Embrace strangers by respecting sacredness.

January 21, 2020

God, who is the author of the story of reality, the history of love, and the evolution of spirit embraces each of you with comfort, strength, courage, insight, peace, and most especially love. 

We speak so often about the embrace of God, and yet with those references to God’s love and to embracing each of you, there is a kind of human association that you give to the thought of an embrace. We’d like to share with you more about God’s embrace—what it means, how you are embraced by all that exists, how you are embraced by timeless love, a form of energy that has no beginning and no conclusion. If you consider an embrace, you may also consider what it means when there is not an embrace, for you are trying to understand the reality of what an embrace means. 

First of all, we can say that there is no beginning to that embrace. You are embraced because you are infinitely surrounded, but by what? It is easy for us to say you are surrounded by love. It is easy to say you are surrounded by care, by concern, by the energy of strength, forgiveness, and courage, but there is much more to the concept of the embrace of God than these rather human-like associations. 

When you think of any other entity, human or not, you are embracing them, for you are surrounding their existence with your thoughts. As you know, your thoughts are an energy-form that radiates outward and never ceases. Thoughts have impact. Thoughts have a presence. Thinking of another, thinking of another life-form even when not human, is emitting an energy which surrounds that of which you think. 

When you imagine a geographic location, you don’t imagine a two-dimensional entity. You imagine an entity that is multi-dimensional. It is an energy that is visually threedimensional but carries with it further dimensions—emotional connections, associations, colors, moods, environments. There are countless levels that belong to your thoughts regarding your location. 

There are also these same levels that are part of your thinking of another human being whom you know. Those thoughts are not just of appearance but involve your relationship with that person. Those thoughts may involve relationships that you perceive to exist between that person and others. It may encompass hardships that you know of, health issues, personal issues, emotional ones. There are so many layers. Each of these components has a kind of energy field that connects you with that person. 

Therefore, your personal prayer, perhaps as it relates to another, brings into focus many of these layers, each of which consists of its own energy, energy that surrounds the other. That surrounding is not linear. It surrounds all that belongs to the other, and because you are surrounding another so completely, you are embracing another. You are connecting to that person in ways far more telling, far more reaching within than merely picturing that individual. 

When you embrace an idea, you’re not just affirming the words of that idea but all the associations related to it—its implications, what is beneficial and what is not, what is long lasting and what is merely temporary, what is self-serving and what is serving others, what is selfish and what is inclusive. Any ideas that you embrace have an infinite number of considerations. Your encountering of those ideas relishes the multilayered reality that such ideas occupy. 

It is this same complexity of envelopment that belongs to the reality of God’s embracing each of you. It is not just simply saying “God loves you regardless of who you are or what you do or fail to do,” but this Spirit Center to which all belong is essentially surrounding each of you. Think for a moment of your experience today—who you had contact with, what thoughts occupied your mind, what moods you experienced, what challenged you, what affirmed you, what caused great joy, what caused concern, what gave you hope, what elicited despair. Your experience of just today incorporates all of the layers that belong to being embraced by God, for you are embraced by all you experienced today. None of you went through the day completely separated from thoughts, from others, from experiencing light or darkness. None of you simply existed. There was an interaction that took place between you and what embraced you. 

When we try to affirm to you that you are embraced by God, we want you to understand that you are embraced by the powers of all that is good, that is loving, that is affirmative, healing—all that is positive. The reality of the Spirit Center, its energy, is in the understanding that everything that embraces your lives matters and is not overlooked, is not ignored. It also affirms that everything that you experience belongs to what it means to be human, but being human does not imply, at any moment, being somehow outside of that embrace. You are embraced by God because you and all else matter. You matter! You are important because you are a part of all that is. 

Yes, that statement of “I am” resonates and becomes “we are.” The “I” and the “we” have become actually one. You know of the teachings that insist that you are never separated from God, but you are never separated from your thoughts. You’re never separated from the air you breathe. You’re never separated from some sense of connection to one another, connection to touch, a connection to light, cold and warmth, happiness, sadness. You are fully enmeshed in all that is. This totality of all that is is not some form of intellectual construct anymore than you can say the beauty of a sunset doesn’t really exist and it is just your imagination. 

We can say that part of a sunset extends far beyond your awareness. There is an energy to the sun. There is an energy component to all light that cannot be immediately detected, but that light is still there. The connection to the energy that is the Spirit Center, that is the collection of all that is, extends far beyond your perceptions.

You are connected. You’re connected by threads, as it were, of energy. They are of course not specifically threads, because then you would say this a thread, and in this particular spot there is no thread. The thread is all-encompassing. The thread is allembracing. There are no gaps between threads. It is a complex tapestry to be sure, but each of these energy components are intertwined so that one thread in the tapestry is indelibly enmeshed with all others, and each thread cannot be separately identified and labeled. Nevertheless, each form of energy has a kind of identity, an identity of what it contributes to the whole. 

If you think of the blending of colors, and you think of blending yellows and blues, the result is a green, and in that green you may not sense the yellow component and the blue component because the green is so strong in its own sense of reality. But somehow the light waves that create the yellow and the blue are enmeshed in a way that creates something totality different. 

It is that way with an embrace. When an individual embraces you, you may feel the emotion, your sense of touch is activated, and you feel a connection with another. The act of an embrace creates many layers of reality that are beyond the simple act of an embrace. You’re embraced by those whom you know, and you may not necessarily sense the individual connections with the others, and yet there is a feeling of warmth, a feeling of support, a feeling of love, an understanding perhaps of what real compassion means. As others respond to you, that is a response of God, and as you respond to others, it is part of the response of God, the embrace. 

You can embrace those whom you have never met by respecting the sacredness of their lives. There are those in the world who have suffered beyond description through loss, torture, or emotional stress. Even though you have not met them, when you think of those who have suffered, you are embracing them. You do not have to know the people whom you embrace. You merely have to honor their existence and their shared part of this circle of life, and in your thinking, you are part of the embrace of God. 

When we remind you that you are embraced by God the Creator, there is no implication that there are times when you are not so embraced, but it is an opportunity to be reminded that that embrace of all the energy from all is ongoing, and you are a part of that. You are never an island, even when you feel separated from others. Even when you may feel abandoned by a loving God, a caring God, you are not abandoned. The vision of your heart may be clouded, but the light is always present. 

When you experience darkness in your lives, remind yourselves that you are enveloped in the light. You’re embraced by the light. You’re affirmed in that embrace, comforted, soothed, and healed. Yes, God listens and God embraces, but the concept of listening and the concept of the embrace are so much broader than what one feels in strictly human terms. God listens because you’re a part of all that is. God embraces because you’re a part of all that is. You belong to the energy. You are the energy. You are the embrace.

Give thanks for your vision. Give thanks for your love. Give thanks for your thoughts, for your prayers. Give thanks that you are a part of the extraordinary brilliance of an embrace. 

Amen.