Phyllis Edgerly Ring's Blog, page 34

One healing spirit animates us all

“An intermediary is needed to bring two extremes into relation with each other.

Riches and poverty, plenty and need:

Without some kind of intermediary power, there could be no relation between such pairs of opposites.”

When he shared these words with his listeners in Paris in 1911, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá noted that as citizens of one world, we are “in extreme need” of such an intermediary, a power by which we are able to receive help from the Divine Reality, the Source of all life.

He likened that Reality to the sun, and the Holy Spirit to the rays of the sun. The sun doesn’t descend to the earth, nor the earth ascend to the sun. It is the rays of the sun that bring illumination and life to earth.

In the following year, addressing an American audience, he shared more about the vital, life-giving role of the Holy Spirit when he described the means by which true unity will be established within the human race:

“The source of perfect unity and love in the world of existence is the bond and oneness of reality.

When the divine and fundamental reality enters human hearts and lives, it conserves and protects all states and conditions of mankind, establishing that intrinsic oneness of the world of humanity which can only come into being through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit.

For the Holy Spirit is like unto the life in the human body, which blends all differences of parts and members in unity and agreement.”

He then urged his listeners to reflect on how diverse the various parts of the human body are. He described how, in a whole and healthy body, there is a oneness of animating spirit that “establishes such a unity in the bodily organism that if any part is subjected to injury or becomes diseased, all the other parts and functions sympathetically respond and suffer, owing to the perfect oneness that exists.”

Just as the human spirit is the animating element that unites and coordinates the parts of a human body, the Holy Spirit is the controlling cause of the unity and coordination of the body of humankind, he said.

“The bond or oneness of humanity cannot be effectively established save through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the world of humanity is a composite body, and the Holy Spirit is the animating principle of its life.” 

The evidence of the ever-increasing dis-ease in that body of humankind is all around us.

 ~ In the course of our lives each day, what might each of us do to draw on the power of the Holy Spirit to establish unity, and healing?

 ~ What can we each contribute to love and service, and the building of the good?

 ~ What qualities and choices empower us to do that?

One healing spirit aminates us all

“An intermediary is needed to bring two extremes into relation with each other.

Riches and poverty, plenty and need:

Without some kind of intermediary power, there could be no relation between such pairs of opposites.”

When he shared these words with his listeners in Paris in 1911, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá noted that as citizens of one world, we are “in extreme need” of such an intermediary, a power by which we are able to receive help from the Divine Reality, the Source of all life.

He likened that Reality to the sun, and the Holy Spirit to the rays of the sun. The sun doesn’t descend to the earth, nor the earth ascend to the sun. It is the rays of the sun that bring illumination and life to earth.

In the following year, addressing an American audience, he shared more about the vital, life-giving role of the Holy Spirit when he described the means by which true unity will be established within the human race:

“The source of perfect unity and love in the world of existence is the bond and oneness of reality.

When the divine and fundamental reality enters human hearts and lives, it conserves and protects all states and conditions of mankind, establishing that intrinsic oneness of the world of humanity which can only come into being through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit.

For the Holy Spirit is like unto the life in the human body, which blends all differences of parts and members in unity and agreement.”

He then urged his listeners to reflect on how diverse the various parts of the human body are. He described how, in a whole and healthy body, there is a oneness of animating spirit that “establishes such a unity in the bodily organism that if any part is subjected to injury or becomes diseased, all the other parts and functions sympathetically respond and suffer, owing to the perfect oneness that exists.”

Just as the human spirit is the animating element that unites and coordinates the parts of a human body, the Holy Spirit is the controlling cause of the unity and coordination of the body of humankind, he said.

“The bond or oneness of humanity cannot be effectively established save through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the world of humanity is a composite body, and the Holy Spirit is the animating principle of its life.” 

The evidence of the ever-increasing dis-ease in that body of humankind is all around us.

 ~ In the course of our lives each day, what might each of us do to draw on the power of the Holy Spirit to establish unity, and healing?

 ~ What can we each contribute to love and service, and the building of the good?

 ~ What qualities and choices empower us to do that?

The road to reunion always waits for us

GLEANINGS FOUND HERE AND THERE:

Keep knocking and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.

