Soulshine

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory: the glory of an only son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love." Gospel of John “Enduring love,” as John says this morning, is the greatest gift God has given us. It is the gift God has sent us in Jesus Christ and it is the gift that God continually pours forth into all of our hearts. Enduring love is the gift that redeems, enlightens and transforms everyone it touches. And it is more than God’s gift to us. It is a gift that we, too, can give to others. All we have to do is grow spiritually in God’s care. Once we grow to see beyond the masks of human behavior, appearance and attitude, we will be capable of offering enduring love to those who hide behind these masks. We will be like Job Skeffington, whom I mentioned in in December 19th's reflection, "Only Love Creates Beauty." We will see beyond the physical, beyond age, beyond behavior and into the soul of each and ...

There is an alarming amount of estrangement between parents and their children in our society. Sons are at odds with their fathers and daughters are at odds with their mothers. Seems the legacy of “Mommy Dearest” is more than a Hollywood phenomenon. It runs deep across our culture. This estrangement between parents and children isn’t so noticeable when the children are younger, but it makes its presence felt as these same children become adults. And it’s more than just teen-age rebellion growing into generational differences. It’s a parenting problem. It’s criminal that we don’t require parenting classes in High School and College curriculums across America. We are required to have years of training and to be certified proficient in most every profession, except parenting. The only parental training we receive is from our parents. If our parents had poor parenting skills, then we too will have poor parenting skills. Poor parenting skills cause immeasurable damage that is handed do...

"Love one another as I have loved you." Jesus Christ, Gospel of John In these last few days of 2010, many of us will be thinking in terms of New Year’s resolutions. I urge everyone to think in terms of love. Love is the Light of the World because Love is God. God is Love. And only Love can eradicate hatred from the one world we all live in.  Jesus Christ gave us two commandments: Love your God and love your neighbor as you love yourself. These two commandments are easily summed-up in one word: Love. We, ourselves, are the embodiment of love, and yet we are so drawn to clothing our hearts with hatred. We wear hatred like a cloak of protection. It's our feeble way of keeping anything we don't understand at bay. We don't understand people of a different color, or creed or sexual orientation or nationality and so we shroud ourselves in our cloaks of fear and hatred. We harbor evil thoughts toward these "different" people. Sometimes we vocalize our evil th...

The belief that “God is with us” is an important one to hold onto everyday. God is always with us, even when He may seem distant. We never have to search for God because God is never lost. God fills-up the entire Universe. There’s no place we can look where God isn’t present, and there’s no where on earth or in the heavens where we can escape from God. So, it’s impossible for God to ever leave our side. And, even if we could escape His exterior presence, there’s no way we can escape from the His interior presence. None of us can escape from the Holy Spirit dwelling within us—unless we simply choose to close down our hearts to God. If God seems distant, it has nothing to do with God and everything to do with us. God never abandons us, but we often abandon or shut God out of our daily lives. Sometimes we do this consciously, like when we blame God for something bad that happened; and sometimes we do it subconsciously, like when we simply drift off completely caught up in ourselves. Ei...

“If my heart was a house, you’d be home.” Adam Young Adam Young is the person behind pop music’s Owl City. As Owl City, Young has written a song entitled “If My Heart Was a House.” I heard this beautiful song for the first time one Saturday morning last year. The chorus of the song is a simple sentence: “If my heart was a house, you’d be home.” What a beautiful sentiment, I thought. The human heart is like a house that welcomes in those we love and invites them to be at home within us. We are able to do this because the human heart is patterned on God’s heart, which is a home to us all. God’s heart is our sacred refuge—a house, a home where love is plentiful, comfort is endless and peace is enduring. In the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, Jesus tells his disciples that there are many rooms in his Father’s house and that he is going to prepare a place for them. I had never thought of that “house” as being God’s heart before I heard Young’s song. But it’s true that we have all emanated f...

“I believe every flower created by God is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I believe that if all the flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be enameled with lovely hues.”    St. Therese of Lisieux Just as every flower of the field counts, so too, every person in this world counts. There are no exceptions. Yet there are those of us who deep down don’t believe we really count. We don’t simply see others as roses or lilies and ourselves as violets or daisies: We see ourselves as weeds. Weeds certainly do not count in our world. We do everything possible to eradicate them. If we feel like weeds instead of like flowers, there may be several reasons. As children we may have been a dumping ground for one or both of our parents. If a parent consistently found fault with us, unloading all of their garb...

Christmas Eve. When we're small, this is a day of mystery and enchantment. The Christ child is born and there's a mystery surrounding this redemptive event, even for a four year old. Santa Claus is flying through the skies, traveling the world to bring the joy of toys placed neatly under every child's Christmas Tree. There are elves, reindeer, sugar plum fairies, angels and nutcrackers; crackling fires, roasting turkeys, cookies and chocolates, blinking lights and gleaming ornaments; and if we're lucky, a starry night shining across glistening snow. All of the mystery and enchantment of the season come from a child's inability to understand, but great willingness to believe-- anyway. As we grow older, and we learn to reason, we also begin to lose our ability to believe in that which we cannot explain. And we lose touch with the mystery and the enchantment of life. Christmas becomes just another day. The charm is lost and most of us don't know how to regain it. ...

