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Lesson 74: There is no will but God’s.

I have often seen this lesson expressed as “There is no will but Love,” and I think that helps to clarify the point of today’s lesson. As a recovering Southern Baptist, when I encounter sentences such as “There is no will but God’s,” I recoil a little bit inside. That kind of sentence was used, in my experience, by leaders who wished to exercise their control over others. “God’s will,” then, was whatever they said it was.

For example, I was told it was definitely NOT God’s will that I embrace my lesbianism. I was told that God’s will was for me to meet and man, marry him and have many babies. This is something that went completely against every fiber of my being. I have known from a very early age that my sexual orientation was toward women, but as anyone who has struggled with this can tell you, my “orientation” isn’t just about sex – it’s about who I emotionally and spiritually, as well as physically, tend to form deep intimate bonds with. That has always been women.

For someone to tell me it’s not God’s will for me to deeply love another human being simply because we are the same gender is pretty insane. I’ve seen many people embrace the idea that their innate sexuality was an affront to God’s will and then live against who they truly are. It has destroyed many of them. Many realize later that they have to embrace who they truly are to do God’s will in their lives.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 14, 2020 — Love’s dance”

Lesson 73: I will there be light.

I chuckle every time I read this lesson because of this one line: “Do you really want to be in hell?”

It makes me laugh because that’s where we always put ourselves when we rely on the ego to tell us what to do, where to go and what to say to those we encounter during the day. We spread the contagion of hell every time we follow the ego’s directives, because the ego wants to project all of its grievances, all of its selfish and greedy desires out onto the world. This is, the Course says, how we create the world: “Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within.”

The entire point of A Course in Miracles is help us eliminate the hell of fear that lurks inside of us in the form of ego and live fully into the heaven of the Divine that also resides within. We created this world, the Course said, when we “forgot to laugh,” when we forgot that we are joy, love, peace and compassion incarnate. We are created by Love to be Love, but we forgot our true self and instead created bodies to give the illusion of separation. Our task now is to remember who we truly are – Light encased in flesh.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 13, 2020 — Mirror, mirror”

Lesson 72: Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.

Body image is a big topic in the world right now. Recently, singer Billie Eilish even took off her shirt during a performance to underscore exactly what today’s lesson seeks to teach us: every single one of us is more than our outward appearance.

It’s a powerful message and one the Course acknowledges is needed if we are to overcome our egoic fear and live into the Love that we have been created to be and communicate in the world. We have a terrible time with our bodies in this illusion. As this lesson says, we tend to either denigrate or glorify the body. I grew up in a tradition that denigrated the body and saw it as the seat of all evil – only redeemed by one man’s sacrifice on a cross.

Those new to the Course may see this lesson as more denigration of the body. It’s true that this lesson tells us that our “natural state” is to be without a body, but that is not to denigrate the body – but to put it in its right perspective. We are NOT these bodies. We have them because we believed the tiny, mad idea that we are somehow separate from God. Because we believe this, we manifested bodies that appear to make us separate and distinct from one another. The Holy, however, knows the truth about us, and has given us the Holy Spirit to communicate to us about who we really are – thoughts in the mind of God that need no bodily form.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 12, 2020 — Some body to hold on to”

Lesson 71: Only God’s plan for salvation will work.

I don’t know about any of you, but I have a TON of plans for my own salvation and I always have. I knew I would be okay in this world if I just found the right job, the right place to live, the right partner to do all that living with and the right community to support me in all of that.

Yeah, it never quite worked out that way. I spent a lot of time looking for jobs, homes, partners and communities. They all disappointed me at some point – and in my dissatisfaction, I made new plans for salvation – new jobs, new homes, new partners, new communities.

It reminds me of the scene from Evan Almighty when Steve Carrell’s character says to Morgan Freeman’s incarnation of God, “This isn’t what I had planned.” To which Freeman bursts out laughing: “Your plans.”

“If you want to make God laugh,” the old joke says, “tell Her your plans.”

Today’s lesson reveals the truth about all my plans: “Such is the ego’s plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in strict accord with the ego’s basic doctrine, ‘Seek but do not find.'”

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 11, 2020 — Seek but do not find”

Lesson 70: My salvation comes from me.

Oh, man, my ego really, really doesn’t like today’s lesson at all. It flies in the face of the religious tradition in which I was raised. If I had said to my religious teachers of my childhood, “My salvation comes from me,” they would have strung me up immediately as a heretic. Pearls would be clutched. Collective gasps would be gasped. The world would implode.

The arrogance of such a statement would render them all aghast. Salvation, I was taught, comes only from one man – that Jesus guy – dying on a cross for your sins, and don’t you forget it, buster. “You’re a filthy sinner who deserves hell and the only reason – hear me, now – the ONLY reason you’re not going straight to hell this minute is because Jesus died for your sins, you terrible, wretched, worm of a soul,” they all said to me.

