Speaking of Spirit

Tree of Life Tapestry https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/64.101.1305/ “We Are But One Thread”    by Rev. Linda M. Rhinehart Neas © 2018    Chief Seattle, the great Native American medicine man, said, “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” I love that imagery. Close your eyes for a moment…picture an awesomely beautiful tapestry, rich in color and texture. See each human, each plant, animal…all of creation as individual threads within the tapestry.  Tapestries are weavings that often tell stories of a great event. We don’t have a tapestry here to demonstrate our interconnectedness, but, if we were to pull just one thread out of what weavers call the weft and warp, it pulls on all the other threads, taking them out of balance. If we pull on several threads, before long, our tapestry is a mess!  This is what is happening to us today. The v...

I remember the first time someone told me to "Forgive and Forget."  I pondered this for days. Forgiving, I felt I could do, but how could I forget?   His Holiness, the Dalai Lama said, " Forgiveness doesn’t mean forget what happened…If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."   When our world is filled with hate, we cannot forget. We must remember, in order to prevent the hate, the horror, from happening again. Each time we forget, hate rises its ugly head once more. However, we can forgive.  Nelson Mandela when asked why he was not resentful for his imprisonment said, " Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die." When we release resentment, when we forgive, we heal. This healing allows us the energy, the blessings, the grace to move forward in positive ways. We become conduits for positive change because we are no lon...