Hmm, Hmm, Hmm… “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer”… OK well maybe not. I mean, yeah, it’s Christmas, but the happiness and cheer is debatable. This time of the year most everyone wants to be happy, but let’s face it, family gatherings sometimes play out like real Nightmares before Christmas. Across America most every family has an Uncle Grumpy-Pants that makes Eeyore seem like the Sugar Plum Fairy; an Aunt Grinchella, who’s conniving and controlling; and a brother Ebenezer, who is bitter and angry at the world. So much for happiness and cheer-- unless we adopt a new attitude toward family and the holiday. First, we have to choose to accept Grumpy-Pants, Grinchella and Ebenezer just the way they are by empathizing with their inner-brokenness. This means that we will not take personally anything they say or do over the holidays. After all, their behavior is just a mask for their inner-pain. It also means that we will set proper boundaries with them when necessary. “How does th...

In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, "Ask something of me and I will give it to you." Solomon answered: "Give your servant an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong." The LORD was pleased that Solomon made this request. So God said to him: "Because you have asked for this--not for a long life for yourself, nor for riches, nor for the life of your enemies, but for understanding so that you may know what is right , I do as you requested. I give you a heart so wise and understanding that there has never been anyone like you up to now, and after you, there will be no one to equal you.”     1Kings 3:5 Having an understanding heart works miracles in our daily lives. I witnessed this quite vividly in the summer of 2008. I was one of several people waiting standby at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). The flight had been over-booked, so our only hope was for someone with an assigned seat to...

When autumn hits Chicago, it’s easy to recognize October in the cool air. I remember hearing the fallen leaves crunch under my shoes as I was walking down Sheffield Avenue toward Dickens one Saturday afternoon. I also remember wondering if life was ever going to live up to my expectations. God, the world, everyone had been holding out on me, I thought, as I entered the Lincoln Park Alano Club. I was tired of being cheated out of life. The 4:00 p.m. Codependents Anonymous meeting began and I wasn’t much into it. I was more into my head—a very dangerous place to be—when suddenly I heard someone say “expectations are preconceived resentments.” My eyes followed the voice and I saw it was Bill speaking. I sat straight up as if cold water had been splashed in my face and immediately realized he was right-on. I had a lot of expectations, of preconceived resentments, and they were making my life miserable. I’d spent years blaming everyone else for my problems. It never occurred to me that al...

"A woman is beautiful when she is loved, and only then." Claude Rains, Mr. Skeffington I don’t agree with people who say nothing the world offers comes from God. Everything the world offers comes from God. The problem is we often pervert what God has given us in this world. Take beauty. A good example of this can be found in the 1944 movie, Mr. Skeffington , starring Bette Davis and Claude Rains. Claude Rains plays Mr. Job Skeffington, and although the movie is named after his character, it really revolves around the future Mrs. Fanny Skeffington, played by Bette Davis.  Fanny Trellis is the greatest beauty 1914 New York has ever seen. She is chased by every man who encounters her. She is among the world's many “carnal allurements", or "enticements for the eye.” And her life is “an empty show” based solely on her physical beauty. Fanny eventually marries Job, the only man who loves her beyond her beauty, but she doesn’t marry him for love. She marries him fo...

      The spirituality of imperfection speaks to those who seek meaning in the absurd, peace within chaos, light within darkness, joy within suffering-- without denying the reality and even the necessity of the absurd, chaos, darkness and suffering. It is concerned with what in the human being is irrevocable and immutable: the essential imperfection, the basic and inherent flaws of being human.       Errors are part of our truth as human beings. To deny our errors is to deny ourself, for to be human is to be imperfect. To be human is to ask unanswerable questions, to be broken and ache for wholeness, to hurt and to try and find healing through the hurt. To be human is to embody a paradox, for according to ancient vision, we are “less than the gods, more than the beasts, yet somehow also both.”      Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply IS: There is no one to blame for our errors--...

"If the eyes had no tears, the soul would have no rainbow" Ancient Native American Proverb Anyone who has ever had the displeasure of up-chucking a day's worth of meals knows the physical horror of the experience. Our insides are swimming in toxins-- be they salmonella, ecol i or flu bugs-- and these toxins must be released to regain our physical health. No one likes the experience of releasing these poisons, but everyone likes the after-feeling of relief. Yes. As sick as we may still feel, there's an immediate sense of relief. We feel better to some degree and we know the worst of our nightmare is over. The same is true of the emotional toxins we carry in our bodies. They are just as poisonous and just as deadly to our physical health as salmonella or ecol i. Yet every time they attempt to push themselves to the surface, every time they scream to be released, we choose to shove them back down. We're afraid that releasing them will destroy us. We're afraid ...

Most people carry a large amount of unnecessary baggage, both mental and emotional, throughout their lives. They limit themselves through grievances, regrets, hostility and guilt. Their emotional thinking has become them, and so they hold on to old emotions because it strengthens their identity.Almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain. Any negative emotion that is not fully faced-- and seen for what it is in that moment-- does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth Self-rejection leaves many people boiling within a brew of negative emotions. Any part of ourselves that we reject in thought carries a negative-- and sometimes self-defining-- emotion. If we dislike and reject parts of our bodies, personalities, intelligence, sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity we will suffer from self-abandonment. This self-abandonment will leave a large hole in our souls that will wail with the inne...