UUAWOL Weekly report 01/14/18 - 01/20/18

Weekly report from UUAWOL 01/14/18 - 01/20/18

Stats

1.    During the week of 01/14/18 - 01/20/18  UUAWOL received 1579 views up 115 from the previous week.

2.    The heaviest viewing day was Sunday, 01/14/18, with 389 views.

3.    The average number of views per day was 226 while the average number of views the preceding week was 209.

Highlights

1.    There was a focus on the meaning of unconditional love.

2.    It is not clear whether the questions of the day are helpful to people in examining their lives and reflecting. More feedback would be helpful.

3.    In case you were wondering continues to be popular for comedic relief.

Plans - Short term

1.    Continue to develop a common vocabulary

2.    Continue to develop a map for the spiritual journey describing milestones along the path.

3.    Review and make adjustments to the question of the day feature.

4.    Continue to solicit feedback via comments on the blog via a survey.

Plans - long term

1.    Build a model of UU theology

2.    Create a dictionary of UU terms

3.    Develop a compendium of possible practices to enhance the spiritual life

4.    Further develop an articulation of the values that comprise a good life.

Editor's note:

1. UUAWOL would welcome your help in two ways. 

First, in providing feedback about the articles and the blog as a whole by commenting on articles are sending criticism directly to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.

Secondly by sharing articles on your social media and emailing articles to people whom you think might be interested.

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You don't have to wait for miracles

Unitarian Universalists don't believe in getting people into heaven. They believe in getting heaven into people. Jesus said in His great prayer, "...on earth as it is in heaven." On the path of the spirit we become aware of the miracles all around us in the here and now.

Do miracles happen instantaneously or do you have to wait for them?

They happen instantaneously. If fact they are there already, all you are doing is finally recognizing what has been there all along. In A Course In Miracles this recognition is called the Holy Instant.

If you are waiting, there is something blocking your awareness and most likely it is fear or grievance. Succumbing to fear and grievance is what you experience as a sacrifice preventing your awareness of the miracle. The Holy Spirit knows nothing of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the work of the ego not of God.

And so, to experience the miracle, letting go of fear and grievance is necessary and something only the individual can do. The Holy Spirit will never force or impose anything on us. This letting go is called forgiveness.

Who or what do you need to forgive today to experience more peace and joy in your life?


Bruce Cockburn Waiting For A Miracle

 

Prophetic voices and events - David Korten - rebalance our relationship to the earth

The basics are straightforward. We must reduce our burden on Earth’s regenerative systems by approximately 40 percent. And we must share what remains of Earth’s generative capacity to meet the essential material needs of all people: food, water, clean air, housing, energy, transport, and more. We must simultaneously limit the growth of our numbers by making family planning services freely available to all and encouraging their use.

We all depend on the health and productivity of living Earth systems that none among us created. We earn our right to use them by fulfilling our responsibility to care for and restore them to full health and productivity. No one has a right to more than they need so long as others’ needs go unmet.

For more click here.

In case you were wondering............

Spiritual practice of the day #21, Let God

You do your best, let God do the rest. Turn your worries over to the Holy Spirit of God and let it go.

Question of the day - Upset with others?

Who is the person you have been most upset with in your life the longest? Will it matter 10 years from now? After you or they die?

Do UUs believe in miracles?

Unitarian Universalists convenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. So, do UUs believe in miracles?

Some do. The more mystical among them do.

It is written in A Course In Miracles that a miracle brings about no change at all. What the miracle is, is a change in perception, a change in awareness, a change in consciousness, an epiphany, the light bulb going on in your mind which sheds light in what was formally darkness, a making of the unconscious conscious. It is written, "A miracle can make no change at all. But it can make what always has been true be recognized by those who know it not; and by this little gift of truth but let it be itself, the Son of God allowed to be himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name Of God as one." T-26.VII.20:4-5

What this passage is referring to is the illusion of the separation from the Oneness into separate egos and the concomitant drama of attack, guilt, judgement, and punishment. To be very blunt, what ACIM is teaching is that this drama of the separation is all bull shit. This separation never really happened except in our own minds which lead to this creation of hell that brings us so much anguish and suffering.

The miracle is the awareness that this drama of separation is not real and what makes this awareness possible is forgiveness. Forgiveness is correcting our perception that we are victims persecuted by external circumstances over which we have little control. We finally realize that these external circumstances are figments of the imagination, simply illusions as the Course calls them, and that while we can't control the illusions, we can control our response to them and our management of them. The Course recommends that we take the path of the spirit and not the path of the ego. In choosing the path of the spirit we decide to surrender to what we discern as God's will for us, and rise above the bull shit, and join with our brothers in love.

It is in making the choice for forgiveness and joining our will with God's will that than epiphanies occur which we call miracles.