Mari’s Blog
A future yet to be created
We dwell in the reality of the One Heart, creation’s birthplace, birthplace of the new. I.11
The situation of violence throughout the world, the feelings of being powerless to change anything, of being caught in deception, make me go, “No, no. I don’t want to look at that. I want to have hope. I want to believe in the power of love. I do believe. I do.”
This is true. I do believe. I believe in love.
I believe in the power of feelings. Lately, I do not know what I’m feeling and I’ve been thinking this is an anomaly. That I used to know. Surely I did! But no. This isn’t any big change. I am often, at least, wordless when it comes to what I feel. I told a friend the other day that I am not suited for a certain task because I am neither crystal-clear nor direct. What I feel is vague. These attributes that are “liabilities” in certain areas are the bedfellows I carry around, that are waiting with me as if for the moment when they’re needed. It’s kind of like not creating in a straight line. I do not operate that way. I weave and ramble and double back.
There’s a sense of the need for these qualities being near. Isn’t that strange? Don’t ask me what I mean.
I write to find out what I mean. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it doesn’t. I write to give voice to what I’m feeling. And I do. But not as often as I’d like and I miss it. Still, it comes to me that it doesn’t matter, that the muddle is the matter at hand, the clash of muted feeling and thought…as if they have nowhere to go.
The time is close but it is not quite . . . now.
It’s as though the catalyst nature of this Course that claims that now is the time, is smoldering. It’s been ignited. It’s rumbling with heat and power and friction. It is hanging out exactly in that pause that appears to be taking place around the globe in which no one knows what to do and those who pretend that they know are looking like fools.
You see. It is not just me. No one knows what to do. Because we have to create the new.
In “A Treatise on the New” we hear:
The future is yet to be created. . . . Many predictions of the future have been made, and many of them have been called prophecy. But the future is yet to be created. The future depends on you who are willing to leave learning behind and who are willing to accept your new roles as creators of the new—creators of the future. T4:11.1-2
Yikes! The future depends on you. (And here I was talking of the “ordinary” pressures of life last week. This takes that up a notch or 12,000.)
Do we truly stand in that moment predicted as “the future yet to be created?” Could there be no sensible plan, no sane thing to do, when there is no future . . . yet? What if we’re stalled in an untenable present? Doesn’t it feel that way at times?
Christ LaFontaine, of Lightsmith, here in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote of this time with feelings much like my own, as “a transition between worlds.” He goes on to say, “Individually we call it healing. Collectively we call it transformation. It’s not always pretty or comfortable, if ever.”
And yet there is some solace in a pressure this big, a pressure that’s not about the vacuuming to be done, or the trip to be taken, but about a future yet to be created.
Testifying and honest sharing
Remember that you are tired of learning. You are tired here, after your climb. 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)
I have been feeling like I’m running on empty lately. The other day I did a radio interview. It was lovely. Very conversational. No stress at all. But at its end I felt so tired. I saw my brother Ray not long afterward and he could even tell I was tired! So I told him I’d done an interview. He’s an investigator and he said, “When I have to testify, I’m tired the rest of the day and the next day too.” In a family that doesn’t understand what I do, I felt so good about him telling me that. So good about that sense that, on some level, he understood.
The word testify is even kind of interesting. Here are some of its definitions:
to make a statement based on personal knowledge or belief: bear witness;
to serve as evidence or proof;
to express a personal conviction;
to make a solemn declaration
No matter how casual and conversational these interviews, I’m asked about my experience. I talk of it often quite simply, emphasizing the humanity of it, as is my way. But even writing a blog—any time we “put something out there” what is shared can have about it some of that “testifying” energy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just is as it is.
I began this latest interview with Caroline Chang, talking about my age and how I can see things differently now; I can look back and see how one thing led to another; how perfect really, it all was. But I could as easily have talked of how my age seems to add to my decline in energy. I mean, I’m only 61, and people who are decades older are probably getting a laugh out of me about now, but I’m adjusting to feelings that are different than they were a few years ago. A lot different.
But then, so is my life. I’ve been feeling a little pressure lately. Pressure here. Pressure there.
