Category: Headline

Some 30 to 40 children at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City were told as they came to the end of the cafeteria line last Tuesday that they could not have their lunch because their parents did not have enough money in their school account.

The children’s lunches were taken out of their hands and thrown into the garbage, according to a report from CNN affiliate KSL. Students and parents reported the incident, and school officials confirmed the astonishing events.

Parents pay for school lunches by placing money in their child’s school lunch account, officials explained, and if the account runs dry, the school cannot provide the child lunch.

A fifth-grader name Sophia was met by a school district nutrition manager, she said, who took her lunch and threw it away and told her to “go get a milk.” When the child asked what was going on, she said she was handed an orange and told: “You don’t have any money in your account, so you can’t have lunch.”

The lunch was thrown away because once it is on a tray carried by a student, it can’t be retrieved and given to someone else, but must be discarded, cafeteria employees later confirmed.

More than 30 children faced this experience at Uintah Elementary School on Tuesday, all of told in front of other students and staff that because their parents hadn’t kept their accounts paid up, they were having their lunches taken away.

Some students and school staff members were reportedly in tears over the incident, the KSL news story said.

Two Utah state senators who visited the school on Thursday said that the employee responsible for taking the action against the children should be fired if found after due process to have acted as it has been reported—and as school officials have confirmed—because that person “used (their) power to humiliate and embarrass children.”

But it isn’t the first or only time such a thing has happened in U.S. public schools, according to a story on Jan. 30 by Annie-Rose Strasser for the website Think Progress.

“In November, a Texas middle school student’s lunch was thrown away because he was 30 cents short on payment,” the news story said.

Strasser’s story goes on to point out that “depriving children of food — and embarrassing them in front of their peers — isn’t the only option. In Boston, for example, public schools provide all students with cost-free breakfast and lunch no matter what their financial situation.”

“Boston is the largest city to participate in a national program called Community Eligibility Option that waives meal fees for all students. It’s also being implemented in Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, and parts of New York City,” a September story at ThinkProgress.org said.

Utah school officials this week did not deny that what students reported last Tuesday is exactly what occurred, and they told students and parents they were sorry. “It was wrong. It should not have happened, and we apologize that it did,” Salt Lake City School District spokesman Jason Olsen said Thursday.

Another way needs to be found to deal with lunch accounts that have fallen to zero, parents, school officials, and state political leaders agree.

It feels to me that in a spiritually evolved society it would be incomprehensible that a child would be denied food for lack of money. Why all school systems don’t do what Boston does is unclear — except that in America’s increasingly “every-man-for-himself, you’re-on-your-own” society, the Boston example may be simply going out of style.

What’s the great American saying? “There’s no free lunch.” Apparently. Not even for a fifth-grader — or a middle school student 30-cents short.

All this, in a world where 85 people hold more wealth than 3.5 billion — half of the rest of the global combined.

Enough, already.

Enough.

How long will humanity allow this to go on…? The 85 richest people in the world own the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest people. That’s half of the Earth’s population.

This mind-boggling statistic was released last week by Oxfam, the international organization that monitors life in Earth in many of its aspects, and reports to the world periodically about global conditions.

Is creating this kind of disparity the way that a spiritually evolved species constructs its society? Or is this a model that could only be put in place by the primitive species of the Universe?

That is the question placed before humanity today as billions suffer from not enough food to eat while fewer people than it would take to populate a fair-sized Manhattan cocktail party have enough wealth to end world poverty overnight.

The plain and unassailable fact is that the global economy does not work to produce the outcome that human beings have imagined (or at least hoped) it was designed to produce.

Indeed, even a casual observer can see that not one of the systems, institutions and devices that our species has put into place to create a better life for all is functioning in a way that generates this outcome.

Our political systems clearly are not working. Our economic systems clearly are not working.  Our ecological systems clearly are not working. Our health care systems clearly are not working. Our educational systems clearly are not working. Our social systems clearly are not working. Our spiritual systems clearly are not working.

Nothing that we have created is producing the outcomes that were intended. 

It is worse than that. They are actually producing exactly the opposite.

Our political systems are creating nothing but disagreement and disarray. Our economic systems are actually increasing poverty. Our ecological systems are generating environmental degradation. Our educational systems are failing to educate enough people in enough places to bring our species anywhere near the reaching of its full potential. Our health care systems are doing little to eliminate inequality of access to modern medicines and health care services. Our social systems are known to encourage disparity, prejudice, and injustice. And, perhaps most dysfunctional of all, our spiritual systems are producing intolerance, righteousness, anger, hatred, and violence.

