August 29, 2005

• The rhythm of God’s creation

[Message received as Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast]

God brings each of you to this place. You are brought here through your activities, through your curiosity, your love, your fears and anxieties, through your efforts to become more loving, to become more effective as agents, as reflectors, as transmitters of God on earth. You are brought here not by accident, but by the design of your souls. It is when each of you becomes more sensitive to the urgings, the outcries, the nudges, the intuition of your soul that your lives take on the direction, the character, the shape that is in keeping with God’s presence.

You have many questions which belong to the experience of human life. As we have said before, human life is a part of the rhythm, the dance of creation. You are aware of a small corner of that creation, but it is equally important with all else that belongs to God’s realm.

Conflicts in life are sometimes interpersonal. Sometimes they are directed entirely within. Sometimes they are conflicts between human beings and what you know to be the environment.

It is difficult to grasp a complete understanding of what it means to belong to all that has been created, because most of what you know and believe to be true comprises such a small percent of all that God has created. You are aware of that part of creation that directly interacts with your experience in human form. We, on the other hand, are aware of a far greater reality—worlds, lifeforms, substances, minerals, elements—that shall never be within the human view. What has been created and what continues to be created evolves from one kind of reality to another. Life as you know it evolves into another reality—human life becomes spiritual life—but it is also true that the physical life of all that exists on your earth continues to evolve to a kind of existence, a plane of reality, that is beyond what your senses can perceive.

We, however, see these other levels of life beyond your vision most clearly. When we speak of God’s creation, we speak of matter that exists beyond your greatest imagination. The reality of God’s creation is that it is without limits. The reality of creation exists outside of time. It exists far beyond your sense of place or space, but why is this important for you to know? What matter is it that there are levels of life that are vital and creative and vibrant beyond what you know?

It is important for you because your lives must be experienced within a context that exceeds your vision. When you live within a greater context, you see your lives belonging to an enormous continuum. You have every reason, therefore, to trust the wisdom of acknowledging that you are where you need to be, that your lives are as they should be, that your lives are neither insignificant nor temporary, and that your lives are a part of a rhythm, of a movement, of motion that spins around a central force, a force of love, a force of peace, a force that you may identify by the name of God.

Everything you do, everything you believe has an impact on all of creation. The smallest wave has an impact on the ocean, and that impact influences land masses, and land masses influence gravitational pulls. Gravitational pulls influence the motions of spheres. The galaxies made up of those spheres influence other galaxies, and those influence other forms of God’s creation. There are no limits and everything is connected. Because your view is limited, it will always be difficult to understand completely when there is suffering, when there is strife, when there are those who are the victims of natural disasters, but such conflicts belong to the greater motion that always progresses to the good. As God is the center of all that has been created, there is a kind of gravitational pull. All are both held together and drawn toward the God Center, the Center of Life.

You wonder about whether you may have an impact as individuals on the greater environment within which you dwell. You do have an impact. The impact is not limited to, and goes well beyond, your thoughts. It is not so much your negative thoughts that lead to or contribute to the kind of natural disasters that you experience, but your thoughts are important in the development of attitudes. Your attitudes govern your behaviors, your behaviors have an influence on your environment, and your environment has an influence on weather patterns. So all is indeed connected, but you cannot say that such suffering, such losses that arise from natural disasters, are the result of negative thoughts as a direct consequence. But indirectly there is indeed that connection.

You live your lives for the growth of your souls, but in living your lives, you have an effect on what God continues to create. You are given life to be lived, to be experienced. You are given life to be challenged. You are given life to understand more about your own relationship with God’s created reality. Even though your vision of that reality was never clear, by simply being conscious of a connection that you have to what God creates, your lives take on a particular direction which serves to support creation and to support your spiritual growth, for what is the purpose of spiritual growth if not to enhance what God creates?

You were created to grow. As you grow spiritually, you are bringing an awareness of your Creator to others as well as to yourselves. You are given life in order to give life, just as you are given love in order to give love. By living with an awareness of spirit, you are giving spirit awareness to others, and in so doing you are strengthening that presence within the experience of human life. As the human experience becomes enriched and strengthened through God, the influence of that enrichment is set forth throughout God’s creation and is in itself enhanced.

God did not create for the purpose of idle amusement. God created so that what was created would continue to create.

The purpose of love is the expansion of love.

The purpose of good is the expansion of what is good.

The purpose of peace is the expansion of peace.

The purpose of balance is the expansion of balance.

The purpose of joy is the expansion of joy.

In being full of joy, full of peace, full of compassion, full of loving, you are expanding the very nature of joy, of peace, of love. It is for this expansion, this love, that all has been created.

The storms that trace around the world transform the physical body of the world, but they also serve to transform the human qualities. They transform minerals, chemicals, components of earth. The acts of nature are ultimately designed to enhance nature. There may be suffering, but ultimately and most importantly, there is growth. If those who lose much through acts of nature become transformed in the process into individuals who are filled with greater love, then the transformation has ultimately served to bring what has been created closer to the God Center, to the Spirit Center. If the suffering and loss bring with them an increase in compassion and service to others, an understanding of your interconnectedness, an experiencing of what it means to be loved and thereby loving, then the direction of God’s creation has been affirmed.

It is always difficult to accept when some suffer, seemingly through the chance workings of nature, but it is important to understand that there is nothing in nature that is merely chance. Just as there are no real coincidences in your own lives, all is part of a pattern, a rhythm—all belongs to the dance of creation. You are a part of that dance, you are a part of that creation, and because of that you are not abused by that natural dance. You belong to it. You are not victims of it; you are participants. You are dancers on the stage. You belong where you are. Your lives are shaped as they must be. Each of you has a different part in the dance. The lives of each of you are different, but they respond in their own way to the same music.

Try in moments of frustration, despair, loss, anger to accept that your lives belong to the route that they are following, that your lives are part of the continuing revolution, the continuing dance, the continuing rhythm and motion of God’s loving creation. To the extent that you are able, continue to erase the sense of self as being important and domineering, of being self-centered, of being separate. Try to consider yourself always to be an equal player, an equal participant, in God’s loving creation. You are blessed in your participation.

May you be uplifted through your faith.

May you be uplifted through the love of others.

May you be uplifted in the love you give others.

May you be uplifted by peace.

Amen.