Rise in One Common Accord

By Ernest Holmes

As never before, our thoughts, our meditations, our hopes and our prayers must rise in one common accord. And you and I should form the habit of taking definite time each day to pray for peace with justice — for there is no peace possible without justice. We should take time each day to pray, to know and to meditate on the thought — and to meditate affirmatively, with complete acceptance — that our leaders everywhere are being guided by the all-sustaining Wisdom and upheld by the all-sustaining Power of Good. And we should pray for the peace of our own minds, that we shall not become confused.

But faith without works is dead. We should not only pray, we should act, each contributing the best he has to the common purpose, each willing to make any sacrifice necessary — not a sacrifice reluctantly made, but as one who offers all he has for two great purposes — one, in a certain sense, a selfish one, for we all desire self-preservation, but the other in the greater sense that there can be no individual self-preservation without the preservation of all. …

For if the whole nation works together and prays together, a great moral and spiritual power, an actual soul force, will penetrate the whole world, helping to bring confidence and calm judgment and right action until the crisis shall have passed.

CSL Resources and Feedback

Staying at home and practicing social distancing sometimes means feeling isolated and lonely. CSL offers a number of ways to help you through this time, as we recognize that we are all connected.

Our World Ministry of Prayer offers a number of ways to support you through affirmative prayer. In the words of Ernest Holmes, “The secret of prayer and its power in the outward life depends upon an unconditioned faith in, and reliance upon this inner Presence.” Learn more here.

Through the CSL Facebook page, we’re offering a series of free concerts, called the Cozy Couch Concert Series, that you can access on Facebook. Upcoming concerts listed here.

To help keep your child — or your inner child — connected, Science of Mind’s website offers a set of 10 free coloring mandalas from CSL’s new Sacred Mandalas coloring book. You can download them to print and color here. Or you can find the full version of the book here.

In future newsletters, on the Science of Mind website and in upcoming magazines, we would like to feature stories of how our CSL communities are responding to the pandemic. In addition to live-streaming services, how are you supporting your local faith community? What outreach are you doing to your broader community? How are you helping others satisfy critical needs and calm the fear?

Please reach out to Julie Mierau to share your stories. Julie@JMWordsmith.com

Make the Decision to Change

Perhaps you want a new beginning in your life. Perhaps you want the pain you feel to end. Perhaps you must embrace the concept that embracing new beginnings frequently necessitates navigating smooth endings.

In the April 2020 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine, writer Kelly Robbins, RScP, offers a three-step guide to making the decision to change your life. The three things she says you need to make a true decision are:

1. Choice. “Stand in the power that you always have a choice,” she writes. “Your challenge may be to choose to be open and see what you may not have seen before.”
2. Commitment. “When you are committed, you play full out and are all in to achieve your goal.”
3. Urgency. “Urgency is something that comes from within,” Robbins writes, “and it’s your job to cultivate it within yourself.”

“It takes faith to embark on something new when there are no guarantees as to how it will end,” she says. “Having a clear understanding of Universal Law and the principles each of us have to work with, in addition to being open to seeing the truth about yourself, are the mystical keys to creating new beginnings with intention that allow you to flourish, serve and thrive as the miraculous soul you are.”

Tame Your Stress

Stress. In the midst of our unimaginable pandemic, stress invades our lives. We worry about the health and wellbeing of ourselves and those we love. We worry about how our lives will be forever changed. We worry about the state of the world and our role in it.

David Kessler, arguably the world’s foremost expert on grief, advises that the stress we are all feeling is actually grief. “We are feeling a number of different griefs,” he said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. “We feel the word has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. …

“The loss of normalcy, the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

As the saying advises, if you can name it, you can tame it.

Kessler suggests that acceptance is where our power lies. He advises us to “think about how to let go of what you can’t control. What your neighbor is doing is out of your control. What is in your control is staying six feet away from them and washing your hands. Focus on that.”

Finally, he says that now is a good time – the perfect time – to stock up on compassion. He believes that in dark times, we find light. “I believe we will continue to find meaning now and when this is over.”

– To read the entire interview, Click here.