"Love's
greatest gift is its ability to make everything it touches
sacred." - Barbara DeAngelis February
2004 Welcome
to the sixteenth issue of Messages from SpiritLight at
Home offering monthly inspirational thoughts,
insights into new, useful, fun, sometimes unusual and interesting
ideas and some of my favorite links on the Internet. A
MESSAGE FROM DEIRDRE Dear
Friends, Valentine's
Day is just around the corner and I am thinking about love! This
is one of my favorite subjects, to which my family and friends
can attest! What
does the word "love" mean? The dictionary defines Love
as: "A deep devotion or affection for another person or
persons." However, there are up to nine definitions listed.
One, of which, is a score for tennis! Of
course, the most famous definition of love can be found in the
Bible in 1 Corinthians, 13:4-7, "Love is
patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is
not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not
delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." We
can assume, therefore, that there are as many definitions of love
as there are people. However, for me, there is only One Love. And that one
love simply engenders different feelings and actions. I guess I
have to say that I resonate the most with the Bible's definition.
The
emotions that arise from love vary in so many different ways and
we certainly have many ways of loving someone and expressing
those feelings to our families (children, parents, siblings and
so on), friends, lovers, and, yes, even to our enemies. But the
one definition that always remains with me is that Love
Never Fails, which is what follows in the
8th verse. To me, Love is All Things. Here
are some of my own thoughts on the various definitions of
"Love." Love
in General: Ah! The very source of life! Love - the
wonder of it all! Is that why we feel so energized, so full of
life, so out of our minds? Yes! Because we are! When we are in
love, we are in our hearts. And that is where we should be. To
love someone is to enhance ourselves. We only grow larger in
spirit when we share our love. We cannot give it away and lose
all that we have, as some people believe, for there is an
unlimited source. That is why when we shut ourselves off, it
builds up until we feel we will burst! It has to escape or we
cannot feel ourselves whole. I believe that in the process of
human creation we were meant to enjoy the ability to love freely
and unconditionally. This is the way of the Divine Self....which
came from the ultimate source, our friend and creator who many
call God. We need to try with all our might to love all beings --
but especially we must love ourselves! We need to fill ourselves
up. Then give it away! All of it. There is an unlimited supply,
and it comes from only one source! How about sending a note to
someone dear to you who has not heard from you in a while? I know
you'll be glad you did and you'll both benefit. For love given is
love returned. That is the way of the Universe. Unconditional
Love: This is a tough one! But unconditional
love is probably the most difficult aspect of loving that we can
encounter. We are human beings and with human failings.
Therefore, it seems to me more important than anything else to
believe in that old adage, "To Err is Human -- To Forgive
Divine!" If Divinity lives inside of us, as I certainly
believe it does, then it must go without saying that we can
forgive if we allow ourselves to do so. Yet, it has to be a
conscious choice! If we can love the unloveable, that is
unconditional love. If someone is unloveable to you, there is
almost a 99% chance that you are unloveable to someone else. Try
to reduce that percentage. You'll be happier for it, I promise! Family
Love: I saw a Hallmark card once which said,
"When you laugh with family, your soul knows it's
home." Unfortunately, the author was not listed, so I can't
give the person credit, but it struck me, as I stood in that
store, as another Universal Truth. This is why, I believe, that
those who are adopted, despite perhaps even having lived happy
lives with their devoted adopted family, still have that nagging
feeling deep in their soul that there is something missing. This
is what I call the "missing soul connection." It is an
authentic feeling and they instinctively know it. Whether or not
they decide to explore where they come from is not the point. The
feeling exists and it is real. Is
it any wonder then, that those of us who are fortunate enough to
have been born of our natural parents and grow up to know them,
our siblings if we have them, and the rest of our extended
family, we also are exquisitely aware of the fact that we belong.
And nothing feels familiar without them. We always have that need
to be home. Whether
or not we are in the midst of a loving and nurturing family, is
not the point. I believe that the point is we are a part of a
family and that is home to us. The family might be completely
dysfunctional, but we are home in that family, and we know it. It
is the instinct that we are born with. The instinct to know,
regardless of the situation. Understanding this, we can begin to
work towards correcting those things in the family that aren't
connecting. We can yell and scream and disagree and cause hate
and discontent, but if we are home we feel safe, even if we
aren't connecting. It might not be a good feeling, but it is
authentic and worth every part of our being to authenticate that
connection by enhancing it with love and understanding. I
learned much later, that when my parents made their transition my
soul connection was deeply disturbed. I thought, at the time of
their passing, that I was in pain simply because of their
physical loss. Eventually, I realized that it involves much more
than that. We need to recognize that physical death is a
disruption in the soul connection and we must make an effort to
regain that reconnection or the pain will be consistent. Yet,
this is a phenomenon that also happens with an emotional death.
It makes no difference whether it is physical or emotional. It
still manifests itself as a separation in the soul connection
when a physical loss is caused by rifts within the family. It
causes us to feel just as unhappy and discontented. It
is the wise person, therefore, who is able to rediscover this
knowledge while the family is together on this earth plane. For
some, it is almost impossible to do this once a loved one has
moved on, unless they have someone to guide them in this process.
