which has always existed. It is not that which can be predicted. It is not that which can be formed and held inviolate. The new is creation’s unfolding love. The new is love’s expression. The new is the true replacement of the false, illusion’s demise, joy birthed amongst sorrow. The new is yet to be created, One Heart to One Heart. This is a course for the heart. The birthplace of the new. I.12-13
Surrendering to the forces that move inside of you is surrendering to your own will. It requires full acknowledgment that you hold within yourself a will to know and to make known. This will is divine will, your will, Christ-consciousness. It is alive within you. All that is required is that you carry it with awareness, honor, willingness. From this will the new be birthed. Day23.5
After a week tending to my daughter and her new son, I feel about a hundred and fifty years old. . . physically! Oh my gosh! What a lot of energy it takes to attend to the physical! I’m so thankful that what goes into creating the New, the New that we hear of in ACOL, will not necessarily require exertion of this kind!
I’m also grateful I found inspiration to help me quit dragging and to rebound into my vocational life. A vocational life is, in my view, a life dedicated to a great love. A Course of Love and creating are my combined vocational loves. They’re the never-fading draw, what I’ll be devoted to until I draw my last breath. And yet I realize . . . family is that too.
The two draws are so different, and yet in a way they are hardly different at all. They’re both undeniable. They have both proven to have times during which there is no other choice. They must be attended to and the attention can’t be split. At other times either one can fade into the background, even while neither is ever set aside. With a great love, there is never a time in which they’re not part of you.
And so, since returning from Philadelphia, during which my presentations were accentuated and altered by the impending birth of my grandson Samuel, I’ve had the idea of birth—the many 
and varied ways birth is spoken of in ACOL, continuing to poke through the daily-ness of tending to a new mother and her child.
(Most of the group at the Center for Contemporary Mysticism.)
Then on my way to the cabin today, I grabbed my “winter” cabin jacket (it’s all of 9 degrees!) and fingered the thin paper in its pocket as I walked out. I was pretty sure that when I sat my laptop down and pulled it out, it would be an old dollar bill. You know how they can feel—so threadbare. But it wasn’t a dollar bill. It was a note I’d written on the back of a “Music in Worship” sheet from the second Sunday of Advent, 2015 (which tells you how often I check these pockets!). The note read:
Prepare the way/ get out of the way /know the secret you’re looking for/ Mary carried her words in her heart.
I went back and looked at the readings from that Sunday and none could explain these notes (even with the theme of Advent and the approaching birth of Jesus). Yet finding this slip of paper that hinted at “that” time of birth, made “this” time of birth once again feel relevant. It got my creative juices flowing. And that felt so good that I realized how inspiration makes me feel utterly joyful, and that joy makes me feel ageless!
Although I can’t connect the dots of whatever contemplation sparked these notes, I can share what they say to me today.
Prepare the way/ Get out of the way
I am, in my way, preparing the way for Mia and Samuel . . . so that I can get out of the way! And when you and I accept that we have been prepared by Jesus (T2:11.17, D:1.5) we do the same! We accept that we have been made ready.
Know the secret you’re looking for!
There is something new coming (even from a scrap of paper found in the pocket of an old coat!). There’s no reason to feel this “coming” must be of something specific. No need to know the secret of “what” is coming! (Or like with a new baby, “when” it is coming!) The new is creation’s unfolding love. We’re ready for the New. That feels like the secret to me. To live full of anticipation for the New, knowing that inspiration can come from anything/anyone/anywhere/any time. And . . . we’re ready!
Mary carried her words in her heart.
Perhaps, like Mary, you and I only need to carry these words of ACOL, and our own words of love, in our hearts. Carry them to the place of love’s expression! The new is love’s expression.
Creation happening one heart to one heart is what I felt during my Philadelphia weekend. It is a present glimpse at a future I am very excited about—a future of creating the New through love’s expression in dialogue and poetry, in song and friendship, with our will to know and make known, in unity and relationship.
See below the lovely settings and all the beautiful people who shared their hearts. The final photo of the collage is of Reverend Rhetta Morgan singing as I read words from The Embrace (C:20). I hope to share a video of that with you soon. It was/is extraordinary!
(See the talk I gave as part of the Center for Contemporary Mysticism’s video series (the day after the ACOL event) here:https://contemporarymysticism.org/media/video-Perron-170226.asp)
You may also want to check out the poetry of our guest poet, Elliott Robertson. I wrote the following as part of a review of his book, Chaos and Surrender: Healing Poems for the Soul, on Amazon in 2011, saying that his poetry “did that mysterious thing poems do – give comfort by speaking truth – even (or especially) when it’s painful. Yes, here is a human heart giving the hardest words an honest airing from which they soften and rise like dough.”
