Choose Love!

"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spirit works through strength. Your strength -- to do whatever is necessary, to meet each challenge that life brings, to let the Divine work through you, even when you're tired, doubtful, or confused. 

Not that you won't be scared. We're all scared. Anyone who tells you that they're never scared is either enlightened, or as dumb as a post, and I'm betting on the latter. Do what Susan Jeffers recommends right there in the title of her book -- Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway! And amazingly, in the combination of feeling and doing, the fear begins to recede. 

As The Course in Miracles says, there are really only two emotions -- love and fear. Each day, each minute, each moment, the choice is the same -- we can choose love or choose fear. Obviously, God's way is the way of love. The coward's way is the way of fear. Our challenge, on a daily basis, is to become less coward and more God.

You're scared, I'm scared, all God's children are scared, and yet, still, even in the face of massive fear, we are encoded,  empowered and emboldened to choose love. And each time we do, our love muscle is strengthened and fear subsides a bit.

It's as simple as that, but it ain't easy. Time after time after time, choosing love over fear, making the loving comment, partaking in the loving act. And as you do, more and more of God's work is manifest through you. More and more of God is manifest as you. 

A path that consists of one simple choice made over and over again. Each choice the same, each situation different. The path from coward to Divine, one step at a time.

Manners

"Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Manners seems like such a quaint subject. Outside of Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, few people champion the use of manners in these post-modern times. I know all the arguments -- manners are old fashioned, they're phony, they're for old farts, they're irrelevant -- I was a teenage myself once and deftly spouted each attack on manners while feeling oh so self-righteous and sophisticated.

What Waldo (yea, he really preferred to be called Waldo) was wise enough to see is that manners have little to do with social convention and everything to do with the Divine. Huh? Here's the thing: When Waldo uses the term "fine perceptions" he's talking about our innate ability to see God in each and every person. Thus to not use the upmost manners in our dealings with one and all, is more than just a transgression of Emily Post's rules of modern etiquette, it is a slap in the face of God!

Waldo knew, as all true saints and sages of all times and all places have known, that each person is a holographic spark of Spirit. He recommended manners not as social constructs but as modes of worship. If Jesus was about to enter the 7 Eleven at the same time as you, wouldn't you at least hold the door for him? Every time that you, or anyone else, fails to respond to another in a mannerly way, it is because they fail to see that God is right in front of them! The postal clerk, the bus driver, the bag lady, the greedy CEO, the gangsta rapper, even the Governor of Illinois -- all sparks of spirit, all Divinity in drag.

That makes your spiritual practice oh so simple -- see God in everyone and act accordingly. Let manners flow from your "fine perceptions." Treat everyone the way that you'd treat Jesus at the race track, Buddha at the bakery, or Krishna in a cocktail lounge. Enlightened behavior, aka manners, grows out of seeing the Light in everyone.