This is why, so many of us seek spiritual advisors to re-connect
with them. What
we are doing, I believe, is really trying to reconnect with our
own souls, because some of us aren't aware that our loved ones
continue to reside alongside us always. It is just in a different
way. They continue to be there, we just don't recognize it
because in our physical bodies we have forgotten to see the
spiritual. We will continue to feel the loss because our
intellectual memory tells us so, but our soul memory has
different information filed away, and unless it can be made
manifest in a way in which spirit is a recognizable state, we
will continue to feel the pain. I
give thanks each day that I was blessed in this lifetime to have
been born by two amazing people as my parents, and enhanced even
further by the grace of being a mother, myself, to two of the
most beautiful souls in God's creation. It hasn't always been an
easy road to travel. But I'd like to think that, along the way, I
have tried hard to learn my lessons. My
children are the lights of my life and I am eternally grateful to
both of them for the life lessons I have received through them.
Just as certainly, I know there are more lessons ahead through my
blessed grandsons, Nathanial and Jacob who were born through my
beloved son and daughter-in-law, and with the expected arrival of
the newest member of the family sometime in September through my
beloved daughter. Family,
to me, means home and without it I am lost. I am blessed, I know.
But, it is not a rare phenomenon. All families are blessed. We
just need to know that. Reconnect with your family, if you need
to. Cry if you have to, but most of all laugh if you can. After
all, we all know that laughter is good for the soul and your
family is your soul. Friendship
Love: There's a famous saying that goes
something like this: "You can't pick your family, but you
can pick your friends." Well, apart from the fact that I
might disagree with the part about picking family because I
believe that we do, the meaning of the saying comes through loud
and clear. Our friends are a conscious choice. Our family is an
unconscious choice -- a soul choice. When
we meet a stranger, we can choose whether or not we want to get
to know them better. We are far more likely to make that effort
with a new friend than we are with members of our family. That's
because we take our family for granted. We feel we don't need to
get to know them because they will always be there. Yet, even
still, we are tempted to fall on our laurels with friends when
our efforts have finally paid off and we think we are safe in
their friendship. But have we allowed them to know us? Isn't it
true that we quickly learn, when we cease to make those efforts,
that our circle of friends slowly dissipates and we can find
ourselves alone again? Well,
then we say, "there's always our family!" And that's
not a bad thing, but it is also why we need to treasure our
friends because our friends can be the source of comfort,
stability, encouragement, learning and ultimately, our peace,
because they will usually tell us the truth. The
importance of harmony in our own personal friendships is that
without it, there is no possibility of it spreading outwards
towards others to blend into, ultimately, world harmony and
peace. We are directed to lead by example and the only way to do
that is to nurture our own circle of friends so that they may go
out and nurture their own circle of friends -- and so on. The
origin is - Home. The moral is - Love. It's the law of nature.
Amazing! Finally,
I would like to thank those of my own circle of friends and
family who have stopped to take the time to give me the blessing
of their love. All of them, in their own unique way, have
encouraged me throughout this process of my growth, and without
whom I would never have been inspired to have gone this far on my
journey........Even if some of you reading this missive would
have preferred otherwise! (A little humor never hurt anyone!) God
bless you everyone and be happy! With
light and love as always, NEW
PAGES Continue
to access the newsletter now directly on our site. Every month,
the newsletter will be published at SpiritLight at
Home and you can find this month's issue by
clicking on: http://www.spiritlighthome.com/NewsletterFebruary.html Each
month, you can find it by typing in the appropriate month. For
example: http://www.spiritlighthome.com/NewsletterFebruary.html and so on.
