June 21, 2011

• God’s response to us and our response to others

• Proselytizing

• Seeking and acknowledging balance

• All that has been created is changing

God waits with each of you—waits with love, with patience, with a constant presence. The waiting that we speak of is one of acceptance and a realization that you all are growing, and you are all growing closer to that Spiritual Presence, that Spiritual Center.

Waiting is never passive. It is like a parent standing in front of a child who is learning to walk. You wait and you put out your arms, you are supportive, you are encouraging, and you rejoice with each step. Every step is observed with great love and joy. This is the stance, figuratively speaking, that God takes with all human beings. It is never a position of impatience. It is not punitive. It is not judgmental. It is always welcoming with arms wide open. It is this stance that you must find ways of assuming.

All of you in your own individual ways stand next to others, stand in front of others. Your lives are given you so that you are not just standing and waiting, but you are encouraging to others, you are supportive of others, you want the best for others. You are with them each step of the way.

What is important here is that you are in front of others with your arms and hands extended. It is not important that you do this out of a sense of duty. You do it because of who you are, not because God says you must do this. It becomes a natural outgrowth of your own being. No parent is taught to stand or to kneel in front of a child learning to walk, at a certain distance with the hands extended at a certain distance. No parent is told what to say to children as they slowly move step by step toward them. It is rather a natural act that is available to all.

Your response to others is also a natural act. The most effective response to your neighbors, your family, colleagues, friends is one of complete acceptance, is one of loving encouragement. How do you assume that stance, for with each individual that you encounter, that position is different? We see it essential that the way you greet others must be through your own perception of others. As you consider that perception, your response will be appropriate. For some whom you encounter, those steps may be angry steps. For others, those steps are very cautious. For still others, there is a reluctance to take those steps. Regardless of where others may be on their journey, you can still be open, loving, accepting, and encouraging.

The question arises about those who may not openly acknowledge God’s existence and whether that is essential. It is never essential if an individual still believes that he or she can be openly loving and supportive. That is what is important. Acknowledging God is one way of helping to provide focus for your relationship with others, but it is not the only way. What is important is your response to others. If that response comes because you are loving in your approach, it is not essential that that be consciously connected to an attempt to be God-like. Indeed, such actions are ultimately self-serving when you try to be God-like, whereas real acts of loving acceptance are serving others and not self.

There is a kind of arrogance that can be manifest by those who feel they and God are a perfect team, and that they are on the right side and others must be brought to their side as in a childhood game. That is not the purpose of your human interaction with others. Your work toward the benefit of your neighbor is most beneficial when it feels natural. When you act out of love—love and support, acceptance without judgment —such outreach brings goodness and peace that you seek. You extend your arms out of love, not out of duty. Those who find difficulty acknowledging God and yet reach out in love are in fact reaching out as a hand of God.

You cannot convince others to believe a certain set of principals on the basis of your own assertions. Those who are leaders in worship who are most successful are those who encourage others to discover God for themselves and don’t try to package that Spiritual Presence into a predetermined form. You all know what it means to proselytize, but proselytizing is not truly representing God. You represent God through the way you live, not through what is said about God. Your understanding of godliness is through your own openness. It is never achieved through obedience. You must allow yourself that openness, that spontaneity that extends the arms and hands and says, “Yes, you are doing well.”

There is concern among you about the meaning of service—service to others, service to yourselves in the fight to create balance. Your comment about the need to experience balance and not merely to seek it is an important expression of truth. We emphasize the fact that the difference between where you wish to be and where you see yourselves is an important component of the human experience that is a motivator, that is an element that encourages effort to seek the goals that you do seek. But the strength to do that comes from a recognition of what it means to experience some balance. If you seek balance and never experience it, you can easily question whether such balance is achievable at any level. It is therefore important that you do acknowledge what in your life at a given time feels to be balanced. It is not wrong to experience balance, but whereas balance is never pervasive throughout all levels of a life, balance is experienced by everyone.