So, I laid down on the bed in my grandson Henry’s room one night to watch his TV. I brought a J.Jill catalogue and an envelope from Pathways of Light with me. J.Jill didn’t take me more than a minute to go through but Pathways “Miracles News” held me for a good while. I opened to see Rev. Mary Gerard Lenihan’s face in a little square attached to an article. I met her in St. Louis earlier this year and found her to be very kind. It was the only time I experienced an “ACIM” type of challenge as I’ve been out speaking, and she stood up and did what I thought of as “rescuing me.” So I am invested right away in seeing what she has to say and could almost have cried as she spoke of “A nagging unworthiness, a not good enough, not getting enough done” energy that she called an “internal rut.” Then I read one by Rev. Carly Glasmyre who shared a feeling of embarrassment. She was on a weekly study group call and a member of the group helped her more than she helped the group. Rev. Myron Jones, whom I met at the NY ACIM conference, spoke of a shift from her: “I do, I fix, I work” goal setting ways, to a way of watching. “I watch Myron,” she wrote.
I felt so comforted.
Why is this? Why is it that we need this kind of honest sharing? I feel like I used to do it more than I have lately. I thought of writing these women to thank them but I didn’t do it. At least not yet.
It’s a sometimes complicated business to feel what you feel and let yourself rest, or to deal with something like feelings of pressure. Me? I want to “get it done.” That’s how I’ve always dealt with pressure. Just get it done. Then the pressure will be gone!
Now, like these women, I need to find a new way. A kinder, gentler way.
At the moment, I’m sticking with (or coming around to) acceptance. This has been a pretty difficult thing for me, to simply accept when I need to rest. To respect my body as well as my spirit! That I did so and found these women to accompany me feels like a sign. Maybe it’s okay!
Here’s the radio archive link: Awake 2 Oneness Radio:
https://goo.gl/KoiEAS
It’s coming up to October when I’ll be meeting folks in Sedona, Arizona who are reading A Course of Love. October is also the time for my family’s annual jaunt to the tiny river town of Red Wing, Minnesota to view the fall colors and give the kids a night in a hotel with a pool. I got the dates confused when I gave them during the interview. I gave the dates for the trip to Red Wing (10/21) rather than the gathering in Sedona (10/15)! The interviewer was in Pennsylvania so I mentioned that I’d be in Philadelphia in February, but I couldn’t remember the date for that either! Here are those dates. For more info, check the ACOL event page: http://acourseoflove.com/events/
Sedona: October 15, 2016
Philadelphia: Weekend of February 25-26, 2017
The New You
Become the author of your own life. Live it as you feel called to live it. D:4.24
I have been reading and re-reading Thomas Merton for over a decade, but I recently found a quote from him I’d never seen, one that describes love and its affects in a way that fits me and A Course of Love beautifully:
“We discover our true selves in love.
“Love affects more than our thinking and our behavior toward those we love. It transforms our entire life. Genuine love is a personal revolution. Love takes your ideas, your desires, and your actions and welds them together in one experience and one living reality which is a new you.”
Personal revolution? Absolutely. Weaving ideas, desires, and actions together into a new reality? Absolutely. And then…as with…so without.
In Chapter 3 of The Dialogues, Jesus spoke of the Covenant of the New. In Chapter 4: The New You, he says:
This Covenant is the fulfillment of the agreement between you and God. The agreement is for you to be the new. As you are new, so too is God, for you are one, if not the same. As you are new, so too is the world, for you are one, if not the same. As you are new, so are your brothers and sisters, for they, too, are one, if not the same. While not the same, you also are not different. The differences you saw during the time of learning, differences that made you feel as if each being stood separate and alone, you are now called to see no more. In unity you are whole and inseparable, one living organism now raised above the level of the organism as you become aware of unity of form. It is time now for this idea to be accepted, for if it is not, you will remain in the prison you have created. D:4.1-3
Jesus reminds us that there is no authority to whom we can turn, and says that in place of that “outside” authority he gives us our own authority, an authority we must claim in order for it be our own.
The chapter ends this way:
Let this acceptance of your own internal authority be your first “act” of acceptance rather than learning. Turn to this as the new pattern and to the thought system of giving and receiving as one. Let the authority of the new be given and received. Become the author of your own life. Live it as you feel called to live it. D:4.24
What would a greater authorship of our own lives be than to be new selves creating a new world?
In Chapter 5 I’m reminded of one of the reasons that some disagreement about “who we are” still exists. We are in a new time! We are in the process of becoming new. It is what is happening today. Creation of the new is going on and the state we’re called to is … new.
