Rev. Kristin Powell
forgiveness
August 21, 2016 – Outrageous Forgiveness
08/21/16 Rev. David McArthur
“Outrageous Forgiveness”
Last week we spoke of outrageous generosity. The next step of our journey is when we see so much violence in our time, we recognize the invitation to step into an even greater consciousness. The higher level then, becomes outrageous forgiveness.
Spirit allows us to to see the turmoil and pain. It is no longer hidden in Shadow. We see it; it affects us and impels us to deal with it. We work on forgiveness all the time. What I’m talking about is outrageous forgiveness. I think of that moment when Nelson Mandela walked out of prison. He said of it that if he hadn’t left that pain and injustice behind, he would never be free, which is what he wanted for all. And apartheid fell. Outrageous forgiveness.
It’s when we want this in our lives and family and world that we can do it. But if you haven’t noticed, not everyone does.
In our families we have ones who act out their pain, and in their addictive behavior blame us. When we are hurt it is our assignment to heal the hurt within, and it is our assignment to say there is no place here in our family for this pain anymore. Outrageous forgiveness. Step into wholeness. We have to live these truths to bring this higher consciousness.
There is an abuse within many religions that has hurt too many. How many thousands of women have been told to forgive and go back into their abusive environment!!? Love says no, it has to end. Love also is true compassion. If we ask them to step up higher, the pain is no more. There is our freedom.
Some people in our own community were acting out their pain and projecting it on others until it became extreme. By the third time we had to say, “You can’t be here.” Our experience here with this took away our emotional safety, which is necessary for a community like ours. So some had to step away. But holding the forgiveness and the higher level, some returned to this place of affirmation and wholeness beyond the pain. This is the place of love, forgiveness, wholeness, of a commitment that this is a place of outrageous forgiveness. And then we know the beauty in others.
Join as we create a consciousness of forgiveness and love which holds the highest for those of family and community. I commit to outrageous forgiveness. This is not ordinary forgiveness; it is higher, more. I commit to outrageous forgiveness. When you see the violence on TV. I commit to outrageous forgiveness. When we look at the person in the family who has not found their wholeness. I commit to outrageous forgiveness. OK, that’s the easy part. How about self. Lift yourself up. I commit to outrageous forgiveness. Spirit made us outrageous anyway, how could you not?
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December 27, 2015 – Appreciation: Key To Letting Go
12/27/15 Rev. David McArthur
Appreciation: Key To Letting Go
At Thanksgiving we open our hearts with appreciation; with Christmas we go even deeper into our hearts. Then we step into New Years and say yes to the energy we have built up to bring something new in. But we have to let go of something old. It’s the Law of Closets and Bookcases. That’s the reason for the Burning Bowl ceremony.
Paul Simon wrote about letting go in “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.” “You Just slip out the back, Jack…Just get yourself free… get yourself free.” Don’t you wish it worked that way? But this isn’t just a 3D world. “I am a spiritual being living in a spiritual world governed by spiritual law.” Real change comes from within.
This is when I go to my teacher, Jesus. In the story of the man blind from birth, the disciples (us learners) asked Jesus who sinned that the man was born blind, his parents or him? At this time Judaism was examining the laws of Karma and Reincarnation. It was taught that if you followed the rules as written, you were righteous and prospered in health, finances, and relationships. To have suffering meant you weren’t righteous; you weren’t in alignment with God. Jesus’ answer was that neither this soul nor his parents had sinned, but that people showing suffering did so as an invitation for all to awaken to the greater pattern within the being. (He never did say, “I have healed you’” He always said, “Your faith has healed you.”) He spat on the ground and took the mud (as if to say yes, we are in the 3D world) and by putting it into the blind man’s eyes meant the awareness of the spiritual gives us sight.
A woman I have known for a long time, Edwene Gaines, grew steadily in this knowledge. Her husband of a short time had walked out on her, saying he didn’t love her any more. Left alone, 6 months pregnant with little money in Hong Kong, her reaction was understandably anger, hatred and resentment.
It literally became a cancer inside her. Her doctor told her to write her will. Her spiritual advisor told her she had a choice: to forgive or to die. She found that the more she forgave the more her cancer subsided. She says that what her ex had done to her seemed to be the worst thing anyone could do. However, she is now truly grateful for it. “Without it I may never have learned the power of forgiveness.” She now can experience her own wholeness with others. There’s no victim in that.
