Archive for the 'Happiness' Category
When the Rev. Dorothea Harvey passed into the spiritual world last week she left quite a legacy as the first woman ordained in the Swedenborgian Church.
We honored her in worship here in Fryeburg, reading the wonderful excerpt that was printed in her obituary where Dorothea offered the lovely and profound statement:
“God’s will is not alien to my own will;
God’s will is that I find my deepest joy.”
Christian history and tradition is full of all kinds of ideas of what “God’s will,” might be for us. At times renunciation of the world, self flagellation, servitude, denial of the flesh, martyrdom, etc. And perhaps for each Christian these paths were what, at the time, led them to their greatest joy & their greatest connection to God.
And what I wonder will lead me to mine?
I am grateful to Dorothea for her life, for her bravery and her wisdom. She has stood in a line of saints that have been helping to birth the new church into the world for generations. May we all honor her part by doing ours.
March 04 2010 | Happiness | 2 Comments »
I am blogging this morning from a bus headed to Detoit Metro Airport equipped with WiFi. Oh, it really is a New Age! We’re running a bit late because of a not so unexpected Michigan Spring snow storm.
Speeding along past slushy snow, cars with snow covered back windows, and this new white blanket, the question of whether I will make my flight time ahead and behind thoughts and reflections from the Peer Supervision meeting I was just attending with my fellow Swedenborgian pastors, and here I am NOW.
I am deep into the NOW, dug into Eckhart Tolle’s bestseller The Power of Now and it’s wisdom.
“Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. All else is madness.”
I love the “all else is madness” bit, because it really is. The time we spend, the energy we spend: fixating, worrying, being anxious, afraid, it is all wasted. It is all separating us from the reality of NOW where we are totally connected to God, to ourselves and to each other.
So I am enjoying the present NOW, speeding along through slushy gray Michigan Spring Snow. I hope you are enjoying your Now too 
March 28 2008 | Happiness | No Comments »
In my Easter Sermon this past Sunday I quoted the author/minister/sage Hugh Prather who wrote, “We are happy when we are being kind.”
That’s it. Nothing more. Its one of those simple truths, like “Love each other,” that seems so basic we can at times not understand it at all.
What would happens if we stop asking “What will make me happy?” and start asking “How can I be kind?”
Perhaps we’ll get the true happiness we’re looking for.
March 25 2008 | Happiness | No Comments »
