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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.

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.

We … have lost our way for a while.

A Course in Miracles, Lesson 300

Today’s lesson reassures us that this world of illusion is impermanent – it won’t last forever. Even those moments of desolation that seem to drag on and on will pass – the clouds of despair will depart and we’ll again see the blue skies of our eternal existence – where there is no death, decay or depression. We are created in eternal Love and joy and the Truth is we have never left it. We’ve simply become captivated by the clouds that cover our vision of the eternal home we still inhabit.

This message gives me heart as we approach the presidential election next week. Everything in this world is temporary – our hardships, our pleasures – they all scud by like clouds in the sky. Sometimes we believe the rain and storms will never pass – and often after they do, we find they have swept away everything we thought we knew – everything we believed was stable in our lives.

Holiness itself created me, and I can know my Source because it is Your Will that You be known.

– A Course in Miracles, Lesson 299

I walked around for a lot of years feeling like I wasn’t worth anything. My father trafficked in shame and blame and I don’t recall hearing a lot of encouraging words from either of my parents. In my teens and 20s, I was very quiet and in my first relationship, people would ask me a direct question and I would allow my partner to answer for me.

It was a radio talk show that drew me out of my shell and gave me the first steps I needed to overcome my shyness, as well as give me a budding sense of worth. It wasn’t that I heard this talk show – I created it. For some reason (Divine, I’m guessing), the powers that be at the radio station I was working for as a reporter and news anchor in Gainesville, Georgia, decided to give me an afternoon “drive time” talk show. In radio terms, that’s a sweet spot because people are trapped in their cars driving home with you on their radio.

That talk show required me to recruit guests, which meant (gasp!), I had to pick up a phone and talk to people and ask them to be on my show. Sure, most people wanted to do it because they had a cause, product or idea to promote, but making the ask the first few times terrified me! My ego voice kept saying, “Why would anyone want to talk to you on this rinky-dink AM radio station in a small NE Georgia town?”

My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear. And thus am I restored to my reality at last. All that intruded on my holy sight forgiveness takes away.

– A Course in Miracles, Lesson 298

During a songwriting retreat a few years ago, the leader challenged each person over the course of the week to do a handstand during our morning yoga session. One by one, the 20 participants or so volunteered to do the handstand, either assisted or not. Some were eager for the experience for the first time, others were handstand veterans and wanted to show off their stuff, others worked through their fear and eventually did it before the week ended.

Then there was me. I did not volunteer to do a handstand. I was cajoled by the others, offered several spotters and reassured that the experience would be fun and maybe even life-changing.

To this day, I have never done a handstand. My fear was greater than my trust in these people who were quickly becoming friends. No matter how hard I tried to want to do it, I could not find the courage to place my body in their hands.

Forgiveness is the only gift I give, because it is the only gift I want.

– A Course in Miracles, Lesson 297

I know, on this day, that I am not an enlightened master, because forgiveness is far from my heart. Last night, the Republican party accomplished its ultimate goal of packing the US Supreme Court with far-right ideologues who will favor corporations over the American people and roll back the civil rights advances of court’s past. It will be a generation before the court can be “righted” or even balanced again, if ever, depending on future presidents and the make-up of the Senate. There is talk of expanding the court, but I am skeptical that Democrats, who constantly bring jello to a gun fight, will have the political stomach to make it happen.

Given this event – and the past four years – I realize this morning that I have not forgiven those who either sat out the election in 2016 or those who voted “their conscience” and threw their ballots away on third-party candidates. See? I can’t even describe it in a forgiving way.

Lesson 143: My mind holds only what I think with God
Review of Lesson 125: In quiet I receive God’s Word today, and
Lesson 126: All that I give is given to myself.

The world is very loud right now. It’s filled with angry, desperate voices demanding justice, not just for one man – George Floyd – who has become the latest black man to die at the hands – and knees – of police officers, but for all the black, brown and minority bodies that have been disregarded, dehumanized and destroyed by white supremacy.

We swim in this sea of noise – told that we are either on top of the heap, in the middle or squashed at the bottom. As white people, we tend to take our position in society for granted. We may have plenty of problems as white people, but they are not compounded by the color of our skin. Black people face a dire reality in this world that white people can only try to understand.

In the noise of protest, this lesson invites us to pause – to remember the Word of God, which is Love – and receive it fully into ourselves. In this moment of noisy protest, those of us with the privilege in this society are invited into the discomfort of our own internalized prejudices – to lean into the pain instead of numbing it, fleeing from it or denying it with some platitude such as “All lives matter.” (Go here to read several different illustrations on why this phrase is so offensive.)