Those old tapes of fire and brimstone still play their top hits when lessons like this pop up in the workbook, promising me that I have gone far afield from the faith of my childhood. Thank God I have, because those old tapes no longer make any sense to me – they don’t have a beat that’s easy to dance to – and for good reason. Dancing is of the devil anyway.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 10, 2020 — Dancing with the devil”

Lesson 69: My grievances hide the light of the world in me.

When I was a kid, the Southern Baptist tradition taught something known as the Rapture. It was a tale of how the world would end. God would “take up” the righteous and leave the damned on earth to fight apocalyptic battles among themselves as Jesus and the Devil battled for their soul. You really, really didn’t want to be “left behind.”

I feared the apocalypse. I was shown biblical passages that talked about the moon turning to blood and God raising the saved from the dead. The part about sucking up the living like a divine Hoover wasn’t in there, but that didn’t keep the story from scaring the bejeezus out of me.

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned the true meaning of the word “apocalypse.” It simply means a revealing – a lifting of the veil between this world of ego and the realm of God. My religion taught that it would be an epic, violent and bloody battle for that veil to be lifted. A Course in Miracles says all we have to do is recognize that the veil isn’t real, and its gone. No fuss, no muss and nobody gets sucked up into the Divine Hoover.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 9, 2020 — Apocalypse now”

Lesson 68: Love holds no grievances.

I mentioned at Jubilee! Circle this morning that today’s lesson in A Course in Miracles lesson was, “Love holds no grievances,” and from the back I heard a voice ask plaintively, “None?”

That voice sounded just like the voice of my ego, hoping against hope that I could keep a couple of my most valuable grievances – some grudges I enjoy visiting, some snarky judgments of others that tickle me when I think of them. Leave me something to ruminate over, to be cynical about, please.

If we truly want to remember who we are, this is impossible. We can’t be a little bit enlightened. Holding any grievance – even if we believe it’s just a tiny one – splits our mind between ego and spirit and a split mind is an unhealed mind. We must choose to release every grievance – even those pet grudges that we keep revisiting in our mind and feeding on a daily basis.

When we hold a grievance of any kind, we deny that Love has created us like itself. Instead, this lesson instructs us to not hold any grudge against anyone, no matter what kind of terrible – or even evil – thing the ego says they have said or done to us or in the world. This is a thought our ego naturally rebels at. “Treat that horrible leader who has done terrible things in the world that have done harm to people as a friend?” it rages. “That’s ridiculous and irresponsible. Justice must be done.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 8, 2020 — Let it go”

Lesson 67: Love created me like itself.

St. Teresa of Calcutta once remarked: “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

That’s how this lesson makes me feel. If Love created me like Itself, then that means I am made of nothing but Love, which is a HUGE responsibility to live up to. A responsibility I don’t think I asked for and if I did, I can’t fathom how to actually live up to such a high expectation. That’s, of course, what my ego wants me to believe. It’s easy to believe the ego, since it’s got all the proof that the last thing you were created like was Love.

This lesson assures us that all of the qualities God has – Love, joy, compassion, justice, acceptance – all reside within us as well, since we are created from that pure Love that is God. The ego scoffs at this. As evidence, it dredges up the old religious traditions of my childhood that warned you not to get above your raisin’ which most definitely means don’t go comparing yourself to God. God is God and you are you and never the twain shall meet.

My religious background taught me that I was made in God’s image – but I am a mere reflection of the qualities of God. I do not actually possess those qualities and to think that I do is to think more highly of myself than I ought.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 7, 2020 — Love and Light”

Lesson 65: My only function is the one God gave me.

The world has many expectations of us – to be productive members of society, form relationships, propagate the species and, first and foremost, look out for number one. We have a lot of expectations on ourselves as well to be “successful” in the world (whatever that means) and build a life that we hope will make us happy.

The ego tells us that our function in this world, then, is to go out there and make it happen – to be the best we can be in business, at home, at play and in all other areas of life. We live by the carrot and the stick – chasing after worldly success and accolades – but wondering at the end of the day what we’re really striving for and if it’s worth all the effort we seem to be exerting – because happiness seems to so fleeting.

A Course in Miracles says we are free to try everything under the ego’s sun to find happiness and fulfillment, but we will never find true happiness until we embrace our true function – to accept forgiveness for ourselves (the Atonement that undoes all illusion) and realize our true function is the one God has given us – to be the light of the world. In the roll and flow of life, however, we forget this. The ego’s game is easy to get wrapped up in, trying to get ahead out there while neglecting the work within that guarantees we can find peace and happiness.

Continue reading “AYoMW: March 5, 2020 — The servant of unity”