The October, November and December/January issues are now active. IN
MEMORIAM February
1st saw the First Anniversary of the loss of the crew of the
Space Shuttle Columbia. We remember them fondly: Shuttle
Commander Rick D. Husband Pilot
William C. McCool Payload
commander Michael P. Anderson Mission
Specialists: David
M. Brown Kalpana
Chawla Laurel
Clark Israel's
first astronaut, Ilan Ramon The
nation and world grieves for the crew and their families and
loved ones. Their courage and boldness is an inspiration. We pray
that their families find guidance and solace in their faith and
friends. http://www.spiritlighthome.com/Columbia.html INSPIRATIONAL
THOUGHTS Brought
to you from various resources around the Globe. We embrace all
religions at SpiritLight at Home and will endeavor to bring to
you inspirational stories that can be applied to your own
beliefs. Here is a true story, unedited, sent to me by a dear
member of the family about the power of miracles..... GUARDIAN
ANGELS ON MT. BLANC by
David
Moignard "I
remembered, for no apparent reason, an incident that occurred in
the Alps, several years ago; I thought that you might be
interested. I
was leader of a ski-mountaineering expedition, based originally
in Chamonix for two or three days, before getting down to the
real business. On the first day I took the party up to about 300m
on the lower slopes of Mt. Blanc, to practice crevasse rescue. On
the way down, on skis, me leading, we were suddenly, and I mean
suddenly, engulfed in cloud and drifting snow and were in a white
out situation. I don't know if you have ever encountered a total
white out but you don't know left from right or up from down. I
closed everyone up and set off, slowly, downhill, glancing back
every so often. At one point, I stopped and there was no sight of
the others. (This was because John, my deputy leader had a
problem with his bindings and stopped to fix it) I waited for
several minutes expecting them to catch up with me. Eventually I
switched my avalanche rescue transceiver to "receive"
but heard nothing, which meant that they were more than 65m away
from me. I tried blowing my whistle, no response. Eventually, I
tried retracing my tracks but they were obliterated by driving
snow. Suddenly
something (someone) told me to stop. Stop I did and remained
motionless for a few minutes. A slight puff of wind cleared the
mist and I found my ski tips on the edge of an 800m (2,500 ft)
drop into Switzerland. I made a hasty retreat and eventually
descended through cloud and made my way to the upper station of
the ski lift. No word of my party. I skiied down to the next
station, no party. Back to the top station. All
the party was there, apart from Andy Renshaw. He had gone in
search of me. Oh God! I had visions of having to tell his wife
that we had lost him ......... but, eventually, after an
interminable period he appeared out of the mist. Can
you believe this? Andy had followed some ski tracks, which
petered out, and he suddenly stopped, didn't move for a couple of
minutes, then the cloud lifted slightly and he found himself on
the edge of a col (probably the same point where I stopped)
looking down 800m into Switzerland. I'll
let you form your own conclusions. Very thought provoking!" Thank
you, David! Wow! DEIRDRE'S
FAVORITE LINKS (Just
favorites in my bookmarks - no profits made here. Any advertising
(if any) is placed at the end of the newsletter.) The following
links come from the Cool Tricks and Trinkets
Newsletter by Charles Kessler. Sign up here
for his cool subscription: cool-tricks-join-request@list.adventive.com 1.
The BBC's Science of the Mind Web Site - Psychology Tests
and Interactives - Spot the fake smile; What flavor is your
Personality? What sex is your brain? Click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/
2. John
and Nancy Wilton's SpiritSearchers - Here's
a twist. "We are Paranormal Investigators located in New
Jersey. We are not psychics or mediums. We claim no special
abilities in the occult." Just plain old ghost hunters huh? An
interesting site with some curious photographs. Click here: http://spiritsearchers.homestead.com/ 3. Rutger's
University Religion Dept - This site is
designed to advance research in matters of religion. As a global
forum that may be accessed instantaneously anywhere, the internet
promises to surpass the impact of the printing press on the study
of religion. Gutenberg made possible the family Bible. The WWW
puts a global library of free information on the desk of anyone
with a computer & telephone line. Click here:
http://religion.rutgers.edu/vri/ 4. The
Cockeyed Science Club - Since 1998, members
have been documenting odd science experiments preformed on
household items: from a history on bacon bits, to odd pranks, and
fun things to do with ink toner cartridges. Click here:
http://www.cockeyed.com/science/scienceclub.html HUMOR OF
THE DAY (Thank
you to everyone who
sends me fabulous jokes! I've got them all saved up and will get
to them in order.) This one I received from two different people A woman
brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgery. As she lay
her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and
listened to the bird's chest. After a
moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm
so sorry, Cuddles has passed away." The
distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure? "Yes,
I am sure. The duck is dead," he replied. "How
can you be so sure," she protested. "I mean, you
haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in
a coma or something." The vet
rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room, and returned a
few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's
owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put
his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from
top to bottom. He then looked at the vet with sad eyes a nd shook
his head. The vet patted the dog and took it out, and returned a
few moments later with a beautiful cat. The cat
jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird.
The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly
and strolled out of the room. The vet
looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said,
this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."
Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and
produced a bill which he handed to the woman.The duck's owner,
still in shock, took the bill. "$150!",
she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead?!!" The vet
shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the
bill would have been $20, but what with the Lab Report and the
Cat Scan ....." SUBSCRIBERS'
SITES Many of
our subscribers have fascinating web sites. Please let us know
about yours so that we might mention it in this section. Write
to: deirdre@spiritlighthome.com Bless
you all and have a great month. Happy Valentine's Day and see you in
March! http://www.spiritlighthome.com http://www.spiritlightworks.com Please
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"I met
in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was
old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water
passed through his shoes -- and the stars through his soul."
– Victor Hugo
"What does
love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet
to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and
want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That
is what love looks like." - St.
Augustine "Someday,
after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness
the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the
world, man will have discovered fire."
- Pierre Tielhard De Chardin (French
Christian Mystic) "Real
love stories never have endings." - Richard
Bach"Love
is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual
journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the
acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential
reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it,
to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of
life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us."
- Marianne Williamson "Love
is not blind -- it sees more, not less. But because it sees more,
it is willing to see less." - Rabbi
J. Gordon "Love is a
perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns
on you with a miniature machine gun."
– Matt Groening (American
Screenwriter) "Every
day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the
love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish
prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses
happiness as well." - Mary
Cholmondeley (British Author)
