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March 15, 2015 – Beauty & the Beast, Part 1: Healing Relationship Pain

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03/15/15 Rev. David McArthur
Beauty and the Beast 1 – Healing Relationship Pain

When we carry past relationship hurt within, our mind wants to protect us with words like “me”, “them”, and “righteous indignation”. Such words of separation cause pain and express fear. This can be healthy at one level, but we use such words to escape our assignment (which is to heal the inner). The outer will change. Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? …You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Sometimes I hate that, but on this assignment I also heard wise words of responsibility, caring, healing, connecting.

A story with very helpful images on this path to wholeness is “Beauty and the Beast”. A merchant, lost in a deep dark wood in a storm, finds a wonderful sunlit castle. There all his needs are met—food, a bed, even breakfast. For his daughter, Beauty, he plucks a rose. Immediately an ugly, terrifying beast confronts him. “Your life is forfeit!” The horrified merchant strikes a deal. If Beauty came to live in the castle with the Beast, all would be provided her, but each evening she had to sit down and dine with the Beast. Pretty clear spiritual symbolism isn’t it? There is no lasting satisfaction in pursuing material goods. The brightly lit castle in the midst of the dark forest is obviously the Kingdom of Heaven, and we are aware that Divine Love provides all our needs. But we pluck the rose (spiritual understanding) for the feelings of the growing soul. Once you take it, life as you know it is over. To embrace and enter into spiritual understanding, you must sit down with your Beast.

It’s the ugly we see inside ourselves. Deal with that pain. That’s your journey, your assignment. Enter the heart (the castle grounds). Breathe the feeling of Ease (that everything is provided by God). Give permission to yourself to feel the pain. The head will enter into blame/control. But breathe Ease, and just hold the pain in your heart. Your brain does not have to protect you from something that’s not there. There’s no need to fix, blame, or judge. Breathe Ease and hold the pain in your heart. Invite the power of your spiritual heart to flow in and start the healing. I breathe Ease and Hold It in My Heart. I breathe Ease and Hold It in My Heart. I breathe Ease and Hold It in My Heart. It is important to fulfill our assignment to heal the past relationship pain, the hurt, we carry. Then we can move into that place we know as “Happily Ever After”!

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March 8, 2015 – Tithing — A Four-Letter Word…Love

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03/08/15 Sheila Gautreaux, L.U.T.
Tithing – A Four-Letter Word…Love

My friend, Dot, joyfully told of the card and money she had prepared for her grandson Langston’s birthday. I could tell the card was filled with love. She was so excited. When you select a gift with such care you imagine how great the loved one will feel when they open it. Give like that when you tithe to wherever you receive your spiritual instruction, support, and enlightenment, your spiritual good. Give by joy. The energy of connection with the universe, when giving from joy, goes out into the universe and the universe is inspired to return it. When giving in joy you are also giving to yourself.
If 10% is fearful for you, you can start small and graduate to 10%. Why 10? 10 is the number of perfect balance, of the balance of masculine and feminine, of resplendent love. It is the divine number, and reduces to 1—indicating our oneness with the universe, that when we are aligned with the universe we are connected and there is no difference between us and God.

When I lost half my income I stopped tithing. Then I started losing track of money; I just couldn’t find it. My paying engagements started drying up. Then I fell and broke my wrist. What was going on? Then I remembered I had quit tithing. So I immediately wrote a check. In fear I had stopped tithing, but then when I did give I gave in love. To give only because you get is not in alignment with the law of giving and receiving. In a month or 6 weeks I was clearly in a better situation.

You can tithe not only money, but your time or service. Give somewhere, somehow, to someone. Are you giving in love to your family? To you community? To your job? Our goal is to give in love across the board, giving in love to our world. Seek to live a life of giving love. The steps are listed in the attached outline.

This week look at every place you go, and give in love. Be aware of how you are giving to our world. Even how you speak is giving. Find a way to give love even if it’s just a little bit, because love changes everything.

