 Hi, today's episode of We Are Only One is brought to you by mountgox.com and carpevium.com and mesagrill.com. Hi everyone, welcome to the episode seven of We Are Only One. Today we're going to talk about hope and love and some unity principles and some practical sharing from experience, my own experience and my wonderful guests experience on how to keep our center, how to stay aligned with the divine inside of us. And so without further ado, I would love to introduce Reverend Karen Epps, our distinguished beloved guest. She is a unity minister who has served in the ministry at Miami, at Dallas and now unity Beaverton in Oregon. She is a very powerful speaker. I have experienced her personally and she leads wonderful meditation retreats if you ever have a chance, please check them out. I'm also going to give you her website. If you want to get in touch with her after the show, I'm sure many of you will want to connect with her. And her website is revrevk at unityglobalheart.org. So welcome, Karen. Hey, thanks Jude. It's wonderful to be here with you and everyone who's tuning in to us this afternoon. So many blessings to you. Well, thank you and many blessings to you too. And I know in discussing today, these are times where we really need some hope and very glad we're going to share from our personal experiences about what to do to stay centered. Many people have lost their jobs, are struggling with home ownership. Just many different things have happened to challenge our inner peace and to challenge our hope. And so I'm really happy, I feel it's really important today to share our own personal journeys a little bit on how our ever changing lives are unfolding. So if you wouldn't mind starting us off on that, I appreciate it. I'll be glad to. You know, when we were preparing for our time together today, we were talking about how to keep hope alive in our ever changing now. Yes. And I think that's one of the central pieces to retaining a sense of inner peace is to know that we are in fact in an ever changing now. And what often I find has happened for me and in counseling with people and listening to folks who come to see me share about what's going on in their lives is often what gives us the most difficulty is that we either wait too long or we are resistant to making the adjustments that we need to make in order to bring us into alignment with what's going on in the ever changing now. Yes. That makes sense, right? Right, I'm with you. Because we're still looking to have our circumstances be the way we have already either experienced or idealized or conceived them to be. And that's where our difficulty arises is in trying to hang on to that attachment, much like Buddha in his original teaching said, right, that the cause of life of suffering is attachment. And that often is what I think gives us trouble and diminishes our ability to experience and hold on to hope. I agree. And just I think for many people accepting that what once was is no longer. And not quite sure, like we're living in the question mark as our dear friend Chris Jackson of Miami said, and how true that is. And when we're used to having the at least illusion. The illusion, yeah. Which it is all illusion, right, of stability. But now it's, the veil is being removed in a very dramatic, quick way, which I think leads to people really questioning what is real. And in a way, there's a big blessing in that. I think because we're getting to the spiritual truths and the fundamental things and that the material isn't what is true. Well, I would agree with you that I mean, this has been the experience that I've had as my life shifted over the course of this last year. And as you know, I've entered into what I'm calling a nomadic phase of my life where literally, you know, my belongings are in storage. I was no longer living in one particular location and was making changes in my life to really come into greater alignment with my own spiritual truth. And there was a point there where I was wondering, where am I going to live? Yes. And in the course of a conversation with a friend, and I had sat down and I'd made a list of people that I know who I felt I could approach and say, you know, can I come stay with you for a period of time. And another friend suggested someone to ask that had never even occurred to me and I thought, oh my God, how wonderful is this possibility. I contacted those friends and said, you know, I'd really like to be able to come stay with you if that's possible and they opened up their home to me completely. Now, why I want to share this is if I had continued to hold on to a particular way that my living situation needed to show up, I would not have been available to receive first my initial friend's suggestion and then secondly to act on it. Okay. So that's a big piece around our unity teachings. And I think a part of what going back to as I started to say earlier about, you know, Buddha in teaching about, you know, attachments through to suffering in our unity teachings. We speak of it in the way in which we perceive our world will dictate how we experience it. So if we perceive our world and our experience as something that is less than desirable or is not in alignment with what is our highest good, we will really push against it and close our mind to this field of potentiality. Yet, when we can draw on the realization that how we're perceiving it will dictate how we experience it and open