Author Archive
I would like to invite you to take a little test. This is not a difficult or complicated test. And it won’t take up a lot of your time. It is simply a fun experiment.
Perhaps some of you have taken this test before. But maybe there are quite a few of you have not.
Below is a short video. In the video, you will see four people wearing white clothing and four people wearing black clothing. You will be asked to count the number of times a person wearing white clothing passes the basketball to another person wearing white clothing.
At the end of the video, you will be given the answer so you can compare your findings to the correct number of passes.
(Please view the video before clicking “read more”)
I generally consider myself to be a person with a fairly high level of awareness, so I was humorously shocked to find out at the end of the video that I had “failed” this exercise completely.
And as a result of this interesting awareness test, my mind could not escape the burning question: If I missed something as seemingly obvious as a moon-walking gorilla dancing in the middle of a small group of eight people, what else might I not be noticing in the world around me as I go about the business of my day-to-day affairs?
Nearly every day, I drive home past the perimeter of a beautiful state park. It is a mile-long stretch of lush beautiful trees and other colorful varieties of Florida foliage. One afternoon, I saw a family of beautiful deer grazing in the tall wispy grass. It looked like a water-color painting, so peaceful, so natural, so perfect. Of all the previous days, weeks, and months of me driving home on this same road, sometimes even traveling on it twice a day, I had never before seen any deer. Ever.
Well, the next afternoon, during my regular commute home, I intentionally looked for the deer, determined to lay eyes upon this picturesque setting once again. And to my delight, and surprise, there they were again. Not the exact same number of deer; there were only two this time. And not in the exact same location; they were a hundred feet or so further down the road. But there they were, peacefully grazing in the tall wispy grass.
And on many occasions since that very first moment, I have seen deer along the side of the road. But it couldn’t be possible that the first time I saw these magnificent creatures was actually the first time they ever appeared there, could it?
Of course not. It was only the first time my awareness included them.
This experience was revolutionary for me and it stirred up quite a few questions: What else am I not seeing in life? Of all the events happening around me, why do some of them come into my awareness and others do not? Am I consciously choosing this? Or is it created by something other than me, being placed into the space of my existence? And the biggest question of them all: What does this mean?
Of course, the answer to that bigger question, as I’ve come to know, is one that can only be answered by me as a creation of my own choosing. For me, it means that there is much more going on here than what I currently see. It means that when I think I know what I need to know, if I expand my perspective to include more, I will allow myself to experience that I actually know more. Because I now understand that the way I view life is based upon my perspective. And my perspective provides the underlying support system which serves to create the reality I ultimately experience. The truth I hold, the thoughts I choose, and the emotions I experience are all sequentially tied into and foundationed upon the perspective from which I see things.
So as hard as I might to try to tell someone “how” something is, or when someone else gets frustrated because I don’t “see” things in a similar way, it is important to remember that a thing can only be seen in the same way when viewed from the same perspective.
We all have the ability to elevate our experience from one of a distorted reality (what we think is happening). We even have the ability to move beyond an experience of observed reality (what we can readily see happening) and closer to an experience of ultimate reality (what is actually happening). How do we do this? By expanding the perspective of the Mind to include the Wisdom of the Soul. It is from this vantage point that we will be given the opportunity to see without limitations, allowing us to embrace every aspect in our lives, including our relationships with each other, with a deeper understanding of what we have already always known.
For a more extensive look at the revolutionary Mechanics of the Mind/System of the Soul process, I invite and encourage you to read the book When Everything Changes, Change Everything, which offers extraordinary spiritual and practical insight into what “creating your own reality” truly means.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
In light of some recent unexpected statements made by some highly influential people in our world, I have been exploring more deeply the underpinnings of why we believe what we believe, and what it takes to create significant change in long and tightly held belief systems. What is the aftereffect globally when someone who has the massive outreach of the Pope or the controversial but well-known televangelist Pat Robertson publicly speaks outside of the box which holds their traditional points of view?