I give you love; I give you peace; I give you joy. May you find this every day in your life and relationships.

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March 1, 2015 – Learning Prayer – Sending Love

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03/01/15 Rev. David McArthur
Learning Prayer – Sending Love

As a child I really didn’t feel connection to anyone “up there”. As a young man I started meditating and my experience of the reality of prayer changed. Later, in the tragedy of losing my wife, I learned the power of prayer. I entered into forgiveness and found peace. Through the experience of prayer it was given to me.

I wanted to really know about prayer. Unity asked me to step into the spiritual being I already was, and to open and receive my good that was already there, not to ask someone else “outside” of me. This experience of prayer I still did not really understand. There’s a difference between knowledge and understanding.

Rev. Mary Wessel established the Unity ministries throughout Montana. I met her when she was 104 years old. She lived on the top floor of a home which overlooked a beautiful valley and mountains. When I stepped into the room Spirit opened my eyes and I saw vibrant ribbons of light flowing out through the window like highways and I knew what she was doing. She was in a ministry of prayer. And later, even with mountains between us, I knew those ribbons of light reached to me and many others. It is powerful and it makes a difference. It is the sacred experience of love supporting each other as we go through this Earth experience.

I invite you to bring someone into your awareness, into your heart, who needs support. Now send that love that you are feeling. Enfold that love over them. At this moment you know for that person they are loved. Tell them You are loved. You are loved. You are loved. Divine love through your heart enfolds them now. Feel that beautiful love. Know this transforming power creates, and that it enfolds them here, now.

I invite you to join us as a spiritual community to pray at noon (or whatever time; Spirit doesn’t get hung up on time) for every person that has asked for prayer support. Pause for a moment and let them know they are loved. What we discover then is that each of us is loved!

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February 22, 2015 – Pinocchio – Through Fear to God

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02/22/15 Rev. David McArthur
Pinocchio – Through Fear to God

Pinocchio begins with a glorious story of our creation myth. Geppetto (the Creator) makes Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy gives him life. A living puppet without strings, Pinocchio becomes famous, but ends up caged. (As we look to the outer for fulfillment, there are limitations.) To be free of the cage, Pinocchio had to quit lying to himself.

He went to Pleasure Island where there are no rules. Soon he and the other pleasure-seeking boys turn into donkeys, showing addiction to the Earth experience; it’s falling asleep into the density of the animal consciousness. It doesn’t work. But he listens to Jiminy Cricket, his consciousness, and gets off Pleasure Island by diving into the ocean (his consciousness).

He has to find Geppetto, his creator. (The focus is now on the divine.) Entering into his subconscious, the ocean, he finds Monstro the whale (the greatest fear). It isn’t easy for him to get into the whale. Here Jesus tells us how: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. “ (Matthew 7:7)

My own personal journey into the “whale” will perhaps encourage some to enter into their fear. It began when my wife was murdered. I felt if God is a lie I wanted to know. So I entered into my fear. When the murderer’s family was interviewed I got to be a part of it, and I got to see how their Pleasure Island was taken from them, how the pain took it all. I did not see evil anywhere. I saw how our choices affect others. I saw that Geppetto, the Divine Presence/Law, was a gift with no strings. A gift of power and choice. Goodness was there.

Pinocchio burns the boat inside the whale (fire is a symbol of transformation) so that the whale would spit them out. The whale (the fear) is gone. In my journey into my whale, I asked if the love was real. I went back through every moment—the act, the choices, the pain, what was said, what happened to the family. Everywhere I touched there was love. Love so powerful it brought something even greater—a love which allowed choices, consciousness, actions. There was not anything else. No second power. An amazing gift of love to every single person there. It’s not just that God is good. That’s not enough. God is love all the time. And All the time God is love. No more whale. I could see the reality we live in, the most amazing choices. I could see we can place our attention on anything we want. And when we put it on this powerful love we see that God Is All Love All The Time.