What gives here? What’s going on with the human race that it cannot see even as it looks at itself? Where is humanity’s blind spot?

Might it be time to ask: “Is there be something we don’t fully understand here, the understanding of which would change everything?

Does anybody even care about this global economic inequality? Does anybody care enough about it to do something about it? Does anybody think they can?

Have we gotten to the point in our world where the conditions in our world are seen as being totally, completely, and utterly out of our hands? Have we given up? Simply given up?

Is this what our spirituality calls us to do? Give up?

Just wondering here…

Many citizens of the United States — and many people watching them from around the world — are shaking their head in disbelief and dismay in the aftermath of the shooting to death of a 43-year-old man in a Florida movie theatre by a former police captain who says he fired the shot because he was afraid he was going to be attacked.

The story of this sad episode has made headlines across the globe and received thousands upon thousands of ‘opens’ on the Internet as people search their hearts to try to figure out why a person trained in the disciplines of law enforcement would fire a gun at another man’s chest at point-blank range after the first man threw a bag of popcorn in his face.

The incident occurred on Jan. 13 at a moviehouse in Pasco County, Florida where, according to various news reports, 71-year-old retired Tampa Bay police captain Curtis Reeves became annoyed when a man in the row of seats in front of him, Chad Oulson, began using his cellphone to tap out a text message with his 2-year-old daughter’s babysitter while the previews were playing before the movie started.

Mr. Reeves asked Mr. Oulson to stop texting, but Mr. Oulson ignored him. According to witnesses quoted in news reports and in the police report filed by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Dept., the two began arguing. Mr. Reeves then left the theatre, apparently to find a management employee.

According to the sheriff’s report, the manager was busy with another customer, and Mr. Reeves returned to his seat.

When Mr. Reeves returned, Mr. Oulson is said to have stood up and asked him if he had gone to management to tell on him. The two exchanged angry words again, and Mr. Oulson threw a bag of popcorn he was holding at Mr. Reeves, the bag apparently hitting Mr. Reeves in the face.

At this point, Mr. Reeves is alleged to have reached into his pants pocket, taken out a .380-caliber pistol, and shot Mr. Oulson point-blank in the chest, the bullet passing through the hand of Mr. Oulson’s wife, Nichole, who was trying to pull her husband away.

Mrs. Oulson’s injury was not life threatening, but her husband was severely injured, stumbled across the movie theatre aisle, fell into the lap of a moviegoer and his grown son, and died after being taken to the hospital. His last words were, “I can’t believe I got shot.”

In court the following day, the attorney for Mr. Reeves, Richard Escobar, portrayed Mr. Reeves as the victim in the incident, saying that Mr. Oulson was the “aggressor.” He said Mr. Reeves, after being hit in the face “with some object” that he could not identify, was afraid he was going to be attacked by Mr. Oulson, and so he pulled his gun — which he had a license to carry — and shot in self-defense, fearing for his safety.

Circuit Court Judge Lynn Tepper did not agree that the evidence gathered by the sheriff’s department and the testimony of witnesses showed Mr. Oulson to be the clear aggressor, and ordered Mr. Reeves not to be released on his own recognizance, as his attorney had requested, but remanded into custody on a charge of second-degree murder.

The whole case has brought to public discussion once again the question of gun violence in America, and in particular has given the country and the world another look at the State of Florida’s now famous Stand Your Ground law, which states that in the case of a reasonable presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm, a person is not required to retreat, but may stand their ground, and use deadly force, if necessary, to do so.

It is not clear if Mr. Reeves and his attorney will seek to use the law as a defense in this case. Law enforcement officers on the scene after the shooting have said to the media that the facts they have gathered do not appear to support its use in this instance.

Witnesses say that no punches were thrown, nor attempted to be thrown, by either of the men, and that their exchange was limited to raised voices, with both men standing up, and then the throwing of the popcorn — until Mr. Reeves allegedly pulled out his pistol and shot Mr. Oulson in the chest from a few feet away.

