You are an immigrant coming to a New World with all your possessions in hand. But as you glimpse what was once a distant shore and now is near, you realize none of what you formerly possessed and called your treasures are needed. How silly you feel to have carted them from one place to the next. What a waste of time and energy to have been slowed down by such a heavy burden. What a relief to realize that you need carry it no more. How you wish you would have believed they were not needed when you began. How happy you are to leave them behind. C:1.7
A Course of Love was, from the start, a vocation. I wanted it. I wanted the work. I’d been looking for a new “job”—for work—work for God.
This compunction was evidently a needed component to me being the scribe, and I’m using that word purposefully here, because, as first receiver, I was also the scribe, the one writing down the holy words. This love of actively being engaged, particularly with the written word—fit me.
I fell into this vocation wanting it to enclose me; to give me a new life where I would be held and supported by the work I loved. When you desire a vocation you want a container, a structure, a routine, a little recognition, an engagement, a paycheck. “I” wanted those things. In many ways I needed those things—felt I needed them, at times, rather desperately. But they didn’t come. My support came from my husband and he was, at times, over-extended.
Nearly ten years later, and just before the recession hit, my dad died and two weeks later my grandson was born. These events greatly changed the shape of my next years. I cared for my dad while he was dying and then my grandson, who lived with us, and for my mother-in-law, during the two years before her death. Eventually, I came to feel rather tired in my caregiver role. Yes, it was one way of giving love and care, but I was weary.
All throughout this time I’d been writing and had published two books. Now I began to work on another: “Discovering Feminism.” I felt a new, radical side of myself emerging and I was surprised to find it felt truly consistent with A Course of Love. It wasn’t just women or the poor who needed the freedom to be who they are—it was everyone. I started being on the lookout for “truth tellers” as I began to see more clearly the deceptive practices of politics and the machinery that runs society. Within these new musings I heard ACOL’s words about ending deception—ending the illusion and creating the new—in a fresh way.
With these ideas in mind, I spoke at a Women and Spirituality conference that was attended by 
a Course of Love reader, Glenn Hovemann. During his visit we began the discussion that led to this new publication of the Combined Volume of A Course of Love.
I don’t think it’s any accident that this occurred in the way it did. It seems also no accident that my years of caregiving in the way I have are ending (my grandson is returning to the care of his mother) at precisely the same time that I’m traveling to New York to attend the annual ACIM conference. The trip now has a symbolic sort of presence in my heart. I am fully feeling this as a time of one life ending and another beginning. That’s what this Course has been like all along, showing up in my life as the necessity of closing out the old to make way for the new (most by way of inner change, but occasionally external change as well).
ACOL begins with an image of an immigrant going to a new land—an immigrant heavily burdened with things that will not be needed; an immigrant who can be shown a way to set those heavy burdens down and truly find new life. In setting my vocation aside, I found it. It is not “about” being a scribe, or feminism, or politics, or even abandoning care-giving entirely. It’s not about anything at all, and it’s about everything. It’s no smaller than the love and truth offered in A Course of Love. And no bigger than being true to myself. All of my life experience is gathered together by it.
I won’t be speaking at the conference, which feels like a great blessing. I am able to go and dip my toes into the waters, into the flow of new life. I feel that I stand at the beginning . . . again. But I do not stand alone. This is what is truly new: the growth of friendships, colleagues and community, and of readers as in love with A Course of Love as me.
We are not alone. Our way is opening. Our time is now.
Dearest Anne, I am so happy to hear that you feel yourself to be entering the new…and that you felt and followed your draw to the divine feminine. Receptivity is by nature such a feminine way. I know what you mean about the goddesses. There must be a way to reanimate the world…in our way…a way that fits who we are now and the world today. I trust that together we will find it!
Paula, I feel I know just what you mean about your “heart being faster.” Love the poem too. especially the last phrase–the door itself makes no promises/it is just a door. Reminds me of “standing at the threshold” both from ACOL and the Moody Blues!
Yes Jacques! It is so lovely to hear the echoes of “our time is now.” And yes, time to “Be” in whatever way our heart and soul is calling.