How did she know she had accomplished forgiveness? Appreciation. With appreciation, we retain the learning but free ourselves. I appreciate the wisdom I have gained. I appreciate the wisdom I have gained. I appreciate the wisdom I have gained. That’s how we get free. That’s the experience of the spiritual being.
Receive it. Hold it. You are a conscious spiritual being. You have learned. You are wise. It is illumination. Your light shines!
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December 27, 2015 – Appreciation: Key To Letting Go
12/27/15 Rev. David McArthur
Appreciation: Key To Letting Go
At Thanksgiving we open our hearts with appreciation; with Christmas we go even deeper into our hearts. Then we step into New Years and say yes to the energy we have built up to bring something new in. But we have to let go of something old. It’s the Law of Closets and Bookcases. That’s the reason for the Burning Bowl ceremony.
Paul Simon wrote about letting go in “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.” “You Just slip out the back, Jack…Just get yourself free… get yourself free.” Don’t you wish it worked that way? But this isn’t just a 3D world. “I am a spiritual being living in a spiritual world governed by spiritual law.” Real change comes from within.
This is when I go to my teacher, Jesus. In the story of the man blind from birth, the disciples (us learners) asked Jesus who sinned that the man was born blind, his parents or him? At this time Judaism was examining the laws of Karma and Reincarnation. It was taught that if you followed the rules as written, you were righteous and prospered in health, finances, and relationships. To have suffering meant you weren’t righteous; you weren’t in alignment with God. Jesus’ answer was that neither this soul nor his parents had sinned, but that people showing suffering did so as an invitation for all to awaken to the greater pattern within the being. (He never did say, “I have healed you’” He always said, “Your faith has healed you.”) He spat on the ground and took the mud (as if to say yes, we are in the 3D world) and by putting it into the blind man’s eyes meant the awareness of the spiritual gives us sight.
A woman I have known for a long time, Edwene Gaines, grew steadily in this knowledge. Her husband of a short time had walked out on her, saying he didn’t love her any more. Left alone, 6 months pregnant with little money in Hong Kong, her reaction was understandably anger, hatred and resentment.
It literally became a cancer inside her. Her doctor told her to write her will. Her spiritual advisor told her she had a choice: to forgive or to die. She found that the more she forgave the more her cancer subsided. She says that what her ex had done to her seemed to be the worst thing anyone could do. However, she is now truly grateful for it. “Without it I may never have learned the power of forgiveness.” She now can experience her own wholeness with others. There’s no victim in that.
How did she know she had accomplished forgiveness? Appreciation. With appreciation, we retain the learning but free ourselves. I appreciate the wisdom I have gained. I appreciate the wisdom I have gained. I appreciate the wisdom I have gained. That’s how we get free. That’s the experience of the spiritual being.
Receive it. Hold it. You are a conscious spiritual being. You have learned. You are wise. It is illumination. Your light shines!
November 8, 2015 – Climbing The Beanstalk to God Within
11/08/15 Rev. David McArthur
Climbing the Beanstalk to God Within
Jack and the Beanstalk is a story of our spiritual journey. Jack is the son of a woman so poor she sends Jack to town to sell the family cow, which he does for a handful of “magic” beans. His mother gets so upset she throws the beans out the window. The mother is our “poor” state of consciousness. For some it’s body poor, relationship poor, whatever your favorite “poor” is.
The beans grow to the clouds. Of course, Jack has to climb the beanstalk. At the top it is beautiful, with lush fields and a beautiful castle. The giant had killed the Knight and everyone else in it but the Lady, who escaped. She was a Fairy (an angel which brings higher consciousness to us here).
The giantess tells Jack that he (us) is heir to the castle, the kingdom, but he has to kill the giant to get it. Emily Cady has written, “…to be ‘heirs of God…means every man is the inlet, and may become the outlet, of all there is in God… that all that God is and has is in reality for us, His only heirs, if we only know how to claim our inheritance.”
The giant is the god-thought that controls all, is far away and doesn’t love us. We believe that when we do our “poor” thing. Jack is enslaved by the giant. The giantess, the feminine feeling of fear, protects Jack because she wants him to serve her. It’s fear that enslaves us (fear of God). So Jack is hidden in the closet. When the giant falls asleep Jack steals the hen that lays golden eggs, goes down the beanstalk, and gives it to his mother. It is a symbol of divine ideas which bring fertility, abundance, and success for the labors of the farm-based life of the early nineteenth century.