Many are asking, if Mr. Reeves is a retired police captain, whether he would not have been trained in recognizing when the shooting of another person was absolutely necessary. Observers also wonder why, if he really felt Mr. Oulson was about to climb over the row of seats between them and launch a physical attack, Mr. Reeves did not simply take out his gun and tell Mr. Oulson, “not a step further.”

But the larger question before the American public is, how long will citizens of the United States continue to put up with lax gun laws, easy availability of weapons (including rapid-fire assault weapons), and laws that threaten to turn the country back into a Wild West version of itself, where most men openly pack a side-shooter and where the motto of the day is: “Smile when you say that, brother.”

People across the U.S. are beginning to ask: Is this what civilization is all about?

Might this be a fine stretch of eternity during which to declare that there is clearly something we don’t fully understand about God, the understanding of which would change everything?

To put it more dramatically, is it possible that unless we enlarge and expand our primitive ideas about God and about Life in the decades just ahead, we may find that we have backed ourselves into a corner, from which there is no escape?

Conversations with God told us that humanity nearly rendered itself extinct once before. Barely enough of us survived to regenerate the species and start over. Are we at this same turning point again? Have we arrived once more at the intersection where theology meets cosmology meets sociology meets pathology?

Right now we are still embracing a Separation Theology. That is, a way of looking at God that insists that we are “over here” and God is “over there.”

The problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces a Separation Cosmology. That is, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.

And a Separation Cosmology produces a Separation Psychology. That is, a psychological viewpoint that says that I am over here and you are over there.

And a Separation Psychology produces a Separation Sociology. That is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages the entire human society to act as separate entities serving their own separate interests.

And a Separation Sociology produces a Separation Pathology. That is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, engaged in individually and collectively, and producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands—as evidenced everywhere on our planet throughout human history.

Only when our Separation Theology is replaced by a Oneness Theology will our pathology be healed. We have been differentiated from God, but not separated from God, even as your fingers are differentiated but not separated from your hand. We must come to understand that all of life is One. This is the first step. It is the jumping-off point. It is the beginning of the end of how things now are. It is the start of a new creation, of a new tomorrow. It is the New Cultural Story of Humanity.

Oneness is not a characteristic of life. Life is a characteristic of Oneness. This is what we have not understood about our existence on the Earth, the understanding of which would change everything.

Life is the expression of Oneness Itself. God is the expression of Life Itself. God and Life are One. You are a part of Life. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle.

It cannot be broken.

No one denies that there are many problems in our world, but few people – stunningly few people – seem to be able to agree that it is humanity’s most sacred beliefs that have created a huge number of them.

Conversations with God made it clear years ago that “beliefs create behaviors,” asserting that it is humanity’s beliefs that are killing us, creating everything from the horribly unending disaster at Fukushima to the unending calamity in Syria to the unending stalemate in Washington D.C. and the unending terrorism around the world.

Now a new analysis, contained in an op-ed piece just published at www.NationofChange.org by author Robert J. Burrowes, places the responsibility for many of the world’s ills specifically on the foundational beliefs of its people.

In a sweeping indictment, the author writes:

“Fundamentalism, in a religious guise, is both widespread and problematic.

“For example, Christian fundamentalism plays a crucial role in shaping US domestic policies in relation to abortion, gay marriage and theories of evolution as well as US imperial and military policy, Jewish fundamentalism is a key driver of Israeli domestic and foreign policy including in relation to Palestine, Islamic fundamentalism (of the Wahhabi variety) drives attitudes towards women and foreign policies in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Hindu fundamentalism manifests as a form of religious nationalism in India, and Buddhist fundamentalism is driving the violence against the Rohingya (Muslim) population in Burma.”

Conversations with God long ago made it clear that it was our beliefs that are the cause of humanity’s ills. In the first CWG text to be released after 9-11, titled The New Revelations, God told the human race: “You think you are being terrorized by other people, but in truth you are being terrorized by your beliefs.”

And it is the most deeply and firmly held of these beliefs, God said, that are at the root of the problems — particularly the problems of violence — confronted daily by our species.

Author Burrowes appears to agree. He also outlines the nature of the problem as he understands it in the op-ed piece.

“Psychologically, a fundamentalist is a person with an intense fear of being ‘wrong’; that is, an intense fear of being judged to hold the ‘wrong’ view or to engage in the ‘wrong’ behavior,” he says.