ourselves up to what our options, what is it that spirit is really trying to bring forth in my life? Where is that next step going to take me? I really, at least in my own experience anyway, I feel that that opens us up to greater opportunity and really just not even knowing what fantastic kinds of opportunities can come our way through that. If that makes sense. That totally makes sense. And I think that being openness, having that openness to be flexible, to change our thinking, to be open to spirit's guidance is a very powerful tool right now. And realizing that we always have the freedom to look at something a different way. We can choose again. And just because the world in form as we knew it is now changing, so dramatically, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that we've been conditioned that this is the way it's supposed to look, shall we say. And so I think there is a challenge in letting go of our preconceived notions and our attachment to form and our attachment to things that we think will bring us happiness. And just in your story, you saying being open to asking and hear these people open their home to you. And this has turned into a wonderful thing. Well, one of the blessings that has come from the experience is that the relationship I had with my friends deepened while we were sharing space. It also opened me to a new awareness of how profound communal living can be. Yes. Which was not something that I had really experienced outside of the nuclear family or perhaps someone with whom I was in a love relationship. You know, again, kind of the more typical ways of sharing space with someone. And I was introduced to another way of being in communal living that then took me for a short period of time into another location in Northern California where I consciously and very intentionally entered into a communal living arrangement for near somewhere around two months. And once again, it was a broadening of my own horizons, opportunity to connect with people, really experience sharing in a different way. And what also came out of it is in both of these instances with my friends and with the other communal sharing time is we all got to a place of recognizing that the giving and receiving are in fact one motion. Okay, and we've talked about this, you and I before, about giving and receiving are in fact one motion. So while I was ostensibly on the receiving end, they truly were also on the receiving aspect of the experience because they were able to see greater dimensions and facets of themselves. I very much have experienced very similar things recently. I needed help and I reached out to someone, a family member, and the joy that I had in just reconnecting with them and then them giving me the help that I needed was just such a beautiful feeling, not only of hope and it solved the situation that I couldn't have worked out myself, but it, like you said, for your friends, you reconnected at a deeper level and I feel, I mean, we know that we're never alone and we always have our connection with the divine, but sometimes when we're challenged, we get into that illusion of separation and to have this, it was like a cosmic hug, you know, in asking and receiving and a friend of mine said, in asking for help, you are also providing an opportunity for someone to give and to experience that side of the two, the giving and the receiving are both really blessed and it's a wonderful, interesting new way for me to look at things, to create a space in a sense blessing people who are blessing you by supporting you and it's kind of, it goes around and around the circle and I know that's also connected in with the law of circulation and having an abundant, prosperous, unconsciousness outlook. Absolutely. You know, what you're describing in how your friend characterized the opportunity for you, to me is about this shift from an idea of going beyond even reciprocity into a true awareness of mutuality. Okay, there's a mutual exchange. There isn't any hierarchy in this realm of giving and receiving. It isn't that one is, even in a sense, helping another per se as it is that both parties or everyone who's involved in it is actually coming to it from the same plane of, in the mind of God anyway, you know, from the same plane of being together, in this seamless fabric of consciousness. Okay, so there isn't a hierarchy in the sense that one is doing for someone as an even an act of kindness, although we express it as kindness and generosity and we use those kinds of words again to try and characterize it, but in the mind of spirit, in the realm of consciousness, it is the same. It is that seamless unified field of consciousness and an awareness that whatever I do to you, I do to me, and whatever I receive from you, I receive in me as well. So there's not a separation there. And the more I believe that we can actually attune our minds and our way of interacting with one another to this idea of mutuality, I believe that a lot of the duality that we see playing out and how that shows up in our finances and all kinds of the realm of the human experience starts to get smoother because we begin to recognize that it is, in fact, this one expression of spirit that is showing up in a myriad of forms. Yes, I think that's a really important point, the mutuality, because we are all interconnected and we are all one. And the worldly condition, sometimes I wonder if everything that's