Signs of God’s love are everywhere when we choose to pay attention to them. There are opportunities for us to give love and receive love every single day. Smiles come to our faces as our prayers are answered in the funniest ways. It’s our responsibility to be aware of those opportunities.

I communicated last week with a friend (I’ll call her Faith) who is deeply involved with her church.  Her ministry is dedicated to serving the youth within her parish.  After ten+ years of working with them, she was wondering if it was time to move on.  In her words she said to herself, “I’m just not feeling it right now!”  She went on to say in her prayer to God, “I don’t think that I’m making a difference in their lives.  If you still want me to continue in this ministry, I’d appreciate some kind of sign”.

Faith went to the church that day to do some work and noticed a letter in her mail box.  She figured that it would be a letter from someone complaining about something.  What she found was a beautiful letter thanking her for her courageous and loving work for others within her ministry.  The envelope also contained a crisp $50 bill with instructions to “prayerfully use it where you see best in your work”.  The letter was mysteriously signed, A Friend.

Faith smiled to herself and said, “Good one, Lord.  You really know how to answer my prayers and give me a good slap on the head at the same time!”

After leaving the church filled with the love of God in her heart, Faith headed to the post office to mail a few letters. She accidentally missed the post office closest to her home and found herself driving toward the main post office downtown which is about 2 miles further from her home.

When Faith got into the post office parking lot, she noticed a van with fluorescent pieces of poster board taped to it with sayings written on them in black magic marker such as, “Free food. Feeding all families in need. Evangelical Ministries”.  Another read: “Love one another as I have loved you, says the Lord, Jesus Christ.”

A couple of seconds after noticing the van, a man got out of the driver’s side who looked very discouraged and worn down.  For some reason, Faith waived at the man and he approached her. Faith then said to the man, “Excuse me, but I think I’m supposed to give this to you.”  Faith handed the stranger the $50 bill.

The man (let’s call him Bill) went on to tell Faith that he was called into the ministry of feeding and worshiping with the hungry.  He lines up tables filled with food in the center of town each Saturday and feeds people while they pray together.  Because times have been so tough lately, he’s found the ministry’s finances so tight that he was unable to pay the rent on the van.  On that day, he got down on his knees and prayed, “Lord, You’ve called us to this ministry and You’ve always provided what we need to do Your work. But Lord, You know we have to rent this van to collect and distribute this food. And, Lord, we don’t have the $50 to pay for the van this week. I’m asking you to provide what we need.”

Faith and Bill  proceeded to pray with and for each other right smack center of the post office parking lot.  In addition to praying for each other’s ministry, they prayed that each would continue to have faith that God will always provide whatever they need to fulfill the ministries that He’s called them to.

Faith realized that when she was questioning her ministry, she was asking herself lots of  I and Me questions:  “ Am I still….?”,  “Is it good for me…?”  She noticed to herself that whenever our thoughts are focused on “I” or “me”, our thoughts drown out God’s thoughts.

Faith’s prayers were answered by God in the form of a hand-written letter, receipt of a $50 bill and prayers from Rev. Bill.

Rev. Bill’s prayers were answered by God in the form of kindness, prayer and a $50 bill from Faith.

Faith will allow us to pay the Bills.

Prior to the Fort Hood killings, Reverend David Rinas, a Lutheran Minister in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and Imam Hafiz Abdul Hannan from the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell (MA) had planned an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. The timing of their service could not have been any better. It was a great time for people within Massachusetts to learn more about Islam and other faiths different than their own.

When I saw the notice in my local paper announcing the service, I immediately tore the clipping out and entered the 7PM service into my Blackberry.  That slot was locked-in on my calendar for several days until I found out on Sunday morning that the New England Patriots-New York Jets games started at 4:15 (which meant it wouldn’t end until about 7:30PM)  The interfaith service would significantly cut-into an evening of relaxing football!

As it got to be about 5:30PM, it was pitch black, cold and raw in Massachusetts.  I was comfortably settled in front of the football game with the gas fireplace in our family room cranked to the temperature of a pizza oven. I had to decide whether to finish the football game while toasty warm, or change clothes, freshen-up and head-out into the dark, dreary night.

Why does doing the right think always make us feel good?

I strolled into the Trinity Lutheran Church at about 6:55PM after listening to the Patriots game on my car radio in the church parking lot up until the last minute.  Like most church services that I’ve ever been to, most of the people there were seated in the middle of the church toward the back.  There were plenty of seats available at the front on the left-hand side, so I headed in that direction so that I’d be able to see and have a little breathing room (H1N1 is everywhere!).