The next night the giant counts his gold coins. They represent the abundance of God in this moment, the experience of divine capacity we are related to. Jack takes them to his mother too. The next night the giant commands his harp to play its beautiful music. (It’s a symbol of love, the harmonizing power.) Jack steals the harp, too, but it calls out to the sleeping giant, “Master…” Jack tells the harp, “I am your master now.” When he gives it to his mother (the symbol of the feminine) she gives him the axe to cut down the beanstalk, to undercut the God we fear. Letting love be felt removes the fearful God from our consciousness.
Jack still lives in the cottage and the Fairy tells him he has to remove the giantess (fear) to live in the castle. She takes him to town and shows the people that he is the rightful heir to have the gifts in the castle. We have to integrate it. We aren’t separate. We are one with all that love, goodness, abundance—our powers. We have to climb the beanstalk. Jesus put it this way, “The Father and I are one.”
For me it is helpful to say I am one with the goodness of God! Feel that goodness. There is no money lack, no need to do relationship lack. I am one with the goodness of God! There is nothing that’s against you because you are a radiant child of God. I am one with the goodness of God! Knowing that, may all your giants come tumbling down!
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September 13, 2015 – Experiencing Self-Forgiveness
09/13/15 Rev. David McArthur
Experiencing Self-Forgiveness
It is easy here on Sunday to go into that place within where you are completely loved, completely at peace, where there is no room for that past stuff, just love—feeling complete unconditional love. It’s always there. The problem is getting there on Monday, with the people at the office and with family. How do we get there, with all the guilt we carry for what we’ve done even long ago? Self-forgiveness! When we get to self-forgiveness we can get to the peace.
Have you ever noticed that peace and guilt don’t go together? When we have guilt it’s when we have perceived the universe as out of balance. Jesus taught, “…forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us… But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” In this, “the Father above” means the divine power we each have within to let go or to hang on! It’s our power, our choice.
Charles Fillmore wrote the book Prosperity, and said that connecting with debt is a feeling of being out of balance. If we hang onto it, we get (have) it. If we let go, we dissolve that idea inside us. There was a lawyer with a couple of substantial bills owed him. Every time he thought about the debtors, he said, “oh, I am out of balance” and then he’d see them as whole and complete. In a surprisingly short time, on the same day, he got a check from each paying up in full! Why did it happen? Because it no longer was real within him. How do we do it?
I have a dear friend who had a lot of guilt that his alcoholism had hurt so many. We talked of how the divine presence of love will heal and release. But his childhood experience had not been about a God of love. He could think of it, but he could not feel it. Additionally, in his family he was always “not good enough.” I asked if there weren’t someone in his life that just loved him. He said, “My grandmother loved me as I was! All my life! ” So he imagined her bringing her unconditional love to his guilt, and his guilt just faded away.
The capacity to receive love often came to us in the form of the feminine. Imagine that divine feminine/Grandma/Mom/special person/Infinite Love—has their arms around you. (Hug yourself.) Relax into that feeling of love. I am loved! Feel that wonderful presence of love (hugging yourself). There is no judgment whatsoever. I am loved! Accept its gift. I am free! That’s what’s there, isn’t it?!!
So on Monday when you walk into the office and someone starts their stuff (if the air-conditioning is on, no one will notice you cross your arms on your chest) say to yourself, I am loved! I am free! Do it when you’re with the people in your family that make you fell guilty faster than anyone else. This is a week of self-forgiveness. I am loved! I am free! Enjoy it! Bless you!
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August 2, 2015 – Pray and Forgive
08/02/15 Rev. David McArthur
Pray and Forgive
Forgiveness is a part of the consciousness of the world. I want it to be a part of me. There are 2 parts in forgiving. We know how to heal the emotional hurt, although it’s not always easy. The other part is when we experience the hurt, the brain needs to blame the other person so it can protect us. The brain rejects and pushes back with resentment for that person. This is how we have evolved. It becomes a block in our spiritual growth, but we do not have to do this. We have wisdom. We do not have to carry the resentment the brain creates.
Mother Teresa: “When people ask me what advice I have for a struggling married couple, I say, ‘pray and forgive.’ For a young person in a violent home, I say, ‘pray and forgive.’ And for a single mother left with young children, I say, ‘pray and forgive.’”
I love the place where you pray for that other person. Edwene Gaines says forgiveness is a big part of opening to God prospering in our lives, but that also there’s another level of forgiveness prayer, which is blessing the other person. Once she was surprised to find she still had feelings against a former husband who had struggled with substance abuse. So she declared of this man, “I see you blessed and doing all you’ve ever dreamed of, peaceful and joyous on your way.” The very next week she got a letter from him (after years). He said he hadn’t appreciated her before, but now wanted to thank her, as she was part of his subsequent recovery and prosperity. He was now free from addiction and doing well. He included a check for $3000 that he had owed her but which she had given up hope of ever seeing.