In an article published by The Huffington Post, “The 83-year-old televangelist [Pat Robertson] sat down on Sunday for the ‘Bring It Online’ advice portion of his Christian Broadcasting Network show, ‘The 700 Club.’ A viewer named David wrote in asking how he should refer to two transgender females who work in his office and have legally changed their genders. Instead of criticizing the trans individuals, Robertson approached the situation in a seemingly level-headed manner.”
“‘I think there are men who are in a woman’s body,’ he said. ‘It’s very rare. But it’s true — or women that are in men’s bodies — and that they want a sex change. That is a very permanent thing, believe me, when you have certain body parts amputated and when you have shot up with various kinds of hormones. It’s a radical procedure. I don’t think there’s any sin associated with that. I don’t condemn somebody for doing that.’”
“He went on to say he would ‘question the validity’ of someone who just says, ‘Well I’m really a woman’ because you ‘don’t count somebody as female unless they really are, or male unless they really are.’”
“When his co-host said the viewer doesn’t know the intentions or medical history of his co-workers, Robertson rebutted, ‘It’s not for you to decide or to judge.’”
Yes, Mr. Robertson’s unpredictable statements are still interwoven between layers of intolerance and judgment, but couple his message with the most-recent comments by Pope Francis which have been making spectacular headlines around the world where he told reporters “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” I am just wondering what might be happening here.
When the people who have been placed collectively at the forefront of large groups of people — whose numbers easily reach into the millions — change their points of view about long-held beliefs, or when they express new thoughts about old ideas, how does this impact the belief systems of the people who associate themselves closely with those groups? What is the ripple effect? Do large numbers of people “change their minds” because someone now told them to, whether that be for “better” or “worse”? How do we know when someone is a messenger versus a manipulator?
Of course, we know that truth, real truth, is a knowing that emanates from deep, deep within. So why is it, then, that so many of us experience our lives as a journey of seeking and finding, gathering our truth from places that exist external to us, perhaps even in the words of someone else’s truth, ignoring the accuracy of our own internal compass and pushing painfully past the true nature of our feelings?
Imagine a world where each and every one of us stood in the light of our own truth, where we didn’t say “yes” when we meant “no”; where we didn’t say “no” when we really truly wanted to say “yes.”
Perhaps in that kind of world we wouldn’t have parents giving birth to children on Saturday, July 20, and waiting until Wednesday, July 24, to name their newborn child, a precious new life, so they can find out what Prince William and Kate Middleton named their child first and follow suit accordingly.
Maybe in that kind of world it would be highly unlikely that some of the highest-rated television programs would continue to be “reality” shows which depict the “reality” someone else is choosing for us instead of the one we have the ability to create ourselves. Perhaps we would simply not desire to watch television at all…unless we do.
Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be shooting people in our own neighborhoods because they look different than we do. Do you think it is possible that within the space and light of our own truth we would not ever feel moved to hurt or oppress another because we would understand at a very deep level that the “truths” we have been told, the stories we have made up about each other or been handed down, the ones which cause us to hurt each other in the first place, are simply not true?
And perhaps in that kind of a world people in positions of power and influence, such as Pope Francis and, yes, even Pat Robertson, will continue to break free from the bonds of history, tradition, and sameness to demonstrate that change, significant and lasting change, is not only a remote possibility, but it is something which is actually taking place right here, right now.
I’m just wondering how the tide of change will roll onto the shore of Humanity in the wake of some of these surprisingly refreshing and recently made comments. If we are going to live in a world where we continue to adopt someone else’s truth as our own, maybe we should be paying close attention right now to the new “truths” that are yearning to be heard and the new “story” that is desiring to be written.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
I recently had a conversation with a very dear friend about what could possibly be one of humanity’s most perplexing and misunderstood relationships: our relationship with money. This particular friend of mine was noticing how every time she dreamt up new and exciting ways to draw more money into her life, she found herself experiencing abrupt roadblocks being constructed in the pathway to that effortless flow of financial abundance that she continues to witness others experiencing with seemingly much more ease.