At about 6:58, about 6 people and an infant chose the row directly in front of my pew and settled-in comfortably making sure to completely obstruct this 5 foot 8 inch man’s perfect view of the lectern and altar.

After a short greeting by Rev. Rinas, John Kurland from Congregation Shalom lead us in this prayer:

God of all creation, we stand in awe before You, impelled by visions of the harmony of humanity.   We are children of many traditions–inheritors of shared wisdom and tragic misunderstandings, of proud hopes and humble successes.  Now it is time for us to meet and worship–in memory and truth, in courage and trust, in love and promise.

In that which we share, let us see the common prayer of humanity; in that which we differ, let us wonder at the freedom of all; in our unity and our differences, let us know the uniqueness that is God.

May our courage match our convictions, and our integrity match our hope. May our gratitude and thankfulness which brings us together today unite our hearts in love. May our faith in You bring us closer to each other.  May our meeting with past and present bring blessing for the future.

Amen.

What football game? At about 7:02, I knew that I had made the right decision to leave the pizza oven and venture into the cold church that was full of warmth.

The 80 minute service alternated between music and prayer. A member from each faith lead us in a prayer that was deemed appropriate by each of the clergy prior to the service.  They got together to decide how to focus on all that we had in common rather than focus on our differences.  I love that!

One of the guys in front of me who was obstructing my view had the red hymnal open but, was not singing.  It appeared as if he had a piece of paper in the hymnal that he was studying while pretending to be looking at the hymnal.

When it came time for the recitation from the Quran, that man got up and proceeded to the lectern. The most touching part of the evening for me was scripture sung from the Quran in Arabic.  His voice trembled from nerves at the beginning most likely because he was out of his comfort zone–I think that everyone else was too. He quickly settled in to singing the Word of Allah.  Muslims are serious about their faith.

Knowing the little that I do about meditation, the body is divided into 7-8 chakras (energy centers) that start from the base of the spine and proceed up to the tip of the head (the crown chakra). The chakras are called energy centers because these are the places where we have large collections of nerves that can frequently become stuck.  Yoga, meditation and chiropractic are all ways of making sure that these chakras are working properly. When each of them is working properly, our body is at ease and free from dis-ease.

Each of the chakras is related to a unique color and  note from the musical C-scale.  Having the scripture sung to me seemed to touch each of my chakras as his chanting resonated with each energy center from the base of my spine up to my crown.

What I now realized is that I had been lucky enough to sit in the section where the Muslims decided to sit.  In addition to the man who chanted from the Quran, the Imam’s wife was to my right and immediately in front of me was a young couple who had a 5-month old infant in a bassinet in-between them.  Amir (the Dad) could not have payed any more attention to his beautiful little daughter if he tried.  She was gorgeous as she sat there sleeping through most of the service waking up only to have the pacifier returned to her mouth or for a sip from the bottle. When Amir’s daughter occasionally woke up, her beautiful, sparkling eyes were looking directly into mine as if she were peering into my soul.  Her Dad turned around and looked at me for the first time to try and figure out who or what she was looking at so intently.

The keynote speaker was the Imam from the Islamic Society.  If I ever had a doubt about our ability to have Unity Consciousness become our collective reality across the globe, that thought was quickly removed. The Imam and each of the clergy from every faith focused on a common God and the common spirit present in every human.

While Imam Hannan was talking about Islam and how Muslims pray 5 times per day, he also told us how they are thankful for so many things including simple things like clothing.   He reminded us that each of us has so many things to be thankful for that we could never count all of Allah’s blessings bestowed upon us.  Well said.

He went on to say that although Thanksgiving is largely a North American tradition, we should include each member of our global family into our prayers of Thanksgiving and not restrict our thanks and blessings to the United States or Canada only.

The service ended with Rev. Rinas, suggesting that we introduce ourselves to each other before going into the hall for coffee and baked goods. Because of the H1N1 virus precaution, the Lutheran church members have stopped shaking hands and instead started touching each other’s wrists. Because Muslim women are prohibited from touching other men, we were asked to either bow or give a visual hello or sign of peace to each other.

I said hello to the man who had sung the Quran scriptures and told him what a great voice he had. He smiled with appreciation. Amir (the little girl’s Dad) had left the church for a few minutes when his daughter had started crying and didn’t hear the announcement about no hand shaking.   He gave me a big, bright smile that came close to matching the brightness of his daughter’s eyes as he extended his hand as a sign of peace. I ignored the no-hand-shaking rule and eagerly extended my hand to my new friend as I told him how lovely his daughter was.

I didn’t want to leave the football game and drive 15 minutes to get to get to the service. Amir and his wife got their 5-month old daughter bundled up and drove 45 minutes to get to the service to hear his friend – Imam Hannan – speak.  What was I thinking?

