April 2000 - July 2000

WORDS TO LIVE BY

 

January 2000

It happened to me on a day when my bed was pushed out of doors to the open gallery of the hospital. I was recovering from an operation . . .

It was an ordinary cloudy March day . . . Here, in this everyday setting, and entirely unexpected, my eyes were opened and for the first time in all my life I caught a glimpse of the ecstatic beauty of Reality.

It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I imagined all existence to be beautiful, but that my inner vision was cleared to the truth so that I saw the actual loveliness which is always there; and I knew that every man, woman, bird and tree, every living thing before me was extravagantly beautiful, and extravagantly important . . .

Besides all the joy and beauty, there was a wonderful feeling of rhythm as well, only it was somehow just beyond the grasp of my mind. I heard no music, yet there was an exquisite sense of time, as though all life went by to a vast, unseen melody. Everything that moved wove out a little thread of rhythm in this tremendous whole . . . There was significance in every created thing, but the significance is beyond our present grasp.

Milton has said:

. . . What if earth

Be but the shadow of Heaven –

What if here we are only symbols of ourselves, and our real being is somewhere else – perhaps in the heart of God? Certainly that unspeakable importance had to do with our relationship to the great Whole; but what the relationship was I could not tell. Was it a relationship of love toward us? For those fleeting, lovely moments I did indeed love my neighbor as myself. Nay, more; of myself I was hardly conscious, while with my neighbor in every form, from wind-tossed branches and little sparrows flying, up to human beings, I was madly in love. Is it likely that I could have experienced such love if there were not some such emotion at the heart of reality?

That is how, for me, all fear of eternity has been wiped away. And even if there were no other life, this life here and now, if we could but open our dull eyes to see it, is lovely enough to require no far-off Heaven for its justification. Heaven is here and now, before our very eyes, surging up to our very feet, lapping against our hearts; but we, alas know not how to let it in!

Margaret Prescott Montagu

 

 

April 2000

From "The Pathway of Roses" by Christian D. Larson

  When you see some one leaving the body you
do not weep if you are spiritually awakened;
you know that the leave-taking is but seeming;
there is neither going not coming in the spirit;
there is no separation in spirit; in the spirit all
are one in His love. Though the soul that seems
to depart becomes invisible to physical sight,
still that soul is ever visible to spiritual sight. To
be consciously in the spirit is to see all those who
live in the spirit whatever the form may be. In
the consciousness of the spirit the manifestation
of the form is secondary; whether the form be
physical or ethereal is not of first importance;
but to know the spirit, to be conscious of the
spirit, and to know that all souls are eternally in
the spirit--that is the first importance.  That
soul that seems to have gone, has not gone; you
who are in the spirit, can feel her life, her presence
and her love just the same; and you are wide
awake to the fact that she still lives. Her ex-
 istence is just as real to you as it was before,
because in the spirit, all souls are real whether they
manifest in this world or in some other world.
They are all in God's sublime world, and when
you are spiritually conscious your eyes are open
to the splendor and glory of that world.

To Dr Sarah Akens a treasured friend, who made her transition to the next plane in March 2000.

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