“This intense fear of being wrong develops during childhood when one or both parents, and probably teachers, dogmatically refuse to listen to the child, thus denying it the chance to develop its own views and moral code (based on its own experience), while also terrorizing (by threatening and using violence) the child into believing/adopting a particular set of values and beliefs, and behaving in a particular manner.”

Virtually the same points are made in The New Revelations. When asked what humanity can do to avoid any new 9-11’s in its experience, God said: “Education, education, education.” 

The dialogue points to how we are raising our children, and the beliefs that we have been instilling in them, as the chief source of humanity’s difficulties.

The op-ed piece by Mr. Burrowes  puts it this way:

“It is the intensity of their fear of being judged ‘wrong’, and the violence they will suffer if they are so judged, that makes the child hold, with phenomenal tenacity, to the ‘approved doctrine’ with which they are presented.

“It is this intense fear of being wrong that marks out the fundamentalist from the person who is open-minded and/or conscientious.”

What is the solution? Mr. Burrowes says:

“Fundamentalism is a significant social problem, particularly in some contexts. And to fix it, we need to recognise its psychological origin. Unfortunately, however, this is not easy to do, because the terror that holds their value and belief system in place, and drives their behaviour, is deeply hidden within the individual’s psyche.”

Conversations with God also offers a solution. Says this dialogue:

“Your experience of yourself and your world will shift dramatically if you adopt, collectively, the Five Steps to Peace:

“1. Permit yourself to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.

“2. Explore the possibility that there is something you do not fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything.

“3. Announce that you are willing for new understandings of God and Life to now be brought forth, understandings that could produce a new way of life on this planet.

“4. Courageously examine these new understandings and, if they align with your personal inner truth and knowing, enlarge your belief system to include them.

“5. Express your life as a demonstration of your highest beliefs, rather than as a denial of them.”

CWG makes it clear that violence is neither an inevitable nor an unavoidable aspect of human behavior. “Your differences do not have to create divisions, your contrasts do not have to create conflicts, and the variations in your beliefs do not have to produce violence in your lives,” the dialogue tells us.

Yet how to stop the violence before it stops us? That will take a collective effort. A massive collective effort. And this is where the spiritual activism work of Humanity’s Team — a global movement based on the messages of Conversations with God — comes in.

“What is needed is a worldwide Evolution Revolution,” Nanette Kennedy, a spokesperson for Humanity’s Team and the Managing Editor of this online newspaper, has said. Persons who feel the impulse to join in producing such a revolution may learn more about it by clicking on the blue box in the right hand column of this newpaper.

As well, persons wishing to join another worldwide movement to end all violence, in whatever form it manifests, may sign online “The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World, Mr. Burrowes said in his op-ed.

A person posting as “AntiSocialSailor” in the Comment section beneath Mr. Burrowes’ article offered this additional observation:

“The author left out the most insidious and evil fundamentalists of all, Free-Market Fundamentalists. These are the fundamentalists that have caused the majority of problems for this country since the 80’s. They’ve infected our government to such an extent that they pose a far greater risk to the country, and the world, then all the religious nutcases combined.”

What about you? Do you believe that fundamentalist thinking — in politics, religion, economics, or any area of life — is a danger, or the bedrock of a civilized society, the bulwark against constant and destabilizing change? We invite you to share your own Comment below.

===================================
Editor’s Note: Robert Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending
human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to
understand why human beings are violent, and has been a nonviolent activist
since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence?

Are we entering a new world with the start of a New Year?

Marijuana as of now is legally purchasable for recreational use in Colorado. Same sex marriage is now legal in 14 countries worldwide and in 18 states in the U.S.  Prostitution is now legal in a growing number of countries. The death penalty is now illegal in a growing number of places.

Popes are declaring trickle down economics to be a global failure, presidents are pronouncing the growing income gap to be the defining challenge of our time.

And on the spiritual front, and a new way to understand God is now being openly discussed in more and more homes.

And so, as we enter 2014, we do see a world whose values are changing. Noticeably. Most of these changes revolve around humanity’s ideas of “right and wrong.” It is those ideas that are shifting.

We have come to the conclusion in many places that if alcohol can be used recreationally, there is no reason that cannabis should not be allowed to be used in the same way: regulated, but freely available.

In Colorado, predictions already are pointing to $400 million in annual sales, generating a boost to the state’s economy — not the least of which will come from increased tourism, as people travel from elsewhere to obtain marijuana legally.