happening isn't happening to kind of clarify for us what's really important in life, you know, each other, friends, family, love, supporting each other, realizing that we really are on a level playing field in spirit. And no one is greater than another. And I think that some of the stripping away of the worldly things is resulting in different behavior, different realizations. The sweetness of little things is really coming out a lot more now, I think, and appreciating the simple things in life and the very important ones that money doesn't buy. No, I agree with you. Something Michael Beckwith, Reverend Michael Beckwith said not too long ago, and actually I believe Reverend James Trapp coined the same idea as that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste, you know. And so really crisis, or we use the word crisis to try to express something that has occurred unexpectedly generally, unexpectedly, or in some way has brought about upheaval. And yet I agree that a crisis is an opportunity to have a wake-up call, it's an opportunity to look at is there something here about how I want to navigate the circumstances of my life differently. Now, it doesn't always have to come through crisis. I don't mean to sound apocalyptic here because I don't believe that. What I do recognize, though, is that what one person calls a crisis may not look like it to another. So I want to use the word crisis in a very broad sense. And then, of course, there are ways in which it really literally shows up in a very large way. But this idea of crisis is a disruption of the status quo in some way, shape, or form. That, again, if we can come back to how do we hold on to hope, I think part of being able to retain hope in those kinds of circumstances is to acknowledge and recognize that they are normal and natural occurrences in the realm of time and space. I mean, it's not out of the ordinary. We think it's out of the ordinary. Yet change is something that is going on constantly. There are just times where we're more aware of it than others. So holding on to hope and retaining that inner peace is also a part of acknowledging and knowing that it is always happening and just recognizing that in this moment, I'm more aware of it than perhaps I am in others. I agree. I agree with that. When you, I find meditation to be extremely helpful when I'm knocked off the mat, so to speak. And I wonder if you would share a couple of ways you feel would help people if they're feeling challenged with grasping the concept that all is in divine order and that there are blessings in everything. Well, you've come to one of my favorite subjects and something that I believe in very deeply. The analogy that I've been working with very profoundly in my life over the past several months is the idea of a tree. So if you can picture, or maybe you're even looking out a window like I am right now and I can see a full tree in front of me. So at the top and at the visible level, you see the leaves. If it's perhaps a flowering tree or a fruit-bearing tree, you may even be able to see the fruit and the flowers that are visible. Yet below the surface in the soil, you have the entire root system of the tree, not the least of which is the main root, what's called the taproot. And the taproot is what goes the most deep into the soil and is the main artery through which the tree receives water and the nutrients that are in the soil. And then the rest of the root system goes out from there. To me, meditation is that main taproot. If you could then now, if we take it into the physical being, our body, think about your spine. So the spine runs from the base of the neck all the way down to the tailbone. It runs really through your entire body, and it is the main structure of what holds our body erect. And certainly in different spiritual traditions, when we think about the chakra system, we recognize that there are various energy centers that are running through the entire body that connect us from really truly the very crown chakra at the top of our head, all the way down to our feet, the ends of our toes planted into the ground. I see meditation as the way in which we take this connection that we have in spirit and bring it fully into our consciousness, literally in mind, in terms of in our head, and all the way down through the body, energizing every center of our body and then running throughout the nervous system into the very ends of our fingers, the tips of our toes. Much like the tree does, without that deep taproot, what we see then expressing from above becomes compromised. A tree that's dwindling, unable to bear fruit or flower, generally its root system has got something infected. So for us, this idea of hope and remaining connected in an ever-changing now, that taproot into our spiritual tradition, our practice, to me, becomes the grounding that even though at a surface level, there may be a little dryness on some of the leaves or a piece of fruit here or there that's starting to wither or flower that is in the decline, the overall experience, the overall structure of the tree is intact. And that's what allows the deep sense of knowing, even though at a surface level, I may be freaking out. I mean, if you had been listening to that phone call I had with my friend who suggested contacting these other ones, I was lancous. Where am I going to move? So while there was this anxiousness that was showing up, yes, it's there, at