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February 15, 2015 – Romance – I Love You

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02/15/15 Rev. David McArthur
Romance – I Love You

Today we’re talking about a sacred experience between 2 people, that beautiful relationship which happens with couples. It comes from that simplest understanding that God is love, and when we experience it we experience God. It changes us and the way we perceive. We see the other through divine eyes. It is a unifying power.

Told that if he’d survive at all he’d be a quadriplegic, a young man fixed his eyes on his wife and mouthed the words, “Maybe we should let me go.” She replied, “I will support whatever you decide, but I am in it for the long run.” The next words she spoke gave him his life back. “You’re still you. I love you.” He mouthed, “This is way beyond ‘in sickness and in health’”. It was Christopher Reeve—Superman! Their love went beyond their vows. She saw him and he saw her as they really are.

Perhaps the most profound statement found in the Bible is “He who is without love is without God.” Love is greater than even marriage. In the most hostile climate of northern Scotland Peter and Eileen Caddy were known for their beautiful gardens. Years later I contacted Peter. He had a new wife and child in Hawaii! He explained that Eileen’s purpose and his had changed. Love doesn’t own. It releases when the connection doesn’t serve the soul’s growth. It doesn’t mean that love is not there and vibrant. It is part of love—letting go.

An ice skater from the age of four, Ekaterina Gordeeva was partnered with Sergei when she was 11, he 15. They skated as a pair for the Soviet Union and in 1988 took Olympic gold in Calgary. Their partnership blossomed into love, and soon into marriage and a beautiful baby girl. In Lillehammer in ’94 they again took the gold. The next year, while they trained in Lake Placid, Sergei collapsed onto the ice dead from a heart attack. He was 28.

Ekaterina was not sure she could skate without Sergei. But at the stadium for his memorial service she felt Sergei’s presence right there beside her. Hearing her coach say, “just trust Sergei” she skated to the music they had used to win the gold. She said she never felt so much power. “I didn’t have a thought in my head. It was all in my heart—my soul.” She later spoke of how they had agreed to smile at each other every day, and every day to say one extra time, “I love you.”

God is love and goes beyond time. Remember feeling that love for your special person and say, “I love you.” So one extra time each day this week say, “I love you.”

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February 1, 2015 – Snow White – God is Good

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02/01/15 Rev. David McArthur
Snow White – God is Good

Each archetypal symbol in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is some aspect of ourselves on our spiritual journey. When the soul enters the Earth it loses sight of its identity as a child of God, taking on a false idea outpictured by the stepmother, the Queen. She goes to the mirror. That outpictures our insecurity. We are concerned how people see us. We need the world to like us.

The Huntsman cannot kill Snow White (the feminine, our feeling side). He thinks he can hide her like we think we can hide our feelings. The 7 Dwarfs (the 7 chakras) can be seen as not fully grown, an early picture of our spiritual development. The mirror tells the Queen that there is something more powerful, more beautiful than she. So the poison apple.

The Dwarfs are so dualistic. Full of fear that Snow White is dead. But it is a false fear. Our journey is to know fear but learn there is nothing but God. Snow White is taken up the mountain by the 7 Dwarfs, the 7 centers of knowledge. It is the rise of awareness that there is no duality. But they cannot put her in the ground because they are still touched by her presence. The Prince just has to come riding by. He is also us, the thought part of us that knows but cannot feel. He finds the feeling self (Snow White) deep asleep. So we open to our feeling world and find incredible beauty with Love’s First Kiss.

A young 20-something guy lost his very closest companion, his dog, and plummeted into a deep depression. His friends wanted to help, so held a memorial. The young man wrote a eulogy, but found it difficult to deliver. “I could barely continue, but right at the point where I released myself into my feelings there was a pinpoint of light through my grief, and a smile. This point of happiness expanded rapidly, vastly, and immensely into a paradoxical experience of grief and happiness, into a greater sense of well being than I had ever had.”

