Knowing it was summer and knowing that I would finally give myself permission to read for enjoyment, a friend gifted me with a novel. I hadn’t read a novel or in fact anything for pure enjoyment for . . . well . . . longer than I could remember. Searching my mind, I knew it had been last summer and I recalled the book, The Life of Pi, compelling but hardly enjoyable reading
in the end.

So, when I started reading Water for Elephants, I was looking forward to en enjoyable summer read about a boy running away to join the circus. Instead I got a grim picture of struggle and violence in a hostile environment where everything was “tarted up” to look pretty. "Oh well! Here we go again," I told myself. You see, if I start reading a novel I have to finish it; HAVE to, no matter how grim. And that’s how this series was conceived, that and the ongoing talk about the oil spill in the Gulf, another grim story I really don’t want to think about.

The most challenging aspect of New Thought "practice" is the day to day work of keeping the mind clear about "the Truth". There seems to be so much evidence of what Ernest Holmes would call "error".

How can I be an agent for change in a world where problems seem to be so much larger than my small efforts or where they are controlled, managed or created by someone else? On the surface, our teaching appears to tell us to ignore, deny or in some way see ourselves as outside of or above social and environmental concerns. The Science of Mind is exactly the opposite. The New Thought movement began as a response to issues around personal health and healing but by Ernest’s time people wanted to know how they would survive, find jobs, a place to live and food to eat in THE most prosperous nation on earth. With its message about the power of individual, success and prosperity, it was a response to the most pressing need of the time.

The questions facing us today are different. They are no longer local. They are global. How will we continue to live on a planet that is, for the moment, our only home; how will we share it with our fellow beings and how can justice and peace be a reality now as well as a legacy for the future? Do Centres for Spiritual Living have answers for these questions? I believe we do. Join me this month as I share with you what I think they are.

Blessings

Rev. Terry