The educated guess is that other states in the U.S. and other locations across the globe, watching Colorado’s experience closely, will soon be following suit.

The same will be true, those educated guessers say, about same sex marriage. It is now only a matter of time before all 50 states in the U.S. and many more nations legalize it.

Currently 14 countries allow same-sex couples to marry. These include Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Uruguay. Same-sex marriage is legal in some jurisdictions of Mexico, the United Kingdom, and, as noted above, the United States.

People around the world are reaching the conclusion that human beings who love each other and wish to commit their lives to each other in partnership should have the ability to enjoy all the legal rights and benefits of entering into the married state, regardless of their gender.

As far back as the 60s internationally syndicated newspaper advice columnist Ann Landers was publicly supporting legalized prostitution, and this social constriction, too, is being lifted in more and more places. Looking at a cross section of 100 nations in the world, it is found that prostitution is totally legal in 50% of them, with limited legality in another 11%.

And on the subject of the death penalty, support for it in the U.S. is at its lowest level in 40 years, according to a survey of public opinion just 12 weeks ago. While a majority of citizens in the U.S. (60%) support the measure, six states have actually repealed the death penalty since 1995. These include Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York.

And, were it up to members of the Democratic Party in the U.S., there would be no such punishment in that country. Just 47% of Democrats support the death penalty, versus 81% of Republicans.

With the total percentage of supporters dropping to historic lows, it appears clear that the idea of a government killing people as a means of the government demonstrating that killing people is wrong is no longer considered viable, sensible, or workable by a larger and larger number of people.

And so we see that the world’s values are clearly changing. Another major shift that we observe is the movement toward complete transparency as a model for our society; for its businesses, for its governments, for it military, and for institutions and industries of every kind.

Some people see the increase in surveillance of many facets of society as a loss of the individual right to privacy, while others see transparency as at last leveling the playing field within our society, with governments and corporations no longer able to operate in secret with impunity and without consequence for overreach or illegalities.

Meanwhile, attitudes and ideas about God are shifting dramatically. More and more people are abandoning the notion of a violent, angry, and vindictive God who judges, condemns, and punishes — moving to belief in a God who loves unconditionally, and whose only desire and purpose is to give all of Life at every level the ability and the tools of total and glorious self-expression, thus to demonstrate Divinity Itself.

The new yearning is not for an Overlord kind of Deity, but for a more fully present Co-Creator kind of Deity — an expression of Divinity that embraces, accepts, and loves; supports, nourishes, and empowers. A God who is our Best Friend, not our Feared Master.

Evidence of a shift to that new definition of a Supreme Being is everywhere present.

There are those who say we are embarking on a New Era beginning with this New Year of 2014. An era of greater tolerance and freedom, gentler choices and decisions, larger awareness and understanding, keener searching for wisdom and clarity within the human family than ever before. A time of expanding accommodation and reconciliation, grander self-expression and self-realization. A moment in our history that will one day be seen as a turning point in our evolution.

If this assessment proves to be accurate, it will because of the changes encouraged and made by people at the grass roots of our global community.

Does life go on forever? Does love?

Yes. Life and Love are both are eternal. And evidence of this has surfaced in the ordinary lives of ordinary people this Christmas season in the kind of love that Brenda Schmitz has for her husband, David. And for David’s new wife and life partner, Jane.

Perhaps you’ve seen this story already. (It’s been on all the television networks and all over the Internet. We’ve passed it on here because we wanted to make sure you did not miss it.)

Brenda Schmitz celebrated her Continuation Day in the second half of 2011. She was well under 50, and suffered from ovarian cancer. But she left a letter with a friend, who she asked to deliver it to a local radio station if the friend saw that David had found a new love in his life — which Brenda (who left four young boys with her husband when she departed) had told David she hoped he would.

The radio station in question — KSTZ Star 102.5 in Des Moines, Iowa — every year grants a Christmas Wish to people who write in asking for a special gift. This year it granted the wish of Brenda, whose anonymous friend sent the station Brenda’s letter of request after David and Jane got engaged.

Brenda asked for three things: She requested a special “pampering session” for David’s “new lifelong partner” — a spa treatment with massage, tanning session, hair styling, the works. Brenda wrote that this lady deserves it for having taken on being a step-mom to the boys.

Brenda also asked for a “magical trip” for the entire family, bringing them special memories to last their lifetime.

