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/