Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Our Vision 

This is the Inauguration of our future as a people, as a nation, as a planetary family.

This is the beginning of the realization of the world we know within our hearts and minds.
This is the manifestation of the time we have been waiting for.
This is the age of possibility and creative solutions.
This is the realization of the vision spiritual teachers have foreseen and prepared us for.

Yes, together in Love we can.
Yes, with joy in our hearts, we will.
Yes, with Peace in our hearts, we step forward.
Yes, we are grateful to be the Ones to say “Yes”.

This is a call to action.
This is the time to serve, to volunteer.
This is the moment to remember our purpose.
We hear the voice of our Conscience and Consciousness.

So what will you do?
Who will you serve with respect?
How will you respond with responsibility?
Where will you give with a cooperative and co-creative spirit?

Everyday in personal and impersonal ways, we are called to live in integrity with our Greatness.
At work and play, at home and in the community we are called to give our best with Kindness.
Within our minds and hearts, with words and with action, we are invited to create a better world.
Together everything is possible and there are no limits to what we can and will do for Goodness sake.

And now we are called to pledge our change.
We are called to pledge our healing.
We are called to pledge our service.
We are called to pledge our support.

Together in loving service for the Good of All, there is nothing we cannot do.
All things are possible for those who love God and love Goodness.
Let us say Yes to one another and to our new President.
Let us say Yes to ourselves and begin today to build a new and better world for All.

Share with me your pledge and I will pass it on to inspire others.

Loving us All as One in Love and Goodness,
Betty Lue


Please look within to find the inner messiah.
And remember to respectfully nurture and appreciate the love and wisdom you find.
Fully appreciate the wisdom and love in all others in your community of souls.
For you see, “God’s laws of creativity with loving wisdom are written on our hearts.
We are here to discover it, to embrace it and to live it!
May you always remember “You are The One.”
Betty Lue


THE RABBI'S GIFT
From A Different Drum: Community Making and Peace by Scott Peck.

The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. They read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things.

The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years," the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?"
"No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well, what did the rabbi say?" "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving--it was something cryptic--was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant."
In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he couldn't have meant Brother Eldred? Eldred gets crotchety at times. But, come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's side, when you look back on it, Eldred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Eldred. But surely not Brother Philip. Philip is so passive and withdrawn. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift of being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Philip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I?
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. On the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura or extraordinary respect that now seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.
Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spiritually in the realm.