July 29, 1999

• God sustains all souls

• All is positive with God

• Humans choose to nurture their souls or not

God is with each of you. God sustains and guides you in your activities as well as your thoughts. Sustaining is a particularly important blessing that all are given, not just you who are gathered together. All human beings are offered the grace of sustenance. We are not talking about physical sustenance, but rather spiritual sustenance. Yes, you are sustained physically, but our concerns, our wishes are for your understanding of how God sustains your soul and how that affects your lives.

Sustaining does not imply merely strengthening. Sustaining requires the one who is to be sustained to be willing to be receptive to that presence. You are given the choice to reject spiritual sustenance. That is part of being human. You can accept all, you can reject all, and so it is with spiritual sustenance.

Each individual experiences discouragement. Each individual experiences those emotions, those attitudes that are generally negative, that serve to pull down rather than to build up. It is not God’s desire to tear down. It is not God’s desire to destroy, to demean, to lessen, to darken. Quite the contrary, God’s will leads towards light, towards joy, towards an affirmation of self-worth, towards the valuation of all that has been created. God’s will is toward collective support. That means the responsibility to strengthen one another, not just the self.

Everything connected with the spirit and God is positive. There is no punishment, no retribution, no guilt—all is positive. If you are choosing to be sensitive to these positive elements of life, then you are choosing to be sustained. Who among you wishes to sustain another by criticism? Who among you can sustain another while rejecting the value of that other? Who among you believes that to be sustained is to be criticized, is to be ostracized, is to be penalized? Of course, there are none who interpret sustenance in that way.

Why is it that so many believe that such negative characteristics as have been mentioned belong to God? Too many fear God. Too many feel God to be judgmental. Too many fear a punishment of God. Too many fear the reality of guilt and its necessity and its place within the relationship between humans and God.

The soul does not flourish in such an environment. No belief system that incorporates judgment and all forms of negativism is going to sustain the soul. You do not flourish through fear. You flourish through joy and love, companionship, encouragement. And so it is with your soul. God sustains through all of the desirable qualities that you can identify relating to joy and peace, confidence.

When your soul is being sustained, you are filled with joy and confidence. You’re filled with a sense of peace. You may find yourself energized, full of insight, understanding. As your soul is nurtured, so are you as individuals. A person whose soul is dark in despair is not a person who reflects brilliance. We ask you to be reflective outward, but what is it that you are reflecting? It is that sustained quality of the soul. It is that sense of peace, of calm, of love and purpose.

Sustaining the soul is not an assignment directed toward God to achieve. Who then sustains the soul? The answer is collectively you! It is the human that serves to sustain the spiritual. Think of the many opportunities you have had in the past to consider the soul being responsible for the human. Doing so makes the human a victim. The human becomes passive—whatever happens, happens to the human. We urge you to understand that it is the human that nurtures the soul. You individually have within you the power to strengthen the soul. The strength of your soul is then reflected through you toward others, but the nurturing of which we speak must come from you. You nurture your own souls, but you also nurture the souls of others.

You should never consider yourselves to be victims, passive participants, in the spiritual growth that takes place in human life-forms. You are your own captains. You are in charge of your lives. You may not be responsible for what happens to you, but you are ultimately the only one responsible for your reactions to what happens. If there are lessons to be learned, it is you who choose to learn those lessons. You can reject them; you can accept them. In accepting the lessons, you are nurturing the spirit. In accepting opportunities to serve others, you are nurturing your own soul and the soul of another.

It is human action that brings nourishment to the soul—physical action sometimes, prayerful action at other times. You can choose to pray. That prayer provides the sustenance of which we speak. You can choose not to pray. You can decide to “go it alone,” as it were. You can decide to ignore the suffering of another. You can decide it is not the proper time to respond to the suffering of another. You can decide to allow the response to come from someone else and therefore take appropriate action to bring another into the equation of life. All of these are your choices. They are not automatic responses.

You see, it is truly you who do the nurturing, and it is because of you that your souls are given human life. If the soul were fully and solely responsible for its own development, it would not need the human. You are therefore directly responsible for nurturing—nurturing yourself, nurturing others. So often we have spoken of the need for service, for reaching out, for responding to others when you are in a position to respond. Everything is outward oriented. That is because it is your responsibility to nurture. It is one of the blessings that you are given by God. It is a grace to be able to nurture. Accept it or reject it—the grace remains.

Ultimately you nurture because it is who you are. Real nurturing is not exercised as an obligation. It is exercised as a natural act of loving. True nurturing is the outcome of loving. Love comes first. Love surrounds all. Love is indeed the essence that constitutes everything with which you are in contact as human beings. It is that love that provides the wellspring of direction, of commitment to nurture.

It is a strange concept to consider that your souls are given human life so that you may shape them, but that is the true relationship of human to spiritual. You nurture, you give shape, you provide the exposure, you choose to accept the opportunities, you respond. It begins with you, and the ultimate recipient is the eternal you. Spiritual nourishment is not a process that takes place at a continuous rate. The spirit will never wither and recede even when it is not nourished. It remains as is, waiting for the gentle rains to fall. If you choose not to nourish your soul, your soul is in no way damaged or hurt, but spiritual growth only is achieved as a result of human choice. Your soul is destined ultimately to grow as it is meant to grow. How that is achieved and within what timeframe is not determined.

Choice as human beings—experience it! It is far more profound than merely asking oneself, “Do I do this or do I do that?” You choose to develop certain attitudes. You choose to be connected through prayer to God. You choose to be connected to one another through your interactions. You choose those connections to be positive or negative, supportive or punitive. All is left to your choice, but every choice carries with it the potential for spiritual growth.

When that growth takes place, your spirit has an enormously intense light that is visible to all of us. When that growth is not being achieved, the soul still emits a light, but of less intensity, less warmth. The light, however, is never extinguished. It is permanent. It never runs out. It is a reflection of the God Center of all creation, because God is a loving light and because all that has been created is sacred. All share in a part of that light. All have light. There is nothing that is dark. There is nothing that transmits emptiness.

Grasp hold of your own lives. Allow them to live in example of the highest order. Be willing to shape your lives according to your current perceptions of what godliness means. Those perceptions may change, but they do provide a center that allows you to nurture your spirit and illuminate the spirit of others with true uniqueness, true security, and an absolute tie to God’s guiding light.

You share in that light. Your souls seek out that light. You can open the soul to even greater light. Life developed around a brilliant soul becomes even more brilliant.

So recognize your own lights. Increase your awareness of spirit. Develop a concept of your soul’s needs. Be open to them through prayer and be ready to nurture each life with which you are in contact. That nurturing can be active. It can be through prayer. That nurturing can be through listening and nothing more. Nurturing does not imply that you must always be doing something, but nurturing you must do. Be aware of your opportunities for nurturing another life, and in the nurturing of your own spiritual essence.

God’s love is with each of you. God’s light surrounds each of you. God empowers you to nurture the soul that is a part of all that you experience. Embrace your soul, welcome it, care for it, love it, recognize the loving qualities of souls around you, and you will accomplish much in giving meaning to your soul’s human experience. Your soul is blessed and we are blessed by God and through your prayers.

Amen.