Pastor's Message
September Spirit Steps-September 2010
“The answer to healing your life will be found in the inner strength of your heart.”
Love Without End, Jesus Speaks ---It is now noon as I sit on the rocky shore of Lake Two in the Boundary Waters
Canoe Area of northern Minnesota. It is hot and overcast today with barely a breeze. The water appears dark as it silently roles against the shore, unlike yesterday when it sparkled bright blue and you could hear the waves lapping upon the rocks. The silence of today is only occasionally broken by the call of a loon or the screech of an eagle nesting on the island across from our campsite.
I have been reading “Love Without End, Jesus Speaks”. I am not far enough into it at this point to formulate an opinion about it, but the author does make some interesting observations about living by the heart as opposed to controlled by the mind. She asserts that the world we live in has become inverted and the mind has become the commander and the heart its servant. She believes that the great gift Jesus brought in his death and resurrection was the restoration of the heart (love) as the commander and the mind as servant, the triumph of Love over death. The heart, she says, is the focal point of Love; it is the connection with the Creator.
This place, is for me, a place of the heart; an experience of being at one with all creation. In this vast wilderness I experience a close connection with the Creator. You cannot be here very long without experiencing the rhythm of the day, the rhythm of nature, the rhythm of life.
It is now four o’clock, a passing shower sent me scurrying under the tarp we hung for added shelter, although I don’t know why I didn’t want to get rained upon ---it is hot! I emerged from the shelter and sat down next to a tall Jack Pine, not noting the hole in the ground at its base until a yellow jacket flew out of it and stung me behind my left ear. Natures lessons are not always gentle. Life here is simple if not easy and the reward for the work in this place of the heart is a profound sense of peace. “A peace the world cannot give.” This place of the heart, this place of peace is then a place of healing “the answer to healing your life will be found in the inner strength of your heart.”
One need not travel to the wilderness to develop that strength of heart. It is developed through the spiritual practices that do seem to come more naturally here but can be practiced anywhere. The first practice is to strengthen your positive emotions through daily gratitude and admiration. The second is to daily disempower your negative emotions through forgiveness. The third is to see what is without judgment.
The clouds have past, the sun has come out, the breeze has picked up, the water is sparkling blue, and the bee sting really hurts.
May you live in harmony with the rhythm of life and enjoy peace and healing in your day.
Pastor Bob