Confused by more questions in her life than answers, she asked God: “What the heck is going on here?”
She is doing what she loves. She is being who she knows herself to be. She is creative and passionate and has a heart called to serve and help others. She gives of herself openly and lovingly and asks for very little, if anything, in return from anyone.
So why does the experience of financial prosperity continue to mock someone who is doing all the “right” things in their world?
Then the answer revealed itself in the very next question from my sweet, wonderful friend: “Is it bad or “wrong” for me to want to make money?”
Ah, the sponsoring thought. The underlying trap.
Somewhere along the line, money has gotten a really bad rap. We have been taught to desire it and despise it in almost equal measure. Intimate relationships, friendships, and families have been torn apart over money, both in situations of lack and in situations of plenty. Basketball players and movie stars make copious amounts of money. Teachers and social workers barely make enough to pay their basic household bills. And then there are those who have a deep desire to “make a living” in the spiritual community, those who consider themselves to be key players in the New Spirituality movement, who abruptly discover that they fall into a category for which many believe they simply should not get paid at all.
If we want to take a ride on the “abundance superhighway,” we must change our views about money and refuel ourselves with the energy that flows and radiates deep beneath the obvious paper and coins we hold in our hands or deposit in our bank accounts. One of the quickest and surest ways to experience the magnificence of our own abundance is to give to another that which we believe ourselves to be lacking; and in doing so, what we are then allowed to discover about ourselves is that we are already plentiful in what we imagined ourselves to not have. And not only are we given an opportunity to experience already having it, but we are given the opportunity to experience it to the degree that we actually have enough to give away. This is just one of the many extraordinary concepts offered to us from the Conversations with God material.
If we change our belief about money, how might that change our experience of money?
If our experience of money is changed, might we be given the opportunity to experience our abundance in a new way, in a way that has nothing to do with money at all?
And if our natural state of abundance has nothing to do with money at all, what does it have to do with?
I love money.
I love receiving it. I love giving it away. And it has been my personal experience at numerous points in time in my life that I can live quite contently without having much of it at all. I have never been someone who has had what one would call a “lot” of money. And I solemnly recognize the disproportionate number of people in the world who are barely getting by in their day-to-day lives with the amount of financial resources they have available to them compared to the tightly guarded segment of our population who holds and controls the vast percentage of our world’s wealth and resources. It is my hope and my vision that one day that model of our world will change. But in order to reach that stage in our evolution, we must reflect upon and restructure some of our most basic and fundamental underlying beliefs not only about money, but about who we are and about why we are even here in the first place.
Where do we begin? What can one person do?
Perhaps we all can throw an extra dollar or two onto the tip for our next waitress. Maybe we actually do have enough time and money to pull into that youth group’s car wash on the corner. Might we allow ourselves to share 3 or 4 or 5 dollars with the homeless man or woman on the corner without worrying about how they spend it or why they are there to begin with? What would happen if we bought our groceries from the local Mom-and-Pop store in our community, where the prices might be slightly higher, but the service is extraordinary? Would we really miss the extra few dollars and cents in the long run?
I’m just wondering…
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
13-year-old Talia Joy Castellano’s six-year battle with cancer ended Tuesday as her body finally succumbed to a disease too relentless for it to overcome. “Tiny” and “frail” may be words to describe the condition of Talia’s physicality from outward appearances, but they definitely are not words anyone would use to describe the ferocious spirit of this young Lover of Life.
“Castellano, who was diagnosed with stage-four neuroblastoma when she was just 7 years old, started using makeup ‘as a wig’ shortly after she found out she was sick. In July 2011, she began filming makeup tutorials in her bedroom — short, how-to videos for the glam, colorful looks she invented. Within months, she had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views on her more than 150 YouTube clips,” US Magazine.
Talia became an honorary “Cover Girl” with the help of her friend Ellen DeGeneres. But one of the biggest gifts Talia has given to humanity is her Bucket List. Five days before she died, Talia jotted down 76 items she wanted to cross off her Bucket List and posted them on her Facebook page. And while she actually got to experience a few of her young heart’s desires, Talia’s request to the world was that we, you and I, go out to all the wonderful places that she had so far only dreamt of and live out those special moments in each of our lives, just in case she did not have a chance to in hers.
