this is the talk i gave at church this morning...i was so nervous...but i stayed on my feet and didn't pass out so that's a good thing LOL...
I left a short prayer on the benches and I thought if we all could start by saying it together it will help me to relax and get grounded and maybe some of these butterflies will go away…
Thank you, Universe, for your grace and guidance.For intuition, luck, hope and dreams. Thank you for the ever-present abundance that is reflected in each moment of my life.
I actually wrote this lecture a few years ago with the intention that I’d love to express to this congregation and my church family just how much I appreciate all that has been brought into my life from being a part of this wonderful community.
But in the years since it’s been put into words, it’s changed quite a bit and this last week it’s seen a major overhaul…
A few years before I found this church I went on a quest…
I really wanted to go to church on Sunday’s and have a spiritual community or family in my life.
Over a few years time I went to maybe 20 different churches.
I started with the Baptist church that I grew up at; I went to catholic mass, jewish temple, greek orthodox mass, congregational churches, assembly of god churches…
I went to lots of beautiful churches but none of them really resonated with me or made me feel I wanted to go back again the next week.
So I gave up.
I didn’t go to church for a few years.
Early summer 2007 my best friend Jill suffered the loss of her sister. It was unexpected and very tragic and it left Jill looking for answers.
We went for readings and saw mediums but still had not heard of “spiritual” churches.
That following winter Jill lost her birth mother in an accident. It was a very tough time and she found herself at an evening with the spirits at the YMCA where Maria Helvason was the medium. The messages Jill got that night were spot on and before she left Maria gave out her business card that said she was the assistant pastor here at the Swampscott church of spiritualism.
Ooohhh…a church of spiritualism?
We googled it and found out what time Sunday services were and planned on going.
The Sunday we planned for ended up being Easter Sunday and I had a small meltdown that morning thinking “it’s Easter Sunday and I can’t go to a church without Jesus”
So I didn’t go that day. But Jill did…
She called me before the day was out to say what a fantastic church it was and that they did indeed acknowledge Jesus on Easter Sunday. That made me happy and I decided I’d check it out the following week.
What a beautiful feeling from the moment I walked thru those purple doors. Smiling faces and positive energy overflowed the small sanctuary.
At one point a lovely lady turned and said to me “your new here aren’t you? My name is Val, what’s your name?”
“we have lunch after the service you should stay and eat.”
All those different churches I went to and not once did anyone say hello or invite me to fellowship…
This church is special and I am so grateful that we found it.
Pebbles and Andrea are the names of Jill’s sister and mother and thru their passing we found this community of love and family. They led us here in some odd way…and I’m grateful for that.
How many of you have had a tragic loss lead you to this church?
How hard is it to acknowledge that as a blessing?
Our 7th principle says:
“We affirm the moral responsibility of the individual, and that we make our own happiness or unhappiness as we obey or disobey natures physical and spiritual laws.”
The first time I heard the principles I knew right away I loved them, all of them…even if I didn’t quite understand all the details…
For instance what are nature’s physical and spirituals laws?
So I began reading books and googling to learn as much as I could about these laws and how they impact my life.
Dan Millman wrote a fantastic book called “Laws of Spirit”.
I recommend it to anyone who is interested in further definitions for natures physical and spiritual laws.
There are so many, and they seem to work with each other in many ways.
The law of balance
The law of choices
The law of presence
The law of faith
The law of action
The law of unity
The law of attraction…
My favorite, or the one that really speaks to me is the law of gratitude. Oprah had me start a gratitude journal years ago so it’s been a part of my life before discovering it was actually one of natures physical and spiritual laws.
The law of gratitude is vital to our being happy. I like being happy, so I thought I’d discuss gratitude. All sides of gratitude.
It’s easy to be grateful for all the wonderful things in our lives…like this church, or our friends and families.
I wake up each day and try to remember to be grateful for all that I am blessed with…starting with my breath and my health…my beautiful daughters and their health, my family, the roof over my head, the love of my dogs and the company of my good friends…
such easy things to be grateful for and all of us should try and remember to find time to be thankful for all the blessings in our lives.
The trick is finding the place where you can be grateful for EVERYTHING about life. There is a sense of peace that comes when you realize EVERYTHING is a blessing.
Yes everything.
That’s a tough one.
How can you suffer the loss of a loved one and find gratitude?
How do you live with disease and illness and be grateful for that?
How the heck are we supposed to be grateful for things that cause us pain and heartache?
Honestly, I don’t have the answer to that.
It’s an individual choice and we each have to find the right eyes for seeing our own challenges and heartbreaks thru the lense of gratitude.
Most times it takes several years to realize something you perceived as awful actually brought you some sort of gift or blessing…
Start with small things…
One day I had a experience while driving that at first made me mad and aggravated but before I got all the way home I was thankful…
I drive by the beach most mornings…I love the ocean and so I drive by the beach in Beverly just about every day…
This particular morning a few years ago I was doing my thing and enjoying my morning when an…lets say aggressive driver…cut me off and caused me to completely change my direction…
I was mad but I went around the block and continued on my journey…ironically he got stopped by a light and ended up behind me but I wasn’t going to speed up for his sake.
As I cruised along slowly I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman running…
I heard her yell something…
I instinctually slowed down and began to look for an off-leash dog…
I noticed a small dog across the street standing with some women and just at the same moment that I noticed he was not attached to a leash he bolted out in front of my car…
I slammed on the brakes and stopped…the little dog could not be seen from the drivers seat and my heart was racing…
I looked at the ladies standing there and cried out…
“did I hit him?” and they all shook their heads “no”
Oh my was I relieved…
The lady who was running came and grabbed her pooch and I gathered myself and drove away shaking and saying to outloud to myself…
"Thank God I didn’t hit that little dog…
Thank you God thank you God thank you God."
