Manifesto: Talking with the Holy Spirit

I like winter fires, don't make them as much as I used to. But still. Sometimes I drag a plastic lawn chair over; mostly I stand by the flames alone. It is what it is.

If the Holy Spirit visits, I ask questions. He answers or he doesn't. How come people get divorced? Same reason they get married. I'm confused. You have said it. What if my son doesn't respect me? Are you sure you're not really worried that he does and now what? 

He says a lot: "tell me what you really want." Eventually I realize he isn't being rhetorical; he really wants to know. Or rather, really wants me to know.

Taking my cue from Peter Maurin, I want to help create a world in which it is easier to do good and to be good, by supporting others in their (natural serious) happiness, e.g., they are safe from violence, they are fed, they have clean water, their work has meaning, there is time to play, they can see a doctor if/when they need to, they can go to a church of their choosing or no church, and so on.  

I want to know the world as a village and everyone I meet as a sister or brother doing their utmost to remember - with me, for me, through me - our shared Creation in Love, by which Love we are all of us sustained. 

In order to live in that way, my mind has to heal. Here, I take my cue from A Course in Miracles. I need to see reality as God creates it, not as I in my separated state would prefer it. This means discerning between what is true and what is false; it means becoming responsible for projection and denial; and it means valuing according to love and not fear. 

I want us each to be the other's savior. 

Stir the fire, throw another log on. Gaze shifting from stars to fire and back to stars.

What you are describing takes work, hard work. Work that requires discipline and willingness. That requires faith, goes on in the face of not-knowing, goes on in the space of un-knowing even. You have to be strong and humble; you have to give everything away; you have to give away your identity, you have to give away even your right to an identity. It's hard to understand let alone apply. There are lots of ways to fail, lots of ways to go astray, lots of ways to quit. Almost everybody does.   

Stillness and peace are effects of remembering oneness with our Creator, by knowing ourselves as an extension of that Creator. This means - among other things - accepting that only loving thoughts are true and that there are only loving thoughts - that everything else is an illusion. 

Love holds everything. You either know this or you don't. Either way, you can't fake it. 

All fires are altars, all flames a grail. I hold my hands up to the starry sky; smoke trails through my fingers. "Love holds everything."  

When we accept that Love holds everything, then we know Love's effects in our life; in that way, Love becomes the foundation and the light; it becomes the word. It becomes us. On that day, Love is all that we bring forth because there is nothing but Love to bring forth. 

Night comes on. Starlight recreates itself in beads of melting snow. An owl cries on the other side of the river, murmuring in darkness. Now and then a pair of headlights where Route Nine bears down into the valley. Loneliness comes on.

I want to remember that there are no favorites anywhere, that God knows one creation, not many. Therefore, there are neither enemies nor competitors. A holy relationship is any relationship which recognizes the other's fundamental equality because it shares that equality, because it is that equality. 

What do I want?

I want you to transform my confused mind, turn it into a prism unto the light of Love, so that all it brings forth is whatever is most good for all Creation, so that all it wants is to bring that goodness forth. 

Teach me to remember what I am; let me be the light by which I remember that the only peace is the peace I bring forth in, with and through you.   

Silence then. The fire dead, the night heavy and dark. Imagine you are the only one in the world. 

Imagine you are not.