Her third wish was that the doctors and nurses at Mercy Medical Hospital who took care of her while she was sick be treated to an evening of food and fun as a thank you for “all they do every day for the cancer patients they encounter.”

Several local businesses contributed to a fund that allowed the radio station to grant the wishes. David and Jane and the children of both (Jane has two children of her own) will be treated to a vacation at Disney World in Florida.

In addition to her letter to the radio station, Brenda left a personal letter for David, and one for the new love in his life as well, in which she told her she loved her, “whoever you are,” for bringing love back into David’s life.

The radio station asked David to come into the station, where he was read the first letter — the one Brenda sent to the station — live, over the air. The other two letters were opened privately.

To David, receiving the communication two years after his wife’s death, it was just another confirmation of the eternality of life. He said that he was not surprised, adding that for the last year and a half Brenda has “shown so many signs” that she’s here.

David told the radio station hosts that Brenda and he had talked about his future, and that his wife wanted him to move on, hopefully meeting somebody new. He said he asked her how he would know if it was the right person, and that Brenda told him not to worry, that “you’ll know. I’ll be there.”

And now, as Jane and David, with her children and his, embark on their new life together, Brenda is there, in the most loving and caring and giving way. David wept on the air when Brenda’s letter was read, as have people around the world who have heard of the story, which has gone viral.

As rightly it should. For it is a wonderful story of everlasting love, hopefully helping all of us to extend the love we feel this season to everlasting lengths in the lives of all around us.

To see one of the many media reports, click here. And have your tissues ready.

I couldn’t sleep last night.

I was up from 2 until 6, having another one of my Conversations with God.

“Tell me about Christmas,” I said. “What is it really all about?”

And I heard, “What do you mean, what is it really all about? I’ve told you a million times what it’s all about.”

So I said, “Tell me again. I think I may have missed it.”

And suddenly my head was filled with a Christmas Carol – one of the happiest and most triumphant of all the melodies of Christmas.

“Joy to the world,” the song began, “the Lord has come.” But I couldn’t get into it. I kept wondering, what is joyful about the coming of someone who is going to be a lord over us?

God! I said…I don’t understand this! And God replied, “You’re right. You don’t.”

Then God said, “But at least you’re asking a question. And that’s good. It’s really hard to understand something if you think there are no more questions to ask. You can’t be given an answer if you think you already have the only answer there is.”

“Well, I don’t have the answer,” I admitted. “So what’s the answer?”

And God said, “The answer is that the Lord….who has come….is not a lord over you, but in you.” These words came to me at 2:57 this morning, and I pondered them in my heart.

“Then,” I ventured, “the Christmas season is not just a remembering of the birth of a Babe. It is also a celebration of the birth of the Christed one in all of us.” And God answered softly, “yes.”

And then I wondered what all the songs, and all the messages, and all the feelings of Christmas would mean if I accepted this truth. If I really understood that the gift of Christmas is us, fully expressed and fully realized. It is us — completely willing and totally ready — to love without condition, to give without restriction, to share without limitation, to create without fear, to celebrate ourselves without shame or embarrassment.

It is us, choosing to forgive without hesitation, to help without being asked, to rush in where angels fear to tread.  Indeed, to lead the way for angels.

Ah, to lead the way for angels. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’ve come to the Earth. To be a herald! Hark! The herald, angels sing. Glory to the newborn king.

At this moment we can give birth to the royalty within us…the royalty that we are in God’s eyes. The Magic of Christmas is that it gives us permission to take the feeling of love and share it with all those whose lives we touch.

With friend, and with stranger. With those who agree with us, and with those who disagree. With those who look and act like us, and with those who do not. We are invited today to feel this love, and to give it permanent place within our heart. To be the source of peace on Earth, and goodwill toward men and women everywhere.

We are invited to walk the Earth not only as one who is blessed, but as one who blesses. Not only as the Lord of the manner, but in the manner of the Lord.

For we are the lord of our inner kingdom, and thus, of the outer one as well. And when we understand that, everything changes. We begin to create a world in which all is calm. All is bright. Joy to the world! The Lord has come. Let Earth receive her King.  Let every heart… prepare him room. And heaven, and nature, sing!

Joyfully, Neale.

(The above is a much-requested re-print of a Christmas Message first shared by Neale Donald Walsch in 2007. We hope you enjoyed it…and might even pass it on.)