Give into that where the soul is awakened. It is not loss because there is only one power—the goodness of God. There is no fear. It is beautiful. Once we touch it there is no more evil Queen. She holds no power over us. This is what Jesus and Lao Tzu taught. God is good all the time. Yes, there is strain when things all come apart, but God is good all the time. This week there will be someone to challenge you, but check it out: God is good all the time.

I Am There
By James Dillet Freeman

Do you need Me?
I am there.
You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by.
You cannot hear Me, yet I speak through your voice.
You cannot feel Me, yet I am the power at work in your hands.
I am at work, though you do not understand My ways.
I am at work, though you do not recognize My works.
I am not strange visions. I am not mysteries.
Only in absolute stillness, beyond self, can you know Me as I am, and then but as a feeling and a faith.
Yet I am there. Yet I hear. Yet I answer.
When you need Me, I am there.
Even if you deny Me, I am there.
Even when you feel most alone, I am there.
Even in your fears, I am there.
Even in your pain, I am there.
I am there when you pray and when you do not pray.
I am in you, and you are in Me…
When you get yourself out of the way, I am there.
You can of yourself do nothing, but I can do all.
And I am in all.
Though you may not see the good, good is there, for I am there.
I am there because I have to be, because I am…

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January 25, 2015 – Year of Forgiveness

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01/25/15 Rev. David McArthur with Robert Plath & Takashi Tanemori
Year of Forgiveness

Ghandi said, “Forgiveness is not a weakness, it is a strength.” A Course In Miracles says, “All illness comes from unforgiveness.” A survivor of Auschwitz, Eva Kor, learned that the greatest gift, one no one—even Dr. Mengele—could take away from her, was forgiveness. “It’s for me, not for him” she said. “I want to be free of the darkness, not suffer in unforgiveness.” Forgiveness is the greatest miracle of all. When Robert Plath was 13 his father died and he became head of the family, and life was a fight. “It took years for me to get over it.” You want to heal and have your heart open up. Take the cover off your light. It is most heroic to get over all that revenge and live open and free.

From 1900 to the year 2000, 100 million people died at the hands of fellow human beings. Takashi Tanemori was 8 when the American bombing of Hiroshima took his entire family, from his baby sister to his grandparents. He had no one and nowhere to go. He ate at the dump with the rats. His father had schooled him, regardless of the cultural pressures, to “live your life for the benefit of others… This is the simplest way to make the world a safer and peaceful place.” But he vowed to avenge his family, and in ten years he was able to go to America to do that.

He was not welcomed with open arms in America, and felt betrayed again by the “Christian nation”. He went to an immigrant work camp. A nurse told him of the One of endless love, but “I worried I hadn’t avenged my father, that I hadn’t kept my word to him.”. It took forty years, but he did learn about true love and forgiveness. Now he is free as a bird. He turned from revenge to forgiveness. I learned to avenge my father by learning forgiveness. “The greatest way to have revenge upon your enemy is to learn to forgive. And now I fly in the blue sky! It is the ultimate demonstration of love.”

We carry with us what no longer serves the beings we really are. Robert Plath and Takashi Tanemori have opened a door for us to let us know there is a beautiful way for us. We can forgive and release; it’ll bring us to peace. Take this moment. I commit to forgiveness. I commit to forgiveness. I commit to forgiveness.

It is said that time has the power to heal. But forgiveness is beyond time. You have the power to move that rock by forgiveness. The whole world can change and the peace cannot be contained.

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January 18, 2015 – The Beloved Community

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01/18/15 Rev. James Trapp
The Beloved Communty

Today’s headlines are the world’s prayer requests—what we need to pray for. They are evolutionary spiritual triggers to move us from where we are to where we want to be. “Invading armies can be resisted,” according to Victor Hugo, “but not an idea whose time has come.” Then, one person can have an idea that changes the world.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat and was arrested. So Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. led a 381 day peaceful boycott of the bus company. It sparked a movement that spread around the world. We each have a compelling mission. We all pray for relief from our nagging problems. And then, we say, will we be able to live a better life of giving and love. But we have it backwards. Our mission is to expand our world, our vision, and then our problems will fade to the nothingness from which they came.

