Thuner See/Switzerland -- It was the only one full day of a mini-vacation on a business trip. Early in the night, and throughout most of the day, it was stormy and pouring rain. The heavy clouds and the mist made most of the terrific high mountains invisible around the lake. I could have been disappointed, and disturbed, but I gave myself permission to still those restless emotions -- and I saw again how powerful an undisturbed thought can be ... because I felt, nothing could take the inner joy and appreciation away of what was present to see, feel, and experience, at that very moment, journeying on that beautiful lake.
I’m always spiritually thrilled when we can recognize how to live in the moment -- in the NOW – undisturbed ... --
because then we do experience HEAVEN on earth!
BTW -- late afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out and
lifted the mist. I looked over the lake and saw the mountains, the mighty peaks
snow-covered, close and far-off brilliant evening light was bathing all I saw in its beauty --- and greeting me! It was a very enriching experience.
--Eva-Maria--
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Boston Park
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Every sort of mastery
is an increase of our freedom.
--Henri Frederic Amiel, a 19th-century Swiss writer—
God’s Way is gain that works no harm.
–LAO-TZU—
Try to care for what is best in thought and action – something that is good apart from the accident of your own lot.
--George Eliot
SHAKESPEARE wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet, Act II, scene 2). Clearly, the quality of our thought has a great deal – in fact, everything – to do with the nature of our experience. It’s vital, then, that our thoughts be conducive to harmony, that they be in accord with God, who is the very Principle of harmony. E-M
Eva-Maria
Clarity
that gives Meaning
A holy man was in the habit of taking his morning plunge at a
particular Bathing Ghat. It so happened that each day as he disrobed to take a
bath, a snake would climb onto a branch, fall into the water and struggle for
it's life for it could not swim back to shore. Each day, the man would rescue
it and the moment it was set free, it would turn on him, bite him and flee. One
day a curious onlooker asked the man “Holiness, could you please tell me why
you are bent on saving the vile creature? Let it perish and you would not be
harmed like this each day.” The man smiled and replied, “It is in the nature of
the poor creature to do what it does while it is my nature to do what I do.”
For each of us, dedication to quality expression of speech that is free from
injury to others in our communications—based on good sense, valid reasoning,
love, gentleness, and spiritual honesty--is perhaps the most needed activity of
all. Thoughts and words
guided by true motives will go out from our heart and lips and reach the heart
of our fellowman--acknowledged they will encourage, comfort, and heal, and
therein we would find clarity and a greater sense of meaning toward our
fellowman, and toward ourselves.
“Incline your ear, and come to me: hear, and
your soul shall live” (Isaiah 55:3).
How did Louis Armstrong sing that song
that echoes out :
What a Wonderful World
. I see
trees of green, red roses too.
I see them bloom for me and for you
. And I think to myself what a wonderful
world.
I see skies of blue and
clouds of white,
bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights. And I think to myself what a wonderful
world.
The colors of the
rainbow so pretty in the sky,
are also on the faces of the people going by.
I see friends shaking hands, saying, “How do you do?”
They are really
saying I love you.
I hear
babies cry, I watch them grow
. They’ll learn much more and I’ll ever know
.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes, I think to myself what a
wonderful world, oh yeah…
A poet once said,
“’[Let God] be your eyes and your hands and your loving. When you do exactly that, the thing you
before have hated will become your helper. A certain preacher always prayed long with enthusiasm for
thieves and muggers: “Let your mercy, O Lord, cover their insolence.” He didn’t pray for the good, but only
for the blatantly cruel. His congregation asked, “Why?” “ Because,” he said,
“they have done me such a generous favor.
Every time I turn toward the things they like, I run into these thieves
and muggers, and they beat me, leaving me nearly dead in the road, and I understand
again, that what they hanker after is not what I hanker after. They keep me on
the spiritual path. That’s why I honor them and pray for them. Those that make you return, for
whatever reason, to God, be grateful to them.” (The Essential Rumi, translated
by Coleman Barks, p.176.)
When the
opportunity of a right idea of God and of man reaches us, and we trust and
follow it consistently, it is our rescue, because we’ll change as it changed
Jacob in a twinkle of an eye, and we can say as he has said, “I have seen God
face to face, and my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:30). Like Jacob, we too should not let go of a right idea, or its
glorious spiritual light. We should not say, “Ah, now I have seen, and now I
know!” And then we turn away from it--go back to our old ways of thinking,
talking, and behaving--instead we stay with one right idea about God and man,
and everything else in our life increasingly will change for the better.
A challenge to human perceptions of existence does not need to
confuse us. But if it does, and
perhaps we unwittingly allow it to undermine our confidence in God, and in
ourselves—we have to pause for a moment! A challenge is only challenging
a false base of thinking.
A prophet once said, “I poured forth my soul into myself” I
understand this to mean: Learn to know yourself. Leave behind your mortal, negative, morbid, and fearful
concepts of self, and then, without laboring hard and long, you’ll gain a
quicker sense of Who you really are: a beloved inhabitant of God’s kingdom of
harmony—the vast kingdom of Mind.
--Eva-Maria
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| painting by Vincent Hogrefe |
Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing
(22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and one of the
most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment
era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the
development of German
literature. He is widely considered by theatre historians to be the
first dramaturg.
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| Eva-Maria with friends in London (center in red blouse) |
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| E-M in India |
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| Eva-Maria |
So to get to authenticity, you really
keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of
something.
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| dear friends on vacation |
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| as I traveled in a train and took a picture of the house on the hill, the reflection in the window appeared |
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| the Christian Science Church or The First Church of Christ Scientist, in Boston MA |
Only silence
perfects silence
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| little girl playing on the sidewalk in the snow |
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| Illustration for a children's book by Eva-Maria |
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| sweet Stella in the midst of her friends in Cameroon/Africa |
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| photo by Ashok Kumar, a dear friend |
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| photo by Roby Azzah, a dear friend |
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| painting by R H with a sunbeam touching it |
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| Rajitha and son Rohit |
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| Bern/Switzerland |
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| Rohit playing on a window sill |
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| photo by Roby Azzah |
To wake & find
the beauty of my dreams conferring with the stars at twilights search
for
dawn....
--Kenneth M. Barker CHSO
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| Rishi, Rajitha, and Rohit, the foto taken by Ashok |
Love ennobles
our
thoughts, words, and deeds,
and we live the love we look for in others.
--Eva-Maria--
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| BERN |
photos of birds by Charlotte Jason, a dear friend
They said give up.
They said it couldn’t be done.
They said I’d regret it.
They were wrong.
My dream is to rise to every
challenge.
And from up there,
All the mountains look like
molehills.
Supply is there always,
and that’s why we have a need for it!
With our spiritual moving forward our
horizon is constantly expanding as we advance. --Eva-Maria—
Particularly in this era … wealth consists not of things but of
thoughts. The entrepreneur does not find values in a new product or a
pool of oil or computer design. He brings value to what was previously
seen as worthless. And this value springs from his own value: his
courage, integrity, diligence, and faith … More than ever before in history,
wealth is metaphysical rather than material … the world opens its portals,
slough of limits and boundaries … with ever-widening spirals of possibilities.”
--George Gilders, The Soul of
Silicon--
One can never go up, until one has gone down in his own
esteem. … it is indispensable to personal growth … Cherish humility,
“watch,” and “pray without ceasing,” or you will miss the way of Truth and
Love.
–Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 356-357—
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| small wild-life painting by Eva-Maria |
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| Switzerland |
With much love,
Eva-Maria
Just beautiful. Thank you.
ReplyDeletethank YOU!
ReplyDelete