A prayer that means a lot to me is to pray for peace and mercy. I don’ have time for justice. Let’s get into the wholeness of our spiritual being. I’m ready for karma to be over. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you. I know when we harm each other it can be from the insensitivity we have in our “sleep” or from our pain. Whatever another goes through, I am for them to know God’s grace, healing, and peace. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you.
And when we do it, guess what? God’s grace, healing and peace comes to us! God bless you!
August 2, 2015 – Pray and Forgive
08/02/15 Rev. David McArthur
Pray and Forgive
Forgiveness is a part of the consciousness of the world. I want it to be a part of me. There are 2 parts in forgiving. We know how to heal the emotional hurt, although it’s not always easy. The other part is when we experience the hurt, the brain needs to blame the other person so it can protect us. The brain rejects and pushes back with resentment for that person. This is how we have evolved. It becomes a block in our spiritual growth, but we do not have to do this. We have wisdom. We do not have to carry the resentment the brain creates.
Mother Teresa: “When people ask me what advice I have for a struggling married couple, I say, ‘pray and forgive.’ For a young person in a violent home, I say, ‘pray and forgive.’ And for a single mother left with young children, I say, ‘pray and forgive.’”
I love the place where you pray for that other person. Edwene Gaines says forgiveness is a big part of opening to God prospering in our lives, but that also there’s another level of forgiveness prayer, which is blessing the other person. Once she was surprised to find she still had feelings against a former husband who had struggled with substance abuse. So she declared of this man, “I see you blessed and doing all you’ve ever dreamed of, peaceful and joyous on your way.” The very next week she got a letter from him (after years). He said he hadn’t appreciated her before, but now wanted to thank her, as she was part of his subsequent recovery and prosperity. He was now free from addiction and doing well. He included a check for $3000 that he had owed her but which she had given up hope of ever seeing.
A prayer that means a lot to me is to pray for peace and mercy. I don’t have time for justice. Let’s get into the wholeness of our spiritual being. I’m ready for karma to be over. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you. I know when we harm each other it can be from the insensitivity we have in our “sleep” or from our pain. Whatever another goes through, I am for them to know God’s grace, healing, and peace. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you. I pray God’s grace, healing, and peace blesses you.
And when we do it, guess what? God’s grace, healing and peace comes to us! God bless you!
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April 5, 2015 – Resurrection: The Vision Keeper & Forgiveness
04/05/15 Rev. David McArthur
Easter Sunday Message
Resurrection: The Vision Keeper & Forgiveness
Every Easter story begins with the experience of dawn, the coming of light where there was darkness. Mary, Jesus’ mother, had been the one person at the cross who was different from everyone else. For her son, she was a vision-keeper, someone who holds for others the awareness of their potential within as powerful spiritual beings for complete healing.
I remember the experience of another mother who was a spiritual seeker, too. How she got a call that her daughter had been in an accident and was in a coma, and that if her daughter ever woke up, she’d not be able to speak or take care of herself, that she would never walk again. This mother responded with, “I don’t believe that. The God I know is greater than the limitation that you tell me.” This vision-keeper reached out to over 3000 people to be in attunement with her daughter, and when she got to speak to her, her daughter awakened. The young woman began to recover. She learned to focus the brain that had been so damaged. Today she is an active, vibrant member of our community. She took a hold of that power and presence within her and used it to build a life of wholeness. Her vision-keeper, her mother, wrote a poem of what Mary must have felt.
I must let Him go. My arms would hold him close, though; my heart would hold Him dear, as that place in the stable long ago, for He is not mine to keep. He belongs to the One that gave Him to me. So I must let Him go, though my heart cries as He suffers so, and I want to keep Him for me. His path has been laid since before the world was to show us the kingdom within. So I know that I must let Him go.
How many people do we have in our lives that are in pain, in struggle, addiction, loss, lack. We are their vision-keepers. And we have the incredible spiritual honor of knowing with them who they are, no matter what. The potential of resurrection in their lives is always there. Hold that for family and friends, and (the hardest one of all) for yourself. It is the only reason we are on that journey. Step into that dawn, that consciousness. Break apart that which is less; bring forth what is more. Say “Yes!” to this consciousness of wholeness.
