The Master as an eight-year-old (William Hughe...

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“Life is exchange between you and God.  You name what is exchanged and how much is exchanged.  Give your limited good for His unlimited good.  Give your foolishness for His wisdom.  Give your weakness for His strength.  The fictions that you offer Him will cease in His realities, to trouble you and the universe no more.”  –Imelda Octavia Shanklin in her book, What Are You?

The sweetness of this universal law is like the most fragrant flower in the garden.  The scent enfolds you, drawing you.  But it is only the beginning as, day after day, your pursuit of the flower yields the enchanting experience of an ever blooming, ever opening blossom.  And so it is with this law of God.  When the seeking and knowing God in all His magnificent universe is your focus, there is no longer “bad” in life.  Every situation, every experience, every person reveals the Master to you more fully.  Nothing that reveals God can be bad.  I have been thinking a lot about my father lately.  His relationships have been ones of great hurt and ugliness to me and others I love.  Recently I was asked what I was going to do with the memories, the trauma, the pain of my childhood.
I believe I need to pursue God and give Him these memories.  This trauma.  This pain.  I am meditating on finding the divine in my dad.  Universal law tells me he, too, has divinity within him.  Despite my other remembrances, there was a charisma, a charm, a geniality in my father.  He always gave generously to those in the community.  I am giving God the other memories which are too painful to keep any longer.   I am appreciating that human beings at their worst and most abased can and are still used of God to do good in His world.
English: A young White-backed Vulture in Mikum...

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I, too, have gifts I received from God through my father.  My great love and affinity for animals of every kind, my appreciation of nature and science, the thrill of watching a plant sprout from a seed I planted, the evocative beauty I find in opera and classical music–these are gifts I was given through my father.  The ability to do what needs done no matter what, to never take no for an answer, to pursue unceasingly until I achieve–although this was born in me through fear of retribution–it is what has allowed me to still be alive, to be walking again after seven years in a wheelchair, to be thriving.  I have triumphed in the end and found enlightenment because in the cauldron of my childhood, I had to learn a survival skill that made me so strong.  And now, I can rest that fear and pain and empty it out of my spirit into God’s hand, making room to fill my heart with gratitude for all gifts which are good.  When we  burn the dross of this world through meditation, prayer and connection with God, we are left with pure gold.  And isn’t that gold the substance with which the streets of paradise are said to be paved?  Heaven and paradise are found in our enlightenment and our connection with God.
Love, Peace, and Joy to you!
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