Sacred Art, Sacred Activism

“Throughout history, human beings have given expression to God, the Divine,” writes artist Amy Livingstone. “Consider the cave paintings of Lascaux, the Hagia Sophia mosque in Turkey or the golden icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church.”

Livingston quotes the late Irish philosopher John O’Donohue, who said, “God is beauty.”

“Sacred art is born of the marriage between the Holy and the creative imagination,” she writes. For inspiration, she looks to artisans through history and draws from “the perennial wisdom woven throughout all our spiritual traditions and the ancient knowledge of our Earth-honoring ancestors.”

The August 2019 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine offers a showcase of Livingstone’s work, along with her explanation of what inspired her to create each piece. The “All Nations Tree of Life,” show above, was born from an urgent message from indigenous leaders, who warn us that humanity is at a crossroads. She quotes Chief Arvol Looking Horse: “Red, yellow, black, white — we are all one people. We must join together as a spiritual community in order to heal Mother Earth.”

“Through a scientific lens,” she explains, “DNA, shown here weaving throughout the roots, affirms this scientific reality.”

Awakened Action as a Pathway to Your Heart

Each day, the world calls to our hearts, asking that we awaken to our truth and live more fully from our souls. Annmarie Early and Annie L. Browning examine awakened action in the August 2019 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine. They write: “Awakening lived from the heart is a place of stillness that connects you to a source that is beyond you. It connects you to a divine union where you are fully within a larger existence. …

“Action that manifests from this place within is your true strength. It is the pathway for creating greater awakening in our world.”

They describe this awakening movement as one of release, of yielding to your true self. “As you position yourself more fully within the stillness of your heart,” they write, “you sync your rhythm with the greater heartbeat of all.”

From here, your awakened action emerges.

Kids with Special Courage

The Center for Spiritual Living in St. Augustine, Florida, created the Venus Manly Scholarship program several years ago to honor a member born with Cerebral Palsy. Venus died two weeks before her 15th birthday. The scholarship in her name honors her courage and tenacity. Last year Venus’ mom, Dr. Tonglia Manly, came forward with the idea of giving the scholarships to kids with special challenges – or as the center likes to say, kids with special courage.

Rev. Ken Wilcox says that meeting the applicants and hearing their stories is one of the most rewarding parts of his ministry. “They are nervous,” he says, “but eager to share their stories.”

He adds that Dr. Manly envisions a time when the center practically adopts the student applicants throughout their higher education — not just with funds but with calls and notes of encouragement, becoming mentors for them.

This year the center gave out awards to three students:

• Jack Kennedy, born with a rare auto immune disease that attacks his body
• Charlotte McCleary, both without sight
• Connor McDonough, who is overcoming many learning challenges

Rev. Wilcox adds, “The Center for Spiritual Living in St. Augustine is making a big difference in our community by sharing our teaching of inspiration and encouragement and doing what’s right in front of us to do to make the world a better place.”

Asilomar: Sermon By the Sea

— by Ernest Holmes

If it were not for that which echoes eternally down the corridors of our own minds, some voice that ever sings in our own souls, some urge that continuously presses us forward, there would be no advance in our science or religion or in the humanities or anything else. …

Find 1,000 people who know that and use it and the world will no longer be famished. How important it is that each one of us in his simple way shall live from God to God, with God, in God and to each other. That is why we are here.

And what we are taking back with us, I trust, is a vision and an inspiration, something beyond a hope and a longing that the living Spirit shall through us walk anew into Its own creation and a new glory come with a new dawn.

Now the Lord is in His Holy Temple. Let all the Earth keep silent before Him as we drink deep from the perennial fountain of eternal life, as we partake of the bread of heaven and as we open wide the gates of our consciousness that the King of Glory shall come in.

— Excerpted from “Sermon By the Sea” by Ernest Holmes, available in full at ScienceOfMindArchives.com.