This is an acceptance that recognizes that while the Self that God created is eternal and the self of form as ancient as the sea and stars, the elevated Self of form is new and will create a new world. D:5.15
I realize that, having been with ACOL as long as I have, I sometimes forget that these are new ideas. I rush ahead, eager to talk about and embrace the new. It’s such an interesting conundrum. When we are given “authorship” of our lives, we get this extreme splash of freedom, like taking a hit on one of those watery amusement park rides. We are doused. We might cry out with enthusiasm or with shock. I am reminded to be gentle with myself and others as we face this call to the freedom of the new.
I’ll be talking of “the new” in Sedona next month:
When: Saturday, October 15, 2016 – 10 AM to 4 PM.
Where: Unity of Sedona, 65 Deer Trail Dr., Sedona, AZ 86336
To register: http://goo.gl/Rh5q5P
Contact: Kathy Scott Perry, Event Coordinator, at 512-938-9996, or kathyscottperry@gmail.com.
Eternal Life: choosing our true nature with our free will
[I]f you were to think now of a person whom you know who has died, you would not be likely to think of them much differently than they were in life, even while you are able to imagine them being peaceful and free of the constraints of the body. This is as good an idea as I can give you of how to imagine the elevated Self of form, as not much different than you are now, but peaceful and free of the constraints of the body. D:Day10.27
I could pull many quotes that make what we are headed for sound grander than that, but this is the one that my heart most responds to. When I imagine my dad, who died almost a decade ago, it is in exactly this way. The memory of this quote was prompted by a visit from my oldest sibling, my brother John who came in from California, partially to help the rest of us access my mom’s needs. She is not dying. She is getting very old and facing what most of us will face if we make it to her age, which will, in weeks be 92. Mom is very frail and we’ve begun to question if she can continue to live alone safely. She feels that she can, does not want to move, and does not like the idea of hiring help.
I would guess this sounds familiar to many of you. You don’t want to take away anyone’s right to choose; to take away their free will. As I began to ponder this, I realized it wasn’t only old age, or memories that reminded me of this section of “A Treatise on the New,” but the idea of free will:
You cannot express yourself independently of the whole! It is as impossible as it would be for the finger to do so. And yet you think that this is possible and that this is the meaning of free will. Free will does not make the impossible possible. It makes the possible probable. It is thus probable that you will use your free will in order to be who you are. But it is not guaranteed! It is your choice and your choice alone that is the only guarantee. This is the meaning of free will. T4:5.9
Then Jesus says:
When you die, you do not die to who you are or who you think you are. You do not die to choice. At the time of death you are assisted in ways not formerly possible to you in form, to make the choice to be who you are. You are shown in ways that the body’s eyes were unable to see, the glory of your true nature. You are given the chance, just as you are being given the chance now, to choose your true nature with your free will. T4:5.9
Because you have now made a new choice, a collective choice as one body, one consciousness, to end the time of the intermediary and to begin to learn directly, you are given the same opportunity that was formerly reserved for you only after your death. It was formerly only after your death that you chose direct revelation by God. Think about this now and you will see that it is true. You hoped to live a good life and at the end of that life to know God. Your vision of the afterlife was one in which God revealed Himself to you and, in that revelation, transformed you. The direct revelations that will come to you now will transform you as surely as did those that came to so many others after death. T4:5.12
Again, like with the quote with which I began, there are many more eloquent ways that the “new” is presented to us. But this somehow makes perfect sense to me. It makes sense that we would want to transform now rather than later. It feels like such a blessing to even imagine being able to do so, as he says:
You are God’s harmony, God’s expression, God’s melody. You, and all that exist with you, form the orchestra and chorus of creation. You might think of your time here as that of being apprentice musicians. You must learn or relearn what you have forgotten so that you can once again join the chorus. So that you can once again be in harmony with creation. So that you can express yourself within the relationship of unity that is the whole of the choir and the orchestra. So that you can realize your accomplishment in union and relationship. So that you can join your accomplishment with that of all others and become the body of Christ. T4:5.2
What a lovely idea that the choice is merely now or later—that this choice to return to who we truly are is eternally ours. It may not make choices like the ones we face with elderly parents any easier…but then again…maybe it does!
Mari’s next public appearance:
Unity of Sedona
When: Saturday, October 15, 2016 – 10 AM to 4 PM.