Roger, I appreciate your comment and remembrance that response, rather than responsibility is the new way. So true!
Is not being happy the best way to share and be in union? Thank you, dear Anne, for being happy.
Happiness needs nothing. Isn’t this giving/receiving as One?
Let us endlessly celebrate!
Love,
Thankyou Jacques.
Where I am right now I have a picture I made 20 Years ago, with two happy dophins in a shining heart and there I have written:
“Gods will for me is perfect happiness” .I see it every morning when I awake and it feels so good.
And I was just thinking about you because I just watched an inspiring movie about a woman living without money. Thinking about what you have shared about living a simple life less posessions.
The film really made me see this in a new way.
Thankyou Mari
This post resonates very much with me.
I love so much the feeling of being an immigrant coming to a new world…and I feel I am ready to walk through that door …and that there is only this new path now for me.
And funny I found your blogpost today just after writing a post in our group about the divine feminine.
I was into writing another post in the group today but then I just felt this opennes and flowing inside me about writing about the divine feminine. So I responded to that and and it felt good like I had the feeling that SHE wanted to come through and that its time to use also feminine language while speaking about the divine.
And at the same time I feel that my way of focus on the feminine divine has change. I am not so intetested any longer in the history and all the Goddesses and their different aspects. And even before this my Women /Goddessretreats was also very much about the message of ACIM. This year I felt even less interest in sharing about history and Goddesses and instead I shared more of the message from ACOL as I had understood so far.
And about the way of the heart.. And also about union and I felt even more the beauty of us being in union with each other.
And now I am.open to share in other ways or in no ways, just being…. being my true self and the message of truth peace and love feels most important for me right now.
So I have a curious feeling of being open for the new…open for the loving and divine impulse, not trying to think it out…
And it is a releif ťo not carry these burdens and I feel happy to leave them behind
Oh my, I get so excited I push the wrong key. Back to the poem
Either you will
go through the door
or you will not go through
If you go through
There is always the risk
Of remembering your name
Things look at you doubly
And you must look back
And let them happen.
If you do not go through
It is possible
To live worthily
To maintain your attitudes
To hold your position
To die bravely
But much will blind you,
Much will evade you,
At what cost who knows?
The door itself
Makes no promises
It is only a door.
Mari, your blog resonates with my heart and my heart is beating faster for the moment. I too think ACOL is so important and will catch on heart to heart. A friend and I were talking a couple days ago about just this. If we are so ignited, there must be many others. She lives outside of Chicago (which was my home for years) and I am heading back there (from FL) in April. We will begin another dialogue group on ACOL there. One has begun here a couple months ago. The time is now. We are ready.
Your immigrant theme reminds me of a favorite poem by Adrienne Rich titled “Perspective Immigrants”
Either you will
As I read you post, Mari, I was to write: Yes our time is now. Then I realized that this exactly what Roger had just written. Whoever has read Talking With Angels by Gitta Mallasz, would have recognized almost the same image described here in C: 1.7, in the form of somebody entering in a new land holding a heavy ball of pure gold and finding out that gold has no value there. The angel asks: What will you do with the ball of gold if not open the hand and let it drop?
I’m also led to the question: Are we here to do or to Be? And I answer for myself now: to Be. And that doesn’t mean not doing anything. And are we not somehow being what we do? But from experience I learned that doing ( quite often for the ego’s sake) may alienate or postpone the art of just Being. The body-mind being very busy, the heart is not listened to.
Love to you both.
Thanks Jacque
I agree a lot with that when the bodymind is busy there is no room for the heart to be listened to.
Now a days when doing…I love more and more to do the things that reminds me of and connects me to spirit.. Singing a song with the message of love and truth…
Painting my experience of light, love, truth…
Writing about the truth so it gets even more deep and clear for me. Being fully me… But also just being because then the inspiration comes.
Yep Mari, « our time is now ». And we are not called to new responsibilities, but just invited to lets the soul respond (let flourish our respond-ability) as naturally as possible. Roger