a very deep level, I knew that I was OK. Yes. So meditation, to me, in a practice of setting aside specific period of time in the day, whether it's in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening, but a specific period of time to literally, as Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore would speak about, to enter into the silence. And we can go into a variety of practices that will help us get to the silence. At its very simplest, it's sitting still. In my mind, it's about eliminating as much external noise as possible, really not using music, to truly just sit, be still, and focus even on one's breathing. That's very simple ways to focus on the breath. And allow whatever thoughts arise to simply arise, that's what thoughts do. That's the purpose of the mind, is to generate thought, one of its purposes. And to just sit and be still and allow ourselves to decompress. That's what starts to open us up into the spaciousness of the now moment. The spaciousness of what is also spirit. Because spirit is emptiness, spirit is also fullness. The formless and the form. I believe that to the degree that we are able to connect ourselves with the formlessness and the spaciousness, the emptiness of spirit, we can then have a greater recognition of the form and the fullness of spirit. And be able to connect with it in ways that might not have been visible to us otherwise. So this piece around meditation. Another aspect of that around meditation is coming into prayer and the act of standing in a spiritual truth and speaking from that spiritual truth, not only alone, but with others. And that's where a real blessing of having spiritual community can inform and be a part of our lives. Because we can be with others who can pray with us. Certainly one of the great gifts that unity brings to the world is the Silent Unity Prayer Ministry that's available 24-7, literally 24-7 for people to call and receive prayer. Because sometimes we need God with skin on it. I think the two are closely linked and are elemental in retaining and connecting to hope in this ever-changing now. Beautiful. Thank you very much for taking us through that. I feel more peaceful already. I feel the expansiveness. And right now I'd like to take an opportunity to break and to thank our sponsors for supporting us to be in the form that we are currently in right now. So I'll be back with you to pick up on community in just a minute. OK? Excellent. Excellent. So today we would like to thank our sponsors for their wonderful support. And we encourage our listeners to support them as well. The first one is mountgox.com. That's mtgox.com, an online exchange service for bitcoins. They now take euros, the British pound, the Australian dollar. And soon they will be taking the Canadian dollar. So check them out, mountgox.com. And carpavm.com. That's c-a-r-p-e-v-m.com. Say it with video. We know that this is a web world. And carpavm will help you seize your market and capture market share. Charlie works very closely with you from beginning to end to make the impact your video needs to get your customers. So check them out. And Mese Grill, m-e-z-e-g-r-i-l-l.com, where authentic Mediterranean food meets modern flavor. They are now serving breakfast as well. They're located at 8th Avenue and 55th Street in New York, just a couple of blocks south of Columbus Circle. And I can personally recommend them. I've had a lot of delicious Mediterranean food. And they're hummus and they're tabooi. It's out of this world. So please give them your support as well. We thank you all. So, dear Karen, back to community and meditation. Meditation, literally when you were speaking, I felt the spaciousness just expanding. And what a wonderful approach that is to go into the silence and how different it is than being distracted. Quite often, I think one part of us feels that we can be peaceful, having a quick fix by going to a movie, turning on the TV, getting distracted with outside stuff. And I love that. And I'm certainly not putting it down. But I find when I really need centering, just what you were saying, that meditation is the way to go. I mean, it's just going inside and feeling the presence, as you said, and connecting. And I have attended some of yours in Miami, and they were fabulous, fabulous. And I know those listening are agreeing, shaking their heads. And then the sense of community to help each other in whatever, to celebrate the good times, and to help each other through some challenging times. And I think, again, back to my experience with a family member recently, one gesture just expanded my whole field so brilliantly. And I know that person felt good, too. And that's what part, to me, the deeper meaning of what life's about, and the community take. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I believe that in our changing society, we are invited to reconsider how we characterize community. OK? I think there's a lot of rich opportunity. For there's the one sense of community where we experience it one-to-one physical proximity to people who are more gathered in the same space, again with the physical proximity. And as we are experiencing and developing greater advances in our technological capabilities, community gets to be expressed in online formats. So like what you and I are doing right now, I'm having an experience of community being here with you, seeing you on camera. There are folks who are going to experience us also on camera or hear us through some sort of audio format. So that's another way of being able to experience community. And I want to bring this up because I oftentimes hear them referred to as opposing concepts or opposing community. One will say, well, we can only experience community if it's in physical proximity. And then there are some who really advocate for online community and see it as an either or. And I don't think that it's an either or. I think that it is a both and. Certainly, we don't want to be in complete isolation without physical contact. So I think there's a very important aspect of that. At the same time, our ability to connect with one another in remote locations to simultaneously participate in an activity because we have this technology that allows people to tune in whether they're in on another continent, an entirely different time zone, quote unquote, we can touch one another in different ways. And I think that this is important as we are reaching out and as we are wanting to experience people and know ourselves in the context of community, that we have much broader ways of being able to experience it. So I want to hold that in our conversation about the importance of community is that it is both there. Now, certainly, I have a bias in bringing that to the forefront as well because, as you know, part of my passion is around online community. And that is really a direction that I'm wanting to go with the ministry of my own of Unity Global Heart. I've already told you my website's not fit for human consumption right now. So I want to tell you folks, if you go and you look at it, you're going to say, wait a minute, this is old. And it's true. It is. And part of why I think I'm saying this is it might give me an opportunity to really get on and germinate some content around that. So I'm passionate about the online community through Unity Global Heart with an awareness that people are able to reach out and touch one another in so many different ways. And then in Unity of Beaverton, which is now a physical community that I'm having the opportunity to minister in, there's bringing together of both that there's an online community that we can share with one another, that we can write about how we are having our life experiences, and then there is the physical community of being able to literally reach out and touch someone. I also think that that's been part of the beauty for me around Facebook, which is another way that people can connect with me. And probably one of the most direct ways in an online format is to connect with me on Facebook. And I'm there under my name, Karen Epps. Because I've been able to find us, and I say us in a broad sense, of being able to share with one another's lives in a very real time way through online medium. So all of this is about supporting one another. All of this is about being able to reach out. All of it is about how is it that we share and receive with one another while we are walking through this, as I call it, realm of time and space, our lives. Yes, and we're so aligned because that's the whole premise around only one TV. We are only one is an international organization a global connection. And we have people in the studio and we use Skype to reach and our audience is global. And if we truly feel we are interconnected, we wanna get that message out to many different people. And you mentioning Facebook too, I mean the popularity of that alone is a testimony to how things have changed and how many people feel community via the net and via the web, you know, and that is our goal here too. So I just wanna do a little plug, only one TV.com and people can find you and find the show and archives of many of the other shows we do by going there and hitting on show. And for us it would be we are only one but we offer other shows on different topics too for two enriched people. But the whole goal behind the founders was that only one TV it's a very significant resonating with what you said. And in connecting with that, what that brings up for me is in these times to be mindful of what resources we have at hand. And Facebook is a big one. I have a lot of friends and I'm sure you do as well who post a quote or an inspiration or something. It could be a sentence or it could be paragraphs or it could be a talk and that uplifts my whole day. And I wonder if you'd comment on different resources that you are aware of or that have helped you or you'd recommend to people. I'll touch briefly on one of my favorite stories that comes out of the Hebrew scriptures and it's in Second Kings and it's the story of a prophet by the name of Elisha and a widow comes to see him because her husband has died, she's a widow and she has two children, she's in debt and her children are going to be sold into slavery and she comes to this prophet and she says to him, you know, I need help. I've been doing all my prayer work, I'm God fearing and yet this is happening to me. And while at a certain level it may sound a little callous his response to her was, what do you want me to do about it? What do you want me to do about it? And he redirects her by saying, what do you have? Okay, what do you already have? And her initial response to him is, well, I have nothing. And then there's the, oh, by the way, except for this jar of oil. And from there he says, we'll take the oil, gather up vessels from your neighbors, shut the door and start