It is our suggestion that you identify what parts of your life feel balanced, recognizing that such balance may not always remain so, but still acknowledging that for the moment, there is balance. We can say that you are balanced at all times in your life in some corner of that life. There is no time when there is no balance. You are therefore given comfort when you acknowledge where that balance resides. Lock on to it, as it were. Hold it close to the heart. Know what it feels like when you observe some part of your being that is not in a state of conflict or imbalance. That place in your lives always exists.

When you encounter others who seem to persist and exist regardless of what seems to be imbalance, you wonder how do they keep going? What gives them the strength to persevere? The answer is that at some level in their lives, they are aware of the presence of balance. That gives a sense of hope that such balance can be achieved elsewhere in one’s life. All is not totally lost. All is not totally in a condition of pain. There is instead a position of balance somewhere. That may be felt as a faith in God’s presence despite what is seen to be dark or negative. It may be an acknowledgment of support from others that is nonjudgmental and constant. Such acknowledgment may not take the pain away, but it provides comfort in the knowledge that such pain can find a balance, that a life can be somehow given a steady hand, that there is a sense of direction, that there is a sense of purpose.

Human life is filled always with elements that define some distance between where you perceive yourselves to be and where you hope to be. That sense of differentiation is always present, but the stability that you seek is within the view of each of you. You seek peace. You may seek that peace internationally, nationally, personally, in relationships with others, but there is always going to be a part of your lives that can be viewed as being at peace. So you are asked to open your eyes, open your hearts, and seek what is peaceful, to seek what in your lives is the reality of what you actually are looking for in a broader sense. If you seek healing, there’s something in your lives that is healed. That sense of being healed somewhere is an acknowledgment of balance somewhere. That recognition of balance provides stability, provides strength, provides a context that gives you strength to continue doing what it is you seek.

As we have said so many times, you are always with God. You can never hide. You can never do anything that separates that presence from your lives. Seeking what is balanced in your own lives is essentially seeking evidence of God’s presence, for if you can feel “God is with me now,” then you experience the balance that you seek. It is not being complacent to see God in your own lives, but rather it is the means of strengthening your spirit so that you are capable of going forward from points of imbalance in your lives to points of greater balance.

The evolution of the earth is in a sense a moving from what is out of balance toward a condition of greater stability, a movement from tension to resolution. The tension is created, the movement takes place, and a resolution takes place, but that resolution is never permanent, for the earth continues to evolve. It continues to transform itself, so what is at one moment in balance will become moved to imbalance in need of further resolution. It is that way in the earth; it is that way in all that God has created. If it were God’s will that all be in balance, then all would be in balance. But it is the nature of God that all that is created is actually in motion. It is actually evolving.

All that is created continues to be transformed. All that is warm continues to change—perhaps to greater warmth, perhaps to less warmth. All that seems hard to the touch—a stone—all is changing. The stone is being reshaped by the water. It is being reshaped by the air. It is being reshaped by all that surrounds it. That change is constant. It may be quick, it may be slow, but it is constant. Because that change is the nature of all that is created, it also includes your life.

Each of you changes. Each of you is affected by those around you. Each of you has an impact on others who are around you. Each of you is affected by the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat. There is no human being who remains unchanged. There is nothing in God’s creation that remains unchanged. Change belongs to life. Change belongs to existence. Change belongs to the animate and inanimate.

It is for each of you in your own way to welcome that change, to embrace it, to find ways of resolving conflicts, to find ways of strengthening relationships with one another, to find ways of allowing the spirit within to become the force, the strength without, to allow what is inside to become outside, not out of duty but out of natural evolution. You respond with compassion as a result of your evolving spiritual growth. It is not out of duty. For some of course, duty does call spiritually-speaking, for they feel that they must do according to their beliefs, but that sense of obligation, although it may begin the process, does not really fulfill the direction of spirit.

Be open. Be unresisting in your own ability to reach out. Don’t deny the steps that are taken by others toward you, and don’t deny the opportunities you are given to move one step at a time toward a God, a Spirit Center, that welcomes you most lovingly.

We are with you with our hearts open. We are with you with arms extended, with hands opened, and we support you, we love you, we encourage you, and we guide each step along your way.

Amen.