Without thinking I said
"Thank God that jerk cut me off or he would have smooshed the little dog…"
A small little moment that made me realize sometimes things happen that we don’t particularly like but are indeed for the greater good.
Some of those moments are simple things like being cut off in traffic and some are bigger things like crashing a motorcycle…
I grew up on the back of my Dad’s bike…loved to ride…
Learned to ride my grampy’s little Honda 160 when I was 12 years old and cruised my neighborhood night after night that summer…loved it…
But Dad got rid of his bike and took up boating so for many years I didn’t get to ride…
I used to bug my husband to get a motorcycle so we could go riding but he wanted no part of it,
He had a crash on a dirt bike when he was 20 and it was enough to scare him into not wanting to ride again…
So back in 2004 I decided I wanted to ride and that I should go get my license and ride…I did just that…
Took the classes and got my motorcycle license and within a few weeks managed to talk Steve into buying me a bike too…
woohoo…I was thrilled.
I road up and down my street and around the block everyday for a week…
I woke up really early on a Sunday morning so I could go out and ride and go off my street and into traffic…
That was the greatest hour…I had so much fun…
And then I crashed.
It was my own inexperience that led to the accident and it was a relatively small crash but I messed my leg up pretty bad…
I couldn’t walk for 6 weeks and had to have surgery on my knee.
The first twist here is that I had this awful keloid scar on my knee from having surgeries when I was a young teen…this scar was ugly and we often railed on the doctor for doing such a poor job stitching me up…
It turned out to be a blessing and could have well saved my life…
When I crashed I smashed and twisted my leg up really bad, but did not break the skin at all…
my leg swelled enormously and looked like someone stuffed it with watermelons, from the ankle right to the hip…
My ugly keloid scar began to split open…within a few days I had a hole in my leg and a few days after that I had blood clots exiting that hole like nothing I’ve ever seen.
When I went to the doctor he too was amazed at the clotting that took place inside my leg and said it was a good thing my scar split open and let them out or they could have traveled thru my body and could have very well killed me if reaching my brain or lungs…
That scar I hated was a blessing.
So back to my crash…my husband had to come to the scene and ride my bike home…
The next day he went and got his motorcycle permit…
Then he took the bike for an inspection sticker (that shows you how little time I had the bike for)
Everyday he’d take the bike out for a ride saying he just bought it and he doesn’t want it to be a waste of money…
Each time he went out he was gone longer and longer…
Finally one day he came home after riding for 2 or 3 hours with this giant grin on his face and just exuberating joy…he looked at me and said
“The guys on real bikes look at me funny for riding this little girl bike, I gotta get me a Harley,”
Within a month he went and got a big boy bike and has been enjoying riding ever since…
My accident really spooked me and it’s taken me until just this year to get on and ride with him but now we are out doing what I wanted in the first place.
So if I hadn’t crashed my bike my husband would have never figured out how much joy he gets from riding and we wouldn’t be out together enjoying these hot summer nights…
Blessings are hidden in every moment of every day…
Good moments and bad moments alike…
I can find so many examples in my own life…
Like having my daughter while I was still in high school…
My family thought it was a disaster and that I was ruining my life…but I’ll bet they’d be the first ones today to say they wouldn’t want it any other way and they are grateful to have Jade and all her wonderfulness in our lives…
Or my adoption. I was adopted at birth and for most of my younger years I thought this was tragic. I thought somehow I missed out on something by not having my biological family…
But after meeting my birth mother I realized rather quickly what a blessing it was that she surrendered me for adoption and how lucky I am to have the parents I have. I was grateful for her decision. Grateful for the mother that did raise me and love me.
These examples I can find in my own life aren’t really relavant to anyone but me…
We all have to find our own comfort with life’s circumstances.
Our own gratitude for what God gives us.
Everything God gives us.
How do you find gratitude when facing the death of a loved one?
It’s not that you need to feel grateful that you lost someone…
But if you can just hold onto the knowledge of the continuance of life we believe in. it brings comfort…
This church and all I’ve learned here has been such a gift in my life and I am filled with gratitude for all those who have taught me, influenced me, loved me, prayed for me and with me.
But the biggest gift I’ve received from this church and the religion and philosophy of spiritualism is the knowledge and belief that life doesn’t end. It just changes form.
Realizing we are all spirits that get the honor of spending some years in this physical body changed the way my heart felt about death and dying.
When my great aunt died last summer I was pained and saddened because I wouldn’t have her physically in my life anymore…
But at the same time I felt so much joy for her as I watched her pass into the spirit side of life…I realized what a blessing it is that she will no longer suffer…
How lucky was I to have been loved by her for so many years?
what a blessing that I am surrounded with wonderful mediums who have brought her thru and proved to me the continuance of life…
Observing The law of gratitude makes us face our own responsibility for our own happiness…
If we are not grateful for all that we have already how will the universe see fit to give us more?
The law of attraction tells us that whatever we put out there is what we will attract…
so why not try being grateful?
Being happy with what is?
We are after all responsible for our own happiness or unhappiness right?
To realize all that we experience while living in these bodies is indeed a blessing and that we should be grateful for everything is a difficult task…
But I think it’s a task worth challenging yourself with.
I asked Stasia to sing Amazing Grace today because Grace is a synonym for gratitude….
Ironically
Grace is also a synonym for forgiveness…
So consider this…
having gratitude for those bad moments is in a way offering forgiveness for those bad moments…
God gave us the gift of his Grace…
I feel pulled to honor that gift and be grateful for all that I can about this life I’m lucky enough to live.
I guess the thought I’d like to leave you all with is this…
Living with gratitude is expressing appreciation to the universe and infinite spirit for the privilege of Being.
