November 2020 – Candace Chellew

November 19, 2020November 19, 2020

Get off the cross. We need the wood.

“I gladly make the ‘sacrifice’ of fear.”
– A Course in Miracles, Lesson 323

The one time I got to see A Course in Miracles teacher Marianne Williamson in person, she called on me to ask a question – and I blew it. With my voice quivering and my hands sweating (I mean this is one of my heroines, after all), I asked some convoluted question about sacrifice.

I could feel her eyes rolling at me. Not really an original kind of question for someone who studies and talks about the Course nonstop. I honestly don’t remember one word of her answer to me, but I imagine whatever she said was the summation of this lesson. We are not called to “sacrifice” anything in this world, except our fear.

What kept me from hearing her in that moment (other than being starstruck) was my … wait for it … fear. I had arrived at her workshop that weekend wracked with fear. I was just beginning to embrace the ideas and concepts of the Course and I was genuinely afraid that it would cost me everything I had built and held dear – my romantic relationship, my relationships with others who didn’t cotton to this whole metaphysical “nonsense” and professional spiritual avenues that I had been pursuing.

November 3, 2020November 3, 2020

Cast all your votes for dancing

Now we see that darkness is our own imagining, and light is there for us to look upon. Christ’s vision changes darkness into light, for fear must disappear when love has come. Let me forgive Your holy world today, that I may look upon its holiness and understand it but reflects my own.
– A Course in Miracles, Lesson 302

I must admit that I am having trouble taking a deep breath today. I suspect no one could blame me for being in a hyperventilative state. Today may be the most important election in the history of our country – and that’s not a hyperbolic statement. It literally feels like voters are battling for the very soul of this nation.

Honestly, the only thing keeping me from climbing the walls right now are my spiritual teachers and practices. I have been trying to breathe deeply and remember that I cannot have a miracle at the same time that I am wrapped in fear and grievance. As long as my focus remains on what I perceive as this world’s darkness, I will never be able to see the Light of Love that shines eternally behind the clouds of my fears and anxiety.

Today is an important and pivotal day, indeed, but what we need most of all – not just in this nation, but in this entire world – are people who are committed to Love no matter the outcome of the election. There will be winners and losers in this contest, but in Love there are only winners. We cannot let whatever the outcome is tonight and events of the coming week tempt us to create more separation and division.

November 2, 2020November 18, 2020

Why we need the Second Coming right now

Pray that the Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that.
– A Course in Miracles

As a Southern Baptist child, I was told that the Second Coming of Christ would be a bloody affair. First, all the faithful would be raptured to heaven – snatched up from whatever they were doing in that fateful moment and bodily sucked up into the air toward heaven. There were films about it in my Sunday school classes that featured bewildered bystanders seeing people vanish before their eyes, leaving only a pile of clothing behind. (We’re all nekkid in heaven, apparently, or at least while we’re being fitted for our robes and harps!)

I recall one scene in these awful movies where a reporter is doing a live shot on all the sudden vanishing going on when the camera dropped to the ground. The cameraman had been raptured, leaving behind his poor, sputtering reporter friend. I laughed at this many years later after spending some time working in television. There were no camera operators I knew who would qualify for the rapture!

After all the vanishing was over, the vanquishing would begin. I was taught that Jesus would return for the “tribulation,” which would feature the macho, war-mongering Jesus on a valiant steed, leading the battle to slay the infidels. My strain of evangelicals never did take too kindly to the squishy, gentle shepherd image of Jesus. Ours was more like Rambo.