 ~ Rumi

When from our better selves we have too long

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,

Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,

How gracious, how benign, is Solitude!

~ William Wordsworth

Man alone is very helpless. Man plus existence is enormous, huge, infinite. Prayer is a meeting of the tiny part with the whole. The tiny part dissolves into the whole and becomes the whole.

~ Osho

” … when we are present in life, free from demands and agendas, when we allow life to unfold according to its own inner principles, we open up a doorway again between the worlds. Within our consciousness the inner and the outer, the visible and the unseen worlds, can come together and speak to each other, and our split apart world can become whole again.”

 ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The gold in the hours

Artwork: Judy Wright

“This is one of the most singular experiences, waking on what feels like a good day, preparing to work but not yet actually embarked. At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead.

Her mind hums. This morning she may penetrate the obfuscation, the clogged pipes, to reach the gold. She can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty.

Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning. She may pick up her pen and follow it with her hand as it moves across the paper; she may pick up her pen and find that she’s merely herself, a woman in a housecoat holding a pen, afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent, with no idea about where to begin or what to write.

She picks up her pen.” 

~ excerpted from The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

Quick contest:

Last pair of hand-painted earrings from D. Kirkup Designs.

Leave a comment on any post and you’ll be included in a drawing Nov. 27.

Light for timid ships

Photo: David Campbell / http://gbctours.com

“Evolution is transformation. And transformation is happening all the time. It happens as we learn new things …

“Evolution is not an automatic ever-ascending spiritual conveyor-belt, but the result of our ability to face reality, adjust, adapt, and change,” says author Christine DeLorey.

Photo: David Campbell / http://gbctours.com

A key element of our transformative path is contrast, whose intensity can sometimes seem shocking – even disheartening. What can it point to, for our hearts, as it reminds us of all that we do not yet know?

Photo: David Campbell / http://gbctours.com

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable,” urges poet Mary Oliver, and theologian Paul Tillich reminds,“The first duty of love is to listen.”

Photo: David Campbell / http://gbctours.com

“ … if you are willing to let your heart break completely open, with no internal narrative controlling the opening, you will discover the pure, innocent love that is alive in the core of every emotion, every feeling, everybody,” writes Gangaji. “It remains pure and spacious regardless of change or loss.”

Once this happens, then perhaps we are equipped at last for what these words of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s invite:

“Make ready thy soul that thou mayest be like the light which shineth forth from the loftiest heights on the coast, by means of which guidance may be given to the timid ships amid the darkness of fog …”

Including those often-timid ships of our own small selves.

Beyond limits and doubt

Courtesy Julie Bond Genovese / http://nothingshortofjoy.com

With thanks to Christine DeLorey for these November gems:

At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, and trending in a certain direction. ~ Aldous Huxley

Nothing we ever imagine is beyond our powers, only beyond our present self knowledge. ~ Theodore Roszak

Photo: http://gbctours.com

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life! But there was always some obstacle, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

~ Alfred D. Souza

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. ~ Franklin Roosevelt

You must stoop a little in order to jump. ~ Scott Fitzgerald

Learn more about Christine DeLorey’s work at: http://creativenumerology.com

A fathomless Ocean, closer than our life-vein

Great, indeed, is this Day.

“Were ye to discover the hidden, the shoreless oceans of My incorruptible wealth, ye would, of a certainty, esteem as nothing the world, nay, the entire creation.

“ … My holy, My divinely ordained Revelation may be likened unto an ocean in whose depths are concealed innumerable pearls of great price, of surpassing luster.

“ …This most great, this fathomless and surging Ocean is near, astonishingly near, unto you. Behold it is closer to you than your life-vein! Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty.

Could ye apprehend with what wonders of My munificence and bounty I have willed to entrust your souls, ye would, of a truth, rid yourselves of attachment to all created things, and would gain a true knowledge of your own selves—a knowledge which is the same as the comprehension of Mine own Being. Ye would find yourselves independent of all else but Me, and would perceive, with your inner and outer eye, and as manifest as the revelation of My effulgent Name, the seas of My loving-kindness and bounty moving within you.

“ … Obstruct not the luminous spring of thy soul with the thorns and brambles of vain and inordinate affections, and impede not the flow of the living waters that stream from the fountain of thine heart.