You see, Talia, even in her most vulnerable and weakened physical condition, understood on a very deep level that her life was not about her. It was about those whose lives she touched. And even after her passing, she is gifting to us all an opportunity to experience Who We Really Are through the expression of Who She Really Is. Her life is a bright light of hope. Her message is one of love and peace. Her Soul is a spiritual activist, continuing to do the healing work it came here to do in a world which weeps to know and experience itself as one without pain, even though, ironically, she endured extraordinary physical pain and suffering for the largest portion of her physical life here on earth.
Perhaps today, or maybe sometime in this upcoming week, we can each find a moment or two to cross off one or two things on this colorful and playful list. After all, how could we turn away such an extraordinary gift? And as we do, maybe we can find a quiet space in the center of each of our hearts to send a prayer of gratitude and appreciation to Talia, a beautiful young girl who most of us have never physically met, for giving us the opportunity to remember once again who we truly are and to experience why we are truly here.
Here is a photo of Talia Joy Castellano’s Bucket List:
If you want to share photos of you completing any of Talia’s Bucket List items, you can post them on her Facebook page Angels For Talia.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Contrary to the way in which the media is portraying it, Central Florida actually has problems much larger than the recent “not guilty” verdict in the George Zimmerman case. And one of the most significant and glaring dilemmas is the rising number of human beings who have no place to live and very little, if any, food to eat. In other words, a growing number of individuals who are what we have collectively classified as “homeless.”
While overly ambitious newscasters clamoring for ratings continue to spoon-feed the drama of this high-profile Zimmerman murder trial to an audience all too willing to devote their free time and undivided attention to their television sets, an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people in the state of Florida are spending their days and nights on the streets, probably much more concerned, I presume, with where their next meal is coming from than the status of George Zimmerman’s criminal case.
I find it shocking that one criminal case can cause thousands of people across the United States to leave their homes and stand in solidarity to protest what they believe to be an injustice, but the fact that last year 633,782 people in the United States alone were without a place to call home does not even create a tiny ripple.
Where is everybody?
How are we choosing what is important to us…and what is not?
Is it that we assuming that someone else is taking care of this?
In the City of Orlando specifically, efforts by local activist groups to organize food offerings for our community’s homeless population in downtown parks have been strategically and legally blocked by local government at every angle over the past several years. The city has designated blue boxes painted on the sidewalks where homeless individuals are permitted to ask for and receive money. If they do so outside the blue lines, they are promptly arrested.
We can’t feed the hungry – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable.
We can’t offer financial assistance to the poorest of poor – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable.
And these people have nowhere to go – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable for them to go.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we should and do live in a world where it truly is each man or woman for him or herself. Maybe those men and women standing on the street corner with signs pleading for money don’t deserve the extra dollar or two I have tucked in the drink holder of my car and I should just continue to act as though I do not even see them. Perhaps that seemingly able-bodied man IS perfectly capable of getting a job and I shouldn’t enable his obvious choice not to work by throwing him a few bucks. Perhaps I should question why those souls who have come to share a portion of life’s journey with me have not experienced their own abundance in the way that I have. After all, they must have done something wrong to get to this point and this place, right? And finally, maybe it is entirely possible that the George Zimmerman trial is way more important than any of this, and that is where I should be focusing my thoughts and energy, as thousands of others are choosing to do.
I don’t think so.
I have never been homeless. But I have had times in my own life where stretching $20 in the grocery store for a week’s worth of meals for my family was a stark reality. And it is not difficult for me to recall many turning points in my life which pivoted upon a compassionate helping hand from someone else. So I’m just noticing. I’m just taking a closer look at what we as a society appear to be fixated on, what issues cause us take a stand, which events in life we choose to outwardly define ourselves by…and which ones we do not. I’m just noticing and wondering how we got here, why we are here, and asking: What will it take to change it?
