 Dear Reader,
Have you ever noticed how the most powerful words are often the most brief? How, the more true a word is, the more powerfully it hits its mark, resonating with layer upon layer of meaning, so that you can come back to it again and again, and always learn something new? For us, The Tao Te Ching and the Sermon on the Mount have that sort of power, so we often meditate on them. For instance, we often find ourselves preoccupied with the saying, 'Why are you anxious about your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?'
What is this really about, we wonder? Just our material needs? But, surely, that’s not SO difficult? To trust that our material needs are provided for by ‘Our Father in Heaven’? On the other hand, though, what about our spiritual needs, or ‘clothing’? Isn't that the real challenge? To learn to let go, and trust that these, too, are amply provided for by divine abundance? When we look at ourselves (more closely than perhaps we’d rather), oh boy do we see all the rides and hunts we've been on, in our quest for spiritual ‘clothing’! Yet, whenever we read the extract from Testimony of Light, we realise that we've been looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope. For, in reality, all that we long for spiritually is already ours and we are free, simply, to begin to live out of that awareness......
And the moment we remember that, we are embraced by the soul consciousness Gary Zukav talks about in his new book, Soul Stories, and we are living in the present tense, where everything IS already. This is something R Neville Johnston talks about, too, in The Language Codes. This new awareness, he says, calls for a new use of language. Can you imagine, for instance, how much more liberating and powerful the Sermon on the Mount would be, if it had been translated into English by people who thought only in the present tense – without all those ideas of ‘should’, ‘ought to’ and ‘will be’? Well, that’s something to think about...... In the meantime, we hope you’ve been thoroughly refreshed by the Summer months and are now full of energy for bringing in your harvest, clearing out what’s no longer needed and making space for the New.
With much love from all of us,
Geoff, Ann, Jackie, Derek, Martyn, Jackie M, Sue, Samantha, Regina, Jon, Sam, Bertel, Sandra, Pat, Karena, Louisa and Mary.
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 21-Jul-2006
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