~ From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

Mid-autumn musings

Like an image of autumn’s last hurrah, this photo of Burg Gamburg shows a setting I can’t wait to visit next year. It’s not far from my childhood home in Germany. I used to picnic with my parents beside a pretty little stream nearby, and marvel at this vision on the hillside.

And as autumn begins to hint at winter, writer Jennifer Clay shared this poem of irresistibly playful spirit:

Photo: D. Kirkup Designs

frantic chuffing chipmunks relay warnings

their neighbors passing it on

mourning the immense loss

of potential winter stash

that cannot be rescued

from the crunch of truck tires

nor retrieved from the nocturnal sorties of squirrels

whose molotov acorns ping off our metal roof

spirited away to line the bird-seed coffers

of opportunistic bullies in gray fur.

~ Jennifer Clay

Kind words and book discounts

 

Bless reader Susanne Weigand, who lives not far from my German hometown of Wertheim.

First she featured Snow Fence Road on her list of 10 Picks for readers in her Sunday column.

Then she shared the gift of a kind review and – a bonus – left that review (below) at Amazon sites in the U.S. and Germany, both, plus at Goodreads.

Since folks have been asking about ordering signed copies as gifts, between now and November 27, if you purchase a print copy of any of my books from me, you are welcome to buy additional copies of either Life at First Sight or Snow Fence Road at 40 percent off the cover price, and I’ll ship for free.

Just let me know your ordering wishes at: info@phyllisring.com.

 

Here are Susanne’s kind reader-review words:

Photo: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DKirkupDesigns

“I love books with a great sense of place. Snow Fence Road has it all. The Spinacker Inn where I would like to go for a holiday. The town of Knowle where you walk the streets with the characters. Great food you taste while reading about it. Art you can visualize. Blueberry picking in summer and a long harsh winter that makes you shiver even when reading the book in warmer weather.

The characters are real, you will go back to them and talk to them, long after finishing the book. And amidst all the snow and storms of winter there is catharsis like in a greek drama and the main characters are able to face their choices of the past and turn to a better and happier tomorrow.”

What the indomitable spirit knows

Photo: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DKirkupDesigns

So happy to share a Guest Post this week

from artist/writer Jane Bernhardt:

Yesterday I met a young man, Pierre Gerard, who is studying “phytoremediation”, which plant forms use for various kinds of detoxification.

When I expressed surprise he said, “Yes, it’s a large field of study.”

So now I’m picturing these fields, full of pollutants or damaged soil or toxic landfill …

and the scientist/farmers are planting fixer crops of sunflowers and grasses and all sorts of healing strains.

Photo: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DKirkupDesigns

I let my mind wander and look around at the beautiful human efforts that have turned tides of darkness or despair, whether it is a young woman placing a flower on a tank, or a small Indian man leading a vast nation to keep its own salt and weave its own cotton and turn away the great British Empire.

Mother Theresa loving the outcasts and becoming a powerful global voice – a saint … or Nelson Mandela waiting decades behind bars for the chance to forgive and gently lead a wounded nation.

You could tell these stories for days on end and never stop being amazed.

So why are we soaking up our conscious fields with stress and fear? Yes: there are tragedies and terrible injustices. There are threats to our survival.

But what does the indomitable spirit know?

There is no death.

Love is the most powerful weapon in the universe for all eternity.

We are not alone: legions of ancestors and angels and divine emissaries of all descriptions are here to love us, encourage us … to show us that, really, there IS only love.

And we are here for each other.

Call your sisters and brothers. Gather in circles. We are powerful. We are great. We are weaving darkness into light, every time we choose to love … beginning with our gnarly selves.

Fall in love with everything. If it didn’t work today, try it again tomorrow.

Don’t give up. You are loved.

Learn more about Jane’s wonderful work at http://janebernhardt.com.

Jane shares illuminations in her first book, We Are Here: Love Never Dies, and her latest release, The Sweet Conversation, includes inspiring messages received over a six-year period as well as exercises for the reader to enter more deeply into a personal relationship with the Source of Love.

Join a widening community of Listening Circles that is springing up, using this manuscript as inspiration for expanding spiritual guidance.