“When someone enters your life unexpectedly,
look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…
I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.”
“Conversations with God” – Book 2
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
How many of us are holding back in our relationships? Who among us is restricting their growth potential or avoiding a change in their career? Let’s see a show of hands from those of us who in some way, shape, or form are limiting ourselves in some aspect of our lives because we are afraid. Yes, I have to admit that my hand has slowly crept up, too.
Afraid of rejection?
Afraid of being hurt?
Afraid of being hurt again?
Afraid of being hurt even again?
Afraid of not being good enough or pretty enough or smart enough or sexy enough?
There seems to me to be a curious double standard when it comes to fear. Human beings have clearly demonstrated time and time again that we actually are not afraid of fear. In so many ways, we are fear-seekers. Just ask the rollercoaster-riders, the bungee-jumpers, the race car drivers, the tight-rope walkers, the lion-tamers, the deep-sea divers, the skyscraper window cleaners, and those who have left the boundaries of earth’s atmosphere to explore what exists beyond this planet we call home. Heck, even I welcomed fear into my life with open arms recently when I zip-lined five stories over a swampy pond filled with giant alligators.
It would appear that in those specific instances, fear actually propels us into our greatness, thrusting us into our highest potential. We desire the rush of danger. We crave the surge of vulnerability. We embrace the feelings of uncertainty. We know there are no guarantees…and we do it anyway.
So why do we not apply that same powerful field of energy when it comes to matters of the heart and soul? Why do we suddenly “need” the guarantee? Why do we suddenly “require” the certainty of a sure thing? Why do we only clear the pathway to our heart when we feel convinced that it is “safe” to do so?
In the meantime, while we are waiting for those assurances, we are not only denying ourselves the gift of those around us, we are denying those around us the gift of us. Fear-based thinking causes us to live small and live prudent, shrinking into an existence of believing we can shield ourselves from our imagined fears by cocooning ourselves in layers of imagined protection.
Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr., thought, “I have a dream, but I am simply too scared to share it with the people of the world.”
Imagine if Rosa Parks thought, “I do not want to give up my seat on this bus because of the color of my skin, but I am too afraid not to.”
Imagine if Neale Donald Walsch thought, “I had an extraordinary conversation with God, but I’m too afraid to share it with the world for fear of how it or I will be received.”
If any one of those people had listened to and acted upon that voice of fear, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right here, right now. But these are the risk-takers. These are the people who looked fear squarely and confidently and gently in the eye, blessed its presence in their lives, and did it anyway.
And what exactly is the difference between these three individuals and us? What do they have that perhaps you or I do not?
Nothing, except a deep-seated understanding that no matter what happens, no matter how the chips may fall or in which direction the events of our lives take us, we have nothing to lose. The guarantee that life gives to us is that we simply cannot fail. The only “loss” we can experience is the one we personally create in our individual reality when we do not place ourselves fully in the game, the type of loss that prevents us from not only knowing who we really are, but actually experiencing who we are.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
Conversations with God
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Some people are quite surprised, and many gasp with disbelief, when they hear the story of how my husband and I both completely forgot our one-year anniversary. I know, it sounds semi-plausible that perhaps one of us might overlook such an important milestone in our relationship, but both of us forgetting altogether seems rather comical, a nearly an impossible idea to believe.
This unusual blunder does not stem from a lack of caring, nor does it reflect some level of mutual apathy towards our partnership. You see, it truly is, rather, that our relationship has not demonstrated itself as yearning to be measured or defined within the parameters of time. Measuring or gauging our relationship in terms of days or months or years, while it does hold sentimental enjoyment for us to reflect upon, has never been the focus or intent of our partnership.
Neither is the expectation of our relationship to be in a constant state of blissful agreement. We understand deeply, although we sometimes forget, that at times our Souls will yearn for different experiences, and that the richness of our partnership is not determined by only those moments in which we see eye to eye. And even on those occasions when life has called upon us to experience contrast, or when we have stepped off the path of remembrance, forgetting who we are, the sanctity of our holy union has always been held in the palm of tenderness, compassion, and understanding.
