Give til it hurts...receive til it feels good!

Our ability to give and receive is directly related to our capacity to create and experience true prosperity, true love, and grow in consciousness.

Many of us have difficulty with giving, receiving, or both. Giving and receiving are opposite energies that are linked together, like inhaling and exhaling. If one aspect of that cycle doesn't function, the entire cycle doesn't function and life force cannot move freely. If you can't inhale, you will soon have nothing to exhale, and before long, your body will be unable to continue living. Giving and receiving isn't always seen as being as vital as inhaling and exhaling because our bodies can live without the giving and receiving cycle, but we won't live as well as we could live with that cycle.

I believe the inability to truly receive is more common than the inability to give. There are a number of reasons why receiving is difficult for so many of us. One factor is cultural conditioning. Giving is generally viewed as honorable and praiseworthy. Receiving, or taking, seems perilously close to selfishness, which has a lot of negative connotations for most of us.

Giving is seen as power and receiving is seen as weakness. When giving, we're "in control" in a way. Our actions are willful and deliberate. When receiving, we must surrender control and open to the feelings that are awakened in us by the giver. We may feel awkward, embarrassed, unworthy or even ashamed. When we stifle our receiving energy, we stop the flow of gratitude and, ultimately, the flow of prosperity and good in our lives.

Life can change for us when we realize that giving and receiving are 2 sides of sharing love. Giving has more meaning when the receiver has the strength to be receptive, because the art of receiving is itself a form of giving.

Live a full, complete life...be both a grateful giver and a grateful receiver.

I'm holding the high watch!
Rev. Donna

What the world needs now is love, sweet love!

When Jesus was asked, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" he replied, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind' - this is the great and foremost commandment, and there is a second like it, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. The whole Law and Prophets hang on these two commands." (Mtt 22:37-40, Mark 12:28-34).

The ancient Greeks had four words for four different sorts of love. At the bottom of the scale of love is epithemia, meaning simple desire or lust. Think of Jimmy Carter's famous campaign confession. Next up is eros, the Greek word for a love of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Further up the scale of love is philia, the affection that one has for one's family and friends. Highest of all on the scale of love, though, is agape. Agape is the apex, the greatest form of love. It is actually agape that Paul means when he says, of faith, hope and love, ". . .the greatest of these is love."

"What the world needs now is love sweet love,
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now is love sweet love,
no not just for some but for everyone."

We need agape love; the love that takes us out of ourselves and our own selfish concerns, challenging us to love not only those who love us, not only those who need us, but even those whom we do not know and may not yet understand, and...most difficult of all...who may not even like us.

The 20th century theologian Daniel Day Williams wrote:
Love does not put everything at rest; it puts everything in motion. Love does not resolve every conflict; it accepts conflict as the arena in which the work of love is to be done. Love does not separate the good people from the bad, bestowing endless bliss on one, and endless torment on the other. Love seeks reconciliation of every life so that it may share all the others.

Those of us in long-term, committed relationships, know that love is change. It is never static. To build a relationship on epithemia only is folly. We can't always manage to be eros or "good, true, and beautiful." We do not always hold each other in philia or brotherly or sisterly affection, either. So what are the odds that we can reach agape? Whatever the odds, we must try. Where there is love, there is transformation...and transformation IS what the world needs now!

I'm holding the high watch!

Rev. Donna

Get out of your "woe-boat!"

Yesterday during church services, we talked about how our thoughts affect our lives. When we spend most of our time reiterating our list of "woes" all we are doing is "woe-ing around in our woe-boat" and generating more woe in our life. We are using our faith backwards!

Eric Butterworth said, "There is no such thing as a lack of faith. We all have plenty of faith, it's just that we have faith in the wrong things. We have faith in what can't be done rather than what can be done. We have faith in lack rather than abundance but there is no lack of faith. Faith is a law."

Have you ever stood in front of your closed refrigerator door, feeling hungry, and wondered why you couldn't feed yourself? Of course not, because you know that all you have to do is open the door. And what happens when you open the door? A light comes on! There's plenty of food waiting for you.

There's plenty of everything waiting for us in the universe. We simply need to open the door and the light of Spirit will lead us to our good. Give up fear and worry about what others will think of us or how scary it is to step out of our comfort zone. Open the door and let in the light...and you will also let in all the abundance and joy you can hold.

I'm holding the high watch!
Rev. Donna

Quit Exercising Your Lips!

Beginning this coming Friday evening and continuing through all day Saturday, I'll be part of a silent retreat. I am looking forward to this time of peace and quiet...to walk, to think, to pray, to meditate...to be alone in the midst of a group. But when I tell people my plans, they shudder as if I'd just told them I was becoming a cannibal!

For most people, unconsciously, the greatest place of fear is within the stillness of their own minds, away from all activity and thought…just present to the moment and themselves.

You would think itwould be very simple…to sit quietly in a room without a care, worry or thought. However the ego doesn't want us to find that place. The chatter of the mind is how the ego grabs our attention and focus and keeps us from seeing what is real and true. The ego likes to keep people small, running, and locked in their insecurities and doubts. This is what sustains it…gives it life. If people were to begin to practice the art of stillness for just fifteen minutes a day, the ego would no longer have control...we would control the ego.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, one of the main characters is an alien named Ford Prefect. Many things about earthlings puzzle him, such as the fact that they seem to talk all the time—even if only to repeat the obvious. Over the course of several months, he comes up with a number of theories for this behavior, one of which I found particularly insightful: “If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.”

Take some time today...quit exercising your lips and let your brain start working! Sit in the silence. Aaah, just breathe.

I'm holding the high watch!
Rev. Donna