Dr. King’s vision was of all people living and working together. Activist Reverend James Lawson called this the Beloved Community. All the great spiritual teachers have taught that this Beloved Community is in the eye of Spirit and we must live it in our hearts. Astronauts tell us they have an epiphany when they see the earth from above: without any map lines, separations among us are false.

It’s easy to love all of humanity, but it’s not so easy loving that particular one that’s on your last nerve. Jesus said we are to love the one “in front of us”. We need to see with new eyes. We must use our imagination to put ourselves in the shoes of another and put our loving into practice, not just intend to. Toleration is a start, but move to appreciation and embracing. Move beyond your barriers. “Turn the other cheek”, which means that when someone gives us one form of energy, we are to return a different form of energy, like forgiveness, love, and compassion. That takes strength. Returning the same energy does not take strength.

A lady, returning to her airplane seat, found the man beside her eating her cookies. She was angry and helped herself to “her own cookies”. Then she realized she was in the wrong seat! She apologized for her behavior, but the man said that he has learned that “when in doubt, share!” Our true theology is what we do, what we put into practice. To forgive “someday” is just a delaying tactic of the mind. Go within; pray. Bring in a higher energy. It affects all people. We are all connected. Stop seeing differences; see the beauty in others. See the many variations of infinite Spirit, which needs variety to express Its infinitude. See the wholeness and unity. Bring in the brotherhood, the Blessed Community. The time is now; the place is where you are. Peace. God bless you!

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January 11, 2015 – Steps of Prosperity

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01/11/15 Rev. David McArthur
Steps of Prosperity

We are going to create a wonderful world this year! A prosperous year! This Infinite Presence we are connected with wants to pour abundance into our lives. It is the only power; it’s not God and materiality. See God in all things. It’s how we connect with Spirit. In the story of the loaves and fishes (Matthew) are step by step instructions for manifesting into physical being what we want. The steps are:

1 (awareness) Jesus said, “Bring them (5 loaves and 2 fish) to me.” Be aware of what is provided, not what is not there. What is wanted is already present in the spiritual.

2 (serenity) “He directed the people to sit down on the grass.” Make the people in your head, your critics, sit down. You can’t get rid of them, but it brings you into balance within.

3 (acceptance) “Taking the 5 loaves, 2 fish…” Accept what is there; it is the way it is. Acceptance is a beautiful thing. You know you’re not in acceptance when you’re complaining.

4 (love) “…and looking up to heaven…” Shift. Raise your awareness to a greater level. Thoughts don’t do it. It takes feeling, a different consciousness. God works through feeling. There is amazing power here. It’s amazing growth to know that everything is love.

5 (gratitude) “he gave thanks…” I am grateful! I am grateful! I am grateful! The new creation is happening in our spiritual world and flowing into this one by way of our hearts.

6 (release all limits) “…broke the loaves” Break the old patterns. Pure spiritual love flows through our hearts and heals us. The hurt we carry is healed by that love. It removes those limiting ideas.

7 (active giving) “then he gave them to the disciples…” Send it on. In the physical world if you want more of something you take more. The spiritual world looks opposite to the physical world; if you want more you give more. Tithing focuses us on the giving, that it’s all God’s. And it brings it into the physical world.

8 (openness) “and disciples gave them to the people.” It is given to that part of us that is busy with the outer. We become open to both giving and receiving. It invites us into open receptivity. It fills us and satisfies the “yeah, but” people in our head. We experience the love, the divine.

Recalling step 4 (love), we enter into this with and through the feeling of love. The feelings of love and gratitude move to the places within us where we carry pain and we heal. I am grateful! I am grateful! I am grateful! And there was more than enough! “…and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.” 12 is the number of fulfillment.

Affirm God is my instant, constant, abundant Supply! God is my instant, constant, abundant Supply! God is my instant, constant, abundant Supply! Live long and prosper!

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