pouring the oil. Now I want to use this as an opportunity to answer your question about resources. We all have in our possession a gift, a talent, a skill, friends, neighbors, you name it, it is there. We already have it. To me, the essence of that story is about start with what you have. Ask yourself, what is it that is here that is already available to me? From there, we can open up to then what are the resources in the landscape of our lives? So certainly we've talked about being able to use online community as a way of resource. I know here at Unity of Beaverton, we are connected with a larger organization that distributes food and we have a food bank that's available in our community for people to be able to come to, both within the Unity of Beaverton community, the Literary Life Spiritual Community, but the larger communities as a whole. So there are people who are making basic necessities available to us, never underestimate speaking to someone that you don't know. I can't begin to tell you how many stories I've heard from people who have come to meet with me or are sharing with me about their lives who said, you know, I just started talking to this stranger, and it led to X, whether it was a job opportunity or food or shelter, you just never underestimate, I got to emphasize this one, talking to someone you don't know because you never know where it's going to lead you, how it is that the stones that are making up the path or the bricks that are making up the path that we're walking. So I think that those are some of the ways that we can very tangibly make use of or delve into what is it that I already have and recognize that when we focus on what we already have, we start pouring this oil, okay, and fill up the vessels of our lives with the movement of spirit in our lives and experience greater prosperity and abundance, because it's already there, okay? It's always, already, always, always, already there. It's about tapping into it. Yes, I think being mindful that it is already there is a huge key, and like you said, there are so many, I would call them walking miracles right in front of us that if we are consciously aware, and I know consciously aware is a very key concept for you, that they're there and to be open and to get out of our own way is one of my favorite phrases and trusting what's before you and not running away from it or hiding or thinking that we know the best way it should happen, but really being open and trusting that what's before us is there for a good reason. And something that's, I've come up and talking to a lot of people about their situation right now. A challenge is they feel some kind of blame. I think it's a big obstacle and either blaming themselves if I had done this and maybe this would have happened instead or feeling some kind of shame in admitting their circumstances when we're all in this collective situation of life is changing and there are perhaps more challenges than there were, but to let go of that blame is very key, I think, because it separates us from our feelings. We had David Friedman on one of the earlier shows and he was talking about how important it is to just sit with the physical sensation with whatever kind of discomfort you may be feeling and to acknowledge it, just sit with it, don't react to it, but just if we just sit with it and work through it, it will lead us to God and the divine and ourselves and reconnecting. And I think that it's important to be mindful to let go of blame because when we blame either ourselves and go into the boxing ring or an outside situation, we're not taking responsibility for our lives and we're not owning how we're feeling and we really need to be centered in how we're feeling to experience the allness and the possibilities that you spoke of. Wonder what you think about that? Well, I agree with you. I think that when we talk about blame, it's a projection for one thing. And like you said, it takes us out of what really are the feelings that are going on underneath and it's unproductive. I think if I were to put it in just a completely pragmatic sense, blame is unproductive because blame is always, I'm making this up as I'm saying it, but I think it's true. Blame is always about looking behind you. Because it's about something that has already happened. Right, right. So I think that I think that's true, that blame is always looking at something that's gone on before. And the reality of it is, is that there is nothing that I can do, any one of us can do to change something that's happened before. Okay, true. So blame takes us out of the immediacy of the moment. It takes us out of the experience of now because we're busy thinking about what already happened. When, if we can, as you said, sit with what is, sit with the feeling. We don't even have to do anything to feel it. It will happen, right? Okay, right. We're talking again about openness, feel the feeling. Which in, it's that very activity that allows it to pass through us. Okay, the feeling is what allows it to pass in order for us to take the next step into the greater good, our greater good. And so there's a very important piece there, as you said, about releasing blame. And I know that it, you know, I can say that and somebody goes, well, how do I do that? There's again, a level of hope and trust and realization that in some way, shape, or form, every experience that leads you to this now moment was absolutely an