Seeking Purity of Heart and Oneness in the New Year

You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you” ~John Wooden, UCA Basketball coach

As we move into the New Year, I pray that we all seek and find ways to live a balanced life, and in so doing, help to restore balance to our relationships and our world. Balance requires groundedness, steadiness, and stillness, allowing our actions to be guided by reflection and inner prayer. As difficult as it may sometimes be, God calls us to devote ourselves to bringing love and compassion to all in order to restore harmony and goodness in our fragmented world.

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Call for Unity and Oneness

There is no easy way to create a world where men and women can live together… But if such a world is created in our lifetime, it will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism, and violence that has characterized Western civilization and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s not uncommon to have difficulties accepting and being comfortable with those who are different  from us. These feelings are often based solely on skin color, cultural mores, or religious beliefs. But racial and cultural prejudice is a social concept; it’s not part of our DNA. We learn prejudice in childhood, and it becomes an unconscious bias. This filter clouds our ability to see clearly and leads to divisive conclusions about other groups or races. It takes great tender love and often great suffering to change us forever. 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” ~Nelson Mandela

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Love Lives in an Atmosphere of Light

A Zen master was teaching his students one day and one student asked, “Is there anything that I can do to make myself enlightened?” The Zen master replied and said; “As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.” The students then asked, “Then what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?” And the Zen master said this; “To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”

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