Elliott has also been a contributor to the Expressions page of the Center for ACOL, http://www.centerforacourseoflove.org/expressions-introduction-with-elliott-robertson/ and to the Embrace newsletter https://acourseoflove.org/category/embrace-acol-blog/
The birth of the new
“Everyone” is just a concept. These words are given to each One. They are heard only by each “alone” by which I mean in the sanctity of the One Heart. We are one heart. We are one mind. Joined in wholeheartedness we are the heaven of the world. We replace bitterness with sweetness. We dwell in the reality of the One Heart, creation’s birthplace, birthplace of the new. (I.11)
We exist in the embrace of love like the layers of light that form a rainbow, indivisible and curved inward upon each other. Love grows from within as a child grows within its mother’s womb. Inward, inward, into the embrace, the source of all beginnings, the kernel and the wholeness of all life. The whole exists untroubled by what it will be. It is. C:20.12
I returned early from my trip to Philadephia. The minute I left town, my expectant daughter Mia’s doctor decided it was time for her baby to come—via inducement (for a variety of reasons). Today, the baby still has not come and I’m about to be off to the hospital where Mia will be admitted soon.
When a baby is coming, life is narrowed down to “one thing only.” It is so precious when this happens. In my book, Creation of the New, I call this the Absolute. It’s what happened when A Course of Love came.
Before any of this became part of the plan for Philly, my theme had emerged as one of beginnings and endings. In A Course of Love it is the ending of the old and the beginning of the New. I don’t have the capacity today to share this well with you, and so am borrowing parts of my journal from the day I returned home. This event was so wonderful that I can’t let it go any longer without expression.
Hello cabin~
It’s 5:43 on Tuesday February 28, 2017, the last day of February and maybe the day my new grandchild will be born. There is no evidence of this other than that Mia’s been ready for 10 days.
The laptop is cool to the heels of my hands and at 6:04 the pink is diminishing by degrees and yet there’s still a murky fading, the way water looks under standing ice, ground having risen up and mingled with the melt.
My dear trees stand so still and tall. I am comforted to be home with the whine of the furnace coming on and off and the whiz of cars on the freeway going and coming, and my heart settling in. Sunrise is not for another 40 minutes. My phone is in my pocket, poised for news of a baby coming …..
6:18 and the violet sky is bluing, second by second.
And I am here, Lord, alone with you.
Thank you for this trip I have just returned from—for the catharsis of it.
I am aware that I was able to adjust to the atmosphere of being with these women and men, to let something go—to let something come. As we spoke of the movement of ACOL and its progression from head to heart and perhaps beyond to “gut” (as suggested during my BatGap interview with Rick Archer), it arose spontaneously in me to say, “No. Not the gut. The womb. The place of birthing the new. The place of conception.” This was all so purposeful, Lord! Mia’s “expectancy” and the beginnings of labor, and the stopping, and the waiting. Oh, Lord—it was so beautiful and so beyond this one birth. It was part of something bigger…as if you wanted to bring this home to us in a “real life” example, a “real life” way.
The word “expectancy” alone! What a lovely replacement for words like anxiety.
What an encouragement to leave behind words of the mind—words like “download” which is so commonly used. I know it works—it makes sense in our current lives—but it sure lessens the holiness, like leaving church, or temple, or cabin… and entering the office.
6:37 and definition has come to the yard. There’s still a murkiness at ground level, but the fence is clearly a fence, the trees are trees, the squirrel a squirrel. “I can “see”” we say. The dark leaves, the light comes, and we say, “I can see.”
And yet what I see in the murkiness is my best seeing! So many revelations about this over the weekend. As if it all forms in the murkiness and we only say “I can see” when light comes because of all that begins there. What was “coming” has arrived and the “seeing” is an attending to what is being born, and then to the life that has come.
The expectancy of new life.
The womb of the new.
The places of ordinary revelation.
6:43 and a sudden shift to white blue. Not a bit of variation to the sky yet. It is a blank slate on which the day is about to be imprinted. A blank page on which the day is yet to be written. The “dawning,” the birth . . . of day.
And now there is new life again…in what was “formed” this weekend in our togetherness at the wonderful Center for Contemporary Mysticism. /
Mari & Brett Louviere Center for Contemporary Mysticsm
More to come later on this event and new life.
See the talk I gave as part of the Center for Contemporary Mysticism’s video series (the day after the ACOL event) here:https://contemporarymysticism.org/media/video-Perron-170226.asp
Those called to the way of Mary … are called to the creation and anchoring of the new relationship in the new world. Their relationship of union, upon which their contentment is based, is the birthplace, the womb of the new. Their expression is expression of this union. D:Day19.6
The photo at the top, of Our Lady of the Millennium was sent to me by Lady Burke who, along with Rhetta Morgan, provided music for the event. Elliott Robertson contributed poetry. I may share these at a later time, but for now I want to express such gratitude for them and for all (and there were so many) who contributed to this exquisite day of sharing. It will be “old news” before I get my photos ready to share, but I’m going to get some up and know I’ll keep sharing with the many I met and connected with. Thank you all.