essential part of your journey. Yes. Okay, it was an essential part of the journey. In some cases it may be because we want to expand on more of what we found that we liked and considered positive. It may very well be that what we call a negative experience is opening us up to adjusting something about who we are and seeing another dimension of our own character and how we can enhance the godliness that is already within us. So that to me is a very important aspect of moving out of blame is to acknowledge that in some way, shape, or form, every single experience has been an essential part of the journey. And then standing where I am now, knowing what I know now, where do I move from this point? Okay, and that I believe is that piece of taking responsibility for our own lives of acknowledging that again, as we said earlier on, how it is that I am perceiving it is dictating my experience of it and that I can in fact open into a different perception which will shape a different reality for me. Yes. I think following with that, as you were speaking, what came to me was also realizing that we are worthy. It's very important that the blame can be an obstacle to love and to inviting the best into our lives. And that's one of the unity teachings that I really resonate with is the inherent worthiness and that we all deserve our highest good. Like we don't need to do certain things, it's inherent in us and that gives me lots of hope. I would absolutely agree with you. I thought I coined the phrase to tell you the truth and I heard Matthew Fox also used it, it was called Original Blessing. And I really love the doctrine of Original Blessing. I think that certainly in the context of our unity teachings that that is something that we offer into the world that is quite profound and beautiful is the idea of Original Blessing. We are inherently worthy. There isn't anything that one needs to do in order to earn worthiness. Worthiness is just as God is. It's always already there. It's our own ideas of ourselves and others that block us from it. And really that's a self-imposed idea. It is not an idea in the mind of God. If you'll allow me just a moment, I came across a writing by St. Teresa of Avila. Great. That I actually think is apropos at this moment. Great. And it's called Clarity is Freedom. And this is what she wrote. I had tea yesterday with a great theologian who asked me, what is your experience of God's will? I like that question for the distillation of thought, Hone's thought in others. Clarity, I know, is freedom. What is my experience of God's will? Everyone is a traveler. Most all need lodging, food, and clothes. I let enter my mouth what will enrich me. I wear what will make my eye content. I sleep where I will wake with the strength to deeply love all my mind can hold. What is God's will for a wing? Every bird knows that. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. So what is God's will for us? To experience our lives, to have what we need, to know that we are worthy of it, that we don't have to try to figure it out. What is God's will for a wing? Well, every bird knows that, to fly. So what is God's will for our lives? To experience the fullness of who we are, to experience the fullness of ourselves as individuals, and to experience the fullness of others in community, again, in this seamless whole where mutuality is the ground of exchange and seeing one another as the unique expressions of the divine that we are. I can't see or really think of anything truly more hopeful than knowing that in ever-changing times. Beautiful. You know, I also brought something to read from a different source and yet very resonant with your message too. And I was listening this morning to John Lennon's version of Stand By Me. And then I got down the subway to come here and there were three gospel singers going through the train and guess what they were singing. And of course, true story, Stand By Me. Just amazing. I'm just gonna, she... Now, why are you surprised? I loved it. I burst out laughing. It was just great. Once again, affirmation. Yeah, spirit shows up all the time. Yes. But the first stanza. When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we see. No, I won't be afraid. No, I won't be afraid. Just as long as you stand by me. And darling, stand by me. And I realized God is always standing. By us, as us, in us, through us. In each one of us. And I'm so grateful for that. And I'm so grateful for you as such a beautiful manifestation being on the show. I catch you, my friend. I wonder if you would close us with some prayerful thoughts. I believe that in many ways we've already touched on them, but I would invite you in this moment to join me in closing your eyes, if you're able. You know, to close your eyes and turn your awareness within. And to know that within you is the vast formless realm of the divine. And in tapping into this ultimate reality of the formless divine. Given expression in and through and as your life, there is the beautiful form that is also the profound expression of the divine, of love. And as we hold these two awarenesses of the formlessness in the form, the silence and the noise, we give thanks and deep gratitude for our walk in our journey with one another and in spirit. And so it is. Amen. Amen. Namaste. Namaste, my friend. Be well. You too. And namaste to everyone. Have a beautiful week. Many blessings. Remember you are the light of the world.