Sure, we disagree about some of the day-to-day tasks in life — taking out the trash and cleaning the kitchen, which television program to watch in the evening, selecting the appropriate temperature setting in our home, dirty socks on the floor, etc. And at times we find ourselves on opposite sides of issues which carry much more importance in our lives, and the lives of others. But the one thing that we do not waiver on, ever, is our understanding of and commitment to the partnership of our souls and the mutual desire and devotion to each other’s experience of and communion with God.
And the experience of communion with God is not something forever lost in days gone by, nor is it something that we can only hope and wish for in the moments of tomorrow. It is for us to experience right here, right now. It doesn’t magically happen at a 1-year anniversary or a 10-year anniversary or a 50-year anniversary, nor does it happen with only one person. It happens the moment you choose for it happen. It happens as often as you desire for it to happen. And it happens with whomever you choose for it to happen with. Because, quite simply, it is always happening. Sometimes we just have to peel back the layers of what we think we see to be able to experience what is really there.
Perhaps now more than ever before, relationships are stretched and challenged by the push and pull of the demands of a fast-paced world. It seems to me that so many of us are forgetting, rather than remembering, the purpose for which we exist in each other’s lives. Maybe these very words will cause one or two or three people to pause and think about what that reason might be, maybe even for the very first time. It is never too late. You are never too old, too poor, too sick, too busy, too tired, or too anything to make a change in your relationships and create your life anew.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
I have two good friends who, on the night they got married a few years back, placed a large custom sticker on the back of the window of their car which boldly and playfully exclaimed “Love Explosion.” I have always thought it to be so wonderfully fitting to describe their relationship as a “love explosion” and still find myself smiling, even today, many years later, at the mere mention of it.
At this moment, I can’t think of a more appropriate phrase than a “love explosion” to describe what has happened in our country today, June 26, 2013, as the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed on September 21, 1996, which allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed under the laws of other states, effectively barring same-sex married couples from receiving federal marriage benefits. The victory means the federal government must recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples married in the 12 states that allow same-sex marriage, plus the District of Columbia, and give them the same benefits that they had been previously denied under the DOMA.
This landmark decision is cause for celebration not only among those in the gay community, but for anyone who counts themselves among those who yearn for the day when all human beings on our planet will be able to freely express and experience love, absent judgment, absent restrictions, a day when everyone will be afforded equal opportunities in every aspect of their lives. And this historic ruling today by the United States Supreme Court is a very good indicator that we are indeed headed in that direction. Perhaps not as swiftly or speedily as many of us would truly desire, but, yes, the shift is definitely happening.
Events like this in our human experience help us to understand more clearly just how vast and limitless and immeasurable Love is. How silly for us human beings to think for one nanosecond that we could contain Love inside any kind of container, and somehow then attempt to keep it there by sternly guarding it with our narrow rules and stiff laws. How naive of some people on this planet to believe that we could place boundaries on that which is boundless and eternal. How peculiar that so many people thought they could define in human terms that which has demonstrated itself time and time again to exist outside the limited parameters of our language.
Love.
Love is all there is.
There is nothing but Love.
And try as we might to control, manipulate, restrict, quell, morph, or ignore the ways in which Love is choosing to be expressed in our lives, Love will pour forth, Love will radiate from the heartbeat of the universe, and Love will explode from the purest place of peace and joy. It will not differentiate between a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It will not subdue or enhance its presence based on differing skin colors or countries of origin or religious preferences. It simply cannot. We can imagine that it can. We can believe that it can. And if we do not stop the insanity of thinking we get to choose who is allowed or who is denied Love, then our experience of Love will be one that reflects those narrow choices.
Thankfully, on this day, these revolutionary words were authored by United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, reflecting the New Tomorrow that we here at “The Global Conversation” are honored and overjoyed to stand witness to and share:
“DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, see Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558, and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
