Good news for 10/13/20 - Pandemic brings more peace and quiet.

People's exposure to environmental noise dropped nearly in half during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to University of Michigan researchers who analyzed data from the Apple Hearing Study.

For more click here.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the acceptance on one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. The first component of spiritual growth is peace and joy which comes from shedding the ill effects of living on the path of the ego.

Spiritual Book Discussion - The Spiritual Child, The six core spiritual strengths

The six core spiritual strengths

Your child is born with a capacity for spiritual knowing. Rather than leave it to be winnowed away by neglect, we can support their natural spirituality, hold open the space for expression, provide a language for it, and help their spiritual assets grow into these six core spiritual strengths: 

1. A spiritual compass for trustworthy inner guidance 

2. Family as a spiritual “home base” and sustaining source of connection, unconditional love, and acceptance 

3. Spiritual community as an extension of the family’s field of love, a shared experience and a lifelong “road home” to spiritual connection 

4. Spiritual “multilingualism” that broadens their access to a world of sacred experience and inspiration 

5. Spiritual agency that empowers them to right action that expands the field of love into a culture of love 

6. Transcendent knowing: dreams, mystical experiences, and other special knowing 

These core strengths build out, like nesting dolls or concentric circles, from the most singular, intimate inner compass, extending and resonating through a child’s spiritual experience of family, community, the multicultural world, and ultimately into their own sense of spiritual agency and transcendent experience.

Miller, Dr. Lisa. The Spiritual Child (p. 177). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

As you can see these six core spiritual strengths don’t have much to do with what we normally think of as “Sunday school” or religious training. These core spiritual strengths refer to the “perennial philosophy”; what all religious traditions have in common.

As Dr. Miller has made clear in her book, “spirituality” is the relationship the individual has with the Transcendent Reality whatever form that takes for the child. This experience of the Transcendent Reality is first based on attachment to primary caretakers and later to the broader community and then to interreligious experiences and awareness which gets manifested in the individual’s participation in society. Lastly there is an awareness and a vocabulary for the interior spiritual like which is composed of dreams, special knowing, and even what might be called mystical experiences described as “awe” and a feeling of oneness with everything.

Miller’s last chapter in Part One of her book describes the six spiritual strengths in more depth. It is well worth reading and discussing. However, we will not do it here but encourage readers to study this material.

Questions

1. What thoughts do you have about Miller’s description of the six spiritual strengths?
2. To what extent have these spiritual strengths been intentionally and unintentionally nurtured in your life?
3. Having reviewed this model, do you have any ideas about how you can nurture the development of these strengths in your children and/or great grandchildren?

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #58, Review of lessons 36 - 40, My holiness envelopes everything I see.

 Lesson #58

Review of lessons 36 - 40

36. My holiness envelopes everything I see.

37. My holiness blesses the world.

38. There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

39. My holiness is my salvation.

40. I am blessed as a Son of God.

Once it dawns on us that there must be a better way than to continue on the path of the ego pursuing all its idols and start searching for Truth and Meaning on the path of the Spirit we realize that deep down we are very holy and loved unconditionally by the Transcendent Ground Of our Being.

We come to realize that Love is our natural inheritance and the ego has created all kinds of obstacles and barriers to our awareness of Love’s presence in our lives. Once we accept the Divine Spark within us, holiness begins to envelope everything I see.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, in our sixth step, we are ready to let this awareness of our Oneness with God remove all these barriers and obstacles of the ego which block this deep intuitive knowing. We come to realize that there is nothing that this deep intuitive knowing which germinates from my inherent holiness can’t do. We come to realize that this experience of my innate holiness is my salvation and that we are truly blessed as the Sons and Daughters of God.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is this awareness of the inherent worth and dignity of every person that envelopes everything I see and which blesses the world and is the source of my salvation as the blessed child of God extending God’s love throughout the universe.

Fall is here and winter weather coming. Stay warm and comfortable in an Eddie Bauer Men's Cloud Cap Rain Jacket.

For yourself, your loved one, and as a great gift! 

Good news for 10/12/20 - Gen Z on track to be best educated generation in American history.

 Generation Z is the generation born after 1996

Gen Z on track to be the best-educated generation yet

A look at older members of Generation Z suggests they are on a somewhat different educational trajectory than the generations that came before them. They are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to be enrolled in college. Among 18- to 21-year-olds no longer in high school in 2018, 57% were enrolled in a two-year or four-year college. This compares with 52% among Millennials in 2003 and 43% among members of Gen X in 1987.

For more click here.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the acceptance of on another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations and around the world.

How successful have Unitarian Universalists been in nurturing the spiritual development of Gen Z? Has their spiritual development kept up with their educational development?

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #57 - My mind is part of God's. I am very holy.

 Lesson #57

Review of lessons 31 - 35

31. I am not the victim of the world I see.

32. I have invented the world I see.

33. There is another way of looking at the world.

34. I could see peace instead of this.

35. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

The eleventh step of Alcoholics Anonymous says that we can seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God praying for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.

Jesus tells us we can seek and we shall find, knock and the door will be opened for us.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations and around the world.

When we decide we no longer want to play the victim and instead seek a better way to live our lives, we begin to realize that we could have peace instead of anger and fear when we realize that our mind is a part of God’s and we are very holy.

We begin to sing along with Louis Armstrong, “It’s a wonderful world.”

Good news for 10/11/20 - In disasters people do much more good than bad studies show.

From the American Journal Of Public Health, October, 2020, pp.1448 - 1449 

Another side of the coin operative during Hurricane Katrina is that, contrary to what was often reported by the media and went viral, there was the demonstration of human kindness: “That whole week newspapers were filled with accounts of rapes and shootings across New Orleans” and “There were terrifying reports of roving gangs, lootings and of a sniper taking aim at rescue helicopters. . . . The chief of police said the city was slipping into anarchy, and the governor of Louisiana feared the same. ‘What angers me the most,’ she said, ‘is that disasters like this often bring out the worst in people.’”4(p18) This narrative playing out in the media was reinforcing the myth of the veneer theory coined by Frans de Waal, which posits:

Civilization is nothing more than a thin veneer that will crack at the merest provocation. In actuality, the opposite is true. It’s when crisis hits—when the bombs fall or the floodwaters rise—that we humans become our best selves.4(p17)

It wasn’t until months later, and reported out of the media spotlight of the immediate disaster, that:

Researchers from the Disaster Research Center (DRC) at the University of Delaware concluded that “the overwhelming majority of the emergent activity was prosocial in nature.” A veritable armada of boats from as far away as Texas came to save people from the rising waters. Hundreds of civilians formed rescue squads, like the self-styled Robin Hood Looters—a group of eleven friends who went around looking for food, clothing and medicine and then handing it out to those in need. Katrina, in short, didn’t see New Orleans overrun with self-interest and anarchy. Rather, the city was inundated with courage and charity.4(p18)

This sowing of a spontaneous response and support for others can result in a bountiful harvest that we also reap in strengthening community resilience and saving lives. Katrina essentially reconfirmed the scientific evidence on how communities react to public health emergencies. The Disaster Research Center has established that, in nearly seven hundred field studies since 1963, there’s never total mayhem. It’s never every man for himself. Crime—murder, burglary, rape—usually drops. People don’t go into shock, they stay calm and spring into action. “Whatever the extent of the looting,” a disaster researcher points out, “it always pales in significance to the widespread altruism that leads to free and massive giving and sharing of goods and services.”4(p18–19)