Where: Unity of Sedona, 65 Deer Trail Dr., Sedona, AZ 86336
Tickets: $75 prepaid, and $85 at the door.
To register: http://goo.gl/Rh5q5P
Or contact Kathy Scott Perry, Event Coordinator, at 512-938-9996, or kathyscottperry@gmail.com.
Change is the way
“Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was. The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories—in short, out of our heads and into our hearts. It’s right up there with life-threatening emergencies and truly mutual sex as a way of being fully alive in the present.” Gloria Steinem
At the airport, awaiting the flight that will bring me home from the ACOL event in Santa Fe, I buy Gloria Steinem’s book, “On the Road.” I’d thought of it when it first came out but at that time rejected the $18 paperback. Now, on the road myself, such reservations leave me. Gloria’s musings prove to be the perfect accompaniment to the final part of my journey, a journey that made me wonder, “How can I still feel such “newness?”” How, when I sit at home wondering what lies “on the road” ahead, can I possibly know what awaits? How can I even imagine lightness and joy when I’m nervously preparing and packing? How can I fail to report it when it comes? All these feelings of change!
And yet they keep coming!
Yesterday, being at church with Mom, walking arm-in-arm, slowly taking the ramp in front rather than the stairs in back, sitting near the door we enter rather than in our usual place, we agree quietly that we won’t be back, probably, until Christmas. It is too much. Sitting with her, realizing all that she is having to accept, I know it could be our last time in church together. Along with the congregation, I sing one of my favorite hymns, “The Summons:” Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same? Looking down at my twisted ankle, supported with a small brace, I’m aware of my desire to walk with assurance into the unknown future. Into all that leaves me “not the same.”
I think to myself, I should have written about Santa Fe right away—before this other stuff came along, making the change of Santa Fe part of a long course of continual change. And yet …
Change is the way.
Change is the way awesome revelations emerge. The way you get your sea legs. The way you expand into all that you are and the cycles of life that revolve as you go. I realize how much I “took leave” of the known in Santa Fe, the wonder of it. Its effect is both a lightness and a strength in me.
Santa Fe was like a meeting with old friends I didn’t yet know, like a sweet experiment in 
sharing. It had all the markings of a grand adventure, complete with treks into the personal and spiritual unknown, treks beyond where GPS could reach, and into areas of this great planet where noise could not reach and the heart could be heard.
I spoke of still standing at the beginning, despite ACOL’s 15 plus years in existence—of being “in it” together, in the change that is the movement to “the new.”
To sustain Christ-consciousness in form is creation of the new. T4:4.18
Santa Fe changed me. It joined with the other continual forces of change, yet held me in its embrace for four days. It was an immersion into the newness of A Course of Love and a demonstration of coming to know together, in union and relationship. I am so grateful for the change that life is, for the poignancy of the human experience and the staying power of the divine experience joining with our lives in form.
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
You will soon wonder, if you haven’t already, just how it is going to be possible to live as your new Self while still in form, while still in a form that seems inconsistent with your being, while still in a form that exists within a form, within a world that seems inconsistent with your being. You will wonder how, if you are done learning, the patterns of learning will change to help you embrace the acceptance of this new time of no time. You will wonder how to live in time as a being no longer bound by time. And I tell you truly, that once acceptance of what is is complete, we will go on to these questions of the new and together we will find the answers. D:5.21
Together we find the answers—our own—and those common to all.
Thanks again to Joe Kittle, Lee Flynn, Ceal Keough, Brendalyn Batchelor and Unity Santa Fe, for bringing me in to share “A Day of Love.” To Anne-Drue and Jon Anderson who hosted me, to Bill and Adele Glaser who hosted a pot-luck for the attendees of our day of sharing, to Sally Patton who invited me to Abiquiu, and to Kathy Scott Perry who supported me and us in this endeavor and is planning the next one in Sedona:
Sedona, Arizona – A DAY OF DIALOGUE AND UNION
When: Saturday, October 15, 2016 – 10 AM to 4 PM.
Where: Unity of Sedona, 65 Deer Trail Dr., Sedona, AZ 86336
Tickets: $75 prepaid, and $85 at the door. Come join us!
For more information contact: Kathy Scott Perry, Event Coordinator, at 512-938-9996, or kathyscottperry@gmail.com.
To register: http://goo.gl/Rh5q5P