Our world is small.

We are all the same at our core.  We’re humans who fall in love with other humans.  We care deeply for our children.  Many of us have come to know God through the faith we learned as a child or deliberately chose as adults.  The more that we learn about each other, the more it becomes easy for us to love each other.

Knowledge brings us together, but it is knowledge of God’s love for us that makes it easy to love each other.

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We’re all connected to each other. We rely upon each other for love, friendship and everything else that we require to live. We can choose whether to embrace each other with love and compassion or to find fault with each other. From a Christian perspective, we look at each person in the universe as a member of the Body of Christ.  If each person is a part of the same body, it then becomes difficult for us to find fault with one of our body parts!

I’ll start today’s discussion about our connection to others with the definition of the word ego?  According to Webster’s II, ego is “the self, as distinct from the world and other selves.  The part of the psyche that is conscious, most directly controls thought and behavior, and is most aware of external reality. An exaggerated sense of self-importance.”

Is your ego (self) getting in the way of your relationship with God and others? For most of us the answer is yes.

From a spiritual perspective, I believe that the separate self does not exist.  We’re all connected spiritually.  It is our collective spirits that make us one with God and with each other.

So where do our problems come from?  We allow OUR egos to get in the way.  We become way too focused on ourselves and don’t focus enough on those around us. A new and better vision would be to look upon each other as brothers and sisters who are truly connected to us spiritually.

In Dr. Wayne W. Dyer’s book  “Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling”, he explains that concept exceptionally well:  “You can see why the word ego is often referred to as an acronym for edging God out.”  When we “edge God out”, we’re creating a huge barrier between us and God and between us and the rest of the people in the world. When we invite God in (igi), we begin embracing love, compassion and well-being for our self and others.

Once we embrace the concept of a spirit (God) that resides within us, we lose all of our fear including fear of death.  Dyer says “There is no death from the perspective of infinity so once you’ve removed the horror of dying from the equation, you’ll have a different perspective.”

In Deepak Chopra’s  “Secrets of Enlightenment CD” he tells us that “fear, addiction, craving and fear of death come from the experience of the separate self.”  When we isolate our “self” from God and others, life is very lonely and scary.  When we commune with God and others every day life becomes a “we” rather than a selfish “I”.  It’s a collective, united consciousness.

Ram Dass in Dyer’s Book explains his philosophy on the united or collective consciousness – our relationship to all other people:  “I’ve firmly come to the conclusion that there are no ‘thems’ for me anymore. I can’t be told who to hate, who to fight, who to subdue–I only see an ‘us’ in my heart.”

Can you stretch yourself far enough to embrace the concept of no more ‘“thems”?  If there are in fact no “thems”, the world becomes very small and we realize that we’re all in this life together.  I no longer feel lonely and isolated.  My “self” is gone.

How can we possibly hate others? How can we hate people who are our connected to us spiritually?  We are literally part of the same body. Our hatred stems from our lack of compassion and from our ignorance. If we believed that each person was connected to us spiritually, I’m convinced that we’d treat each other with dignity, respect and love.

Here is a segment from one of the Dalai Lama’s books – ‘Becoming Enlightened’ on the subjects of ego, self and hatred: “Seeing that defective states of mind such as lust and hatred are rooted in egotism, Buddha taught something that had not been explained before him, the view of selflessness. Buddha taught that a permanent unchangeable self, separate from mind and body, does not exist.  He taught that the self is set up in dependence upon the mind and body.”

In science, we try to isolate the mind and body from the spirit.  What Buddha is telling us is that the three are connected. Our self (spirit,consciousness) is one with the mind and body and can’t exist without them.  When the spirit (self, consciousness) dies, so do the mind and body.

Inviting and embracing God to live and flourish within us naturally has a tremendously positive impact on our mind and body.

The opposite of selfish is altruistic (selfless regard or concern for the well-being of others)

Later in the book the Dalai Lama explains the concept of altruism as part of the path to enlightenment.

Altruism is a source of goodness for yourself and others.

Medicine alleviating all troubles,

The great path traveled by the wise,

Nourishment for all who see, hear, remember, and contact it,

Possessing great efficacy for advancing others’ welfare.

Through it you indirectly achieve your own interests full.

–Tsongkhapa, Great Treatise On The Stages of The Path

The Dalai Lama continues by saying “The fame of other great teachers with great followings, such as Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, arose from the power of altruism.”

Those sound like pretty good mentors to me!

Let’s embrace and nourish the spirit that resides in ourselves and each other.

We ARE one in the Spirit!