There’s one more piece that brings about this demonstration of resurrection, this new awareness, something we accomplish with the spiritual power within us. Jesus had to do that. For Jesus at the cross there is one moment that makes the entire difference. Had this moment not happened I do not believe we’d be celebrating this event today. It’s the moment of forgiveness. This wonderful intelligence and power that flows within us gets blocked by our resentments, by our judgments. His response was, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” One of the greatest moments in the change of consciousness in the history of humankind.
That prayer to “Father”, the presence and power within, for forgiveness released that block within Himself so there was no resentment, no judgment. The way I usually get to forgiveness is called “desperate” prayer, at the point nothing else is working. At the most painful spot in my life that’s what I did, and it released me from the resentment and pain. Not the physical pain—the other pain: we are separate, right and wrong, who does what. In that beautiful experience of forgiveness we take the “wrong”, the lesser, and we turn our vision to this all-loving goodness of God. That is freeing; that is wholeness. It is always there. So what ever is going on, here is the truth: “There is only one presence, one power in your life—the all-loving goodness of God.” Step into that new day, that beautiful wholeness and fullness. As spiritual beings it is the desire of that presence to bring it forth in our lives. What a joy it is to step into that love without any limitations! There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that anyone of us can do to lessen that love. It’s just not possible. From His experience on that first Easter, Jesus has become the symbol of the all-loving. And because you are, I am grateful!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
April 5, 2015 – Resurrection: The Vision Keeper & Forgiveness
04/05/15 Rev. David McArthur
Resurrection: The Vision Keeper & Forgiveness
Every Easter story begins with the experience of dawn, the coming of light where there was darkness. Mary, Jesus’ mother, had been the one person at the cross who was different from everyone else. For her son, she was a vision-keeper, someone who holds for others the awareness of their potential within as powerful spiritual beings for complete healing.
I remember the experience of another mother who was a spiritual seeker, too. How she got a call that her daughter had been in an accident and was in a coma, and that if her daughter ever woke up, she’d not be able to speak or take care of herself, that she would never walk again. This mother responded with, “I don’t believe that. The God I know is greater than the limitation that you tell me.” This vision-keeper reached out to over 3000 people to be in attunement with her daughter, and when she got to speak to her, her daughter awakened. The young woman began to recover. She learned to focus the brain that had been so damaged. Today she is an active, vibrant member of our community. She took a hold of that power and presence within her and used it to build a life of wholeness. Her vision-keeper, her mother, wrote a poem of what Mary must have felt.
I must let Him go. My arms would hold him close, though; my heart would hold Him dear, as that place in the stable long ago, for He is not mine to keep. He belongs to the One that gave Him to me. So I must let Him go, though my heart cries as He suffers so, and I want to keep Him for me. His path has been laid since before the world was to show us the kingdom within. So I know that I must let Him go.
How many people do we have in our lives that are in pain, in struggle, addiction, loss, lack. We are their vision-keepers. And we have the incredible spiritual honor of knowing with them who they are, no matter what. The potential of resurrection in their lives is always there. Hold that for family and friends, and (the hardest one of all) for yourself. It is the only reason we are on that journey. Step into that dawn, that consciousness. Break apart that which is less; bring forth what is more. Say “Yes!” to this consciousness of wholeness.
There’s one more piece that brings about this demonstration of resurrection, this new awareness, something we accomplish with the spiritual power within us. Jesus had to do that. For Jesus at the cross there is one moment that makes the entire difference. Had this moment not happened I do not believe we’d be celebrating this event today. It’s the moment of forgiveness. This wonderful intelligence and power that flows within us gets blocked by our resentments, by our judgments. His response was, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” One of the greatest moments in the change of consciousness in the history of humankind.
That prayer to “Father”, the presence and power within, for forgiveness released that block within Himself so there was no resentment, no judgment. The way I usually get to forgiveness is called “desperate” prayer, at the point nothing else is working. At the most painful spot in my life that’s what I did, and it released me from the resentment and pain. Not the physical pain—the other pain: we are separate, right and wrong, who does what. In that beautiful experience of forgiveness we take the “wrong”, the lesser, and we turn our vision to this all-loving goodness of God. That is freeing; that is wholeness. It is always there. So what ever is going on, here is the truth: “There is only one presence, one power in your life—the all-loving goodness of God.” Step into that new day, that beautiful wholeness and fullness. As spiritual beings it is the desire of that presence to bring it forth in our lives. What a joy it is to step into that love without any limitations! There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that anyone of us can do to lessen that love. It’s just not possible. From His experience on that first Easter, Jesus has become the symbol of the all-loving. And because you are, I am grateful!