Sexters and Amazing Grace

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Somehow sexters, people who send explicit sex-related texts, have gotten hold of my cell phone number. Two or three times a day, I get text messages from these people or this person. I’m reasonably sure it’s the same entity each time. I don’t know if it’s an individual or a room of people hired to send these texts like mass spammers. The first time I received such a text, I felt violated and enraged. How dare they! How did this happen? I took it personally, not realizing there’s nothing personal about it. My phone number is on a list, that’s all.

There’s no way for me to get off this list unless I change my number, which I’m not about to do. So instead, every time I get a text, while I’m swiping the red delete banner, I send a prayer to that person and bless them, hoping their distorted, confused hearts and souls will open to divine love and heal. It may not happen in this lifetime, but I don’t want to add to their misery by cursing them.

Once, I, too, was blind, but now I see.

Thank you, God.

So the next time you feel powerless over the careless actions of another person, try praying and blessing that person instead of cursing them. It’s an opportunity to spread love in some small way. And who knows, maybe it’s a critical way, in the end.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found;

Was blind, but now I see.”

We Reveal Her Beauty

When I was nineteen, I knew everything I needed to know about my spiritual self — that I was good. Only I didn’t believe what my heart knew instinctively because I was in too much pain.

Here’s what I wrote back then:  “I tend to make problems for myself. I‘m not used to thinking and acting as if I were truly good. It’s probably due to hanging on to feeling bad. Intellectually I can say I am good, but why can’t I feel it emotionally? That’s what I’m searching for—the goodness in me.

“I speak of God—inside me and all around me and in other people—that’s what I want to see. Despite my pessimism, I am beginning to love myself, a manifestation of God, of a spirit within me, within this whole phenomenon of life. It’s just too much to ignore! I could go crazy over that, or I could be calm knowing the power of the truth.”

Forty-six years later, I marvel at what I knew and appreciate the truth in my youthful words: we are all okay. No matter how much pain we are in, we are good; our souls are bright and loving. It’s just that the truth is hard to know when we feel lousy.

Oh dear ones, listen to your heart. You are magnificent! Believe it! You are an expression of Her creativity—golden, warm, and loving.

Here is one of my all-time favorite prayers:

“When thus I lose myself in thee, my God,

Then do I see and know,

That all Thy universe reveals Thy beauty,

All living beings, all lifeless things,

Exist through Thee.

This whole vast world is but the form

In which Thou showest us Thyself,

Is but the voice,

With which Thyself Thou speakest unto us.

What need of words?

Come, Master, come,

And fill me wholly with Thyself.”

–Tukaram, a Hindu mystic of the 17th century

So here it is spoken plainly: “All Thy universe reveals Thy beauty…”

That includes us! We are Her universe! We reveal Her beauty! Isn’t that grand! Isn’t that miraculous!

Enjoy the day!

My Heart’s Song

Hello, dear friends. Sorry I missed posting last week. I am so busy trying to finish this book I’m writing about my teenage years when I was lost and frightened and on my own.

I think we all feel that way sometimes and don’t realize that we aren’t alone. God is always with us.

But what if you don’t believe in God? What if you feel like God isn’t there for you or doesn’t care? Once upon a time, I screamed at God for not helping me. I was enraged. She just stood there as silent, unhelpful, solid, and unmovable as the tree at which I screamed.

I felt no help then, but how do I know that tree didn’t help me just by standing ground, by receiving my anger?

Believing in God, believing we are loved is a decision, a choice. It opens our hearts to the possibility of healing and hope. It is a choice I make every day to love and be loved, to feel whatever shows up–sorrow, rage, hope, joy, love.

Listen carefully to your heart. If it aches, pour that ache out to God and or some healing soul.

Take heart, have hope. Spirit will guide you.

“Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song.

Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song.

I will never forget you.

I will never forsake you.

I will never forget you.

I will never forsake you.”

Write to me; I will listen.