There is an inner life of complete perfection that exists at the center of everything; otherwise, nothing could be. We should identify ourselves with this perfect pattern of our being, claiming its reality in our experience and continuously knowing we are animated by the Living Spirit.
— Ernest Holmes

Daily Guide for March 22:
Designed in Perfection

By Rev. Joanne McFadden

The long-lived mourning cloak butterfly provides an amazing example of Spirit's ingenuity and perfection. In the summer months, it enters a period of estivation, a summer sleep, to avoid predation. When it wakes up in the fall, the mourning cloak's dark color helps it blend right into tree bark so predators can't see it. If it is about to become a meal, the butterfly plays dead, dropping to the ground amidst fallen leaves that offer camouflage. If startled, the butterfly makes a clicking noise, which startles predators. That, coupled with opening its wings to display bright blue and yellow colors, helps keep it from being attacked.

When it hibernates, the butterfly's body reduces its water content, replacing it with glycerol and sorbitol, both of which have antifreeze properties that keep the butterfly from freezing to death in the winter. Hairlike bristles on its body also help insulate it from the cold and allow the butterfly to emerge from hibernation in mid-March, when temperatures are still chilly.

The butterfly's dark outer-wing color helps it absorb the sun's heat and warms up its body. Simply put, the mourning cloak's body is divinely designed, as is all in the Universe, including you and me. Spirit knows what it's doing and has created each of us with everything we need to thrive. Remembering this, I give great gratitude for the perfection and divine order in the universe, and I recognize that that perfection includes me.

Affirmation: I marvel at the perfection of the universe and everything in it, including me. I am divinely designed and always equipped for life.

A Celebration of Newness

On its website, Mystic Heart Spiritual Centers includes an Easter message from its director, Rev. Diana L. Johnson, RScM. The following is an excerpt from her message.

“In New Thought and mystical traditions, Easter is a celebration of the newness of every moment, and of the new possibilities and opportunities present in every day of our lives. It offers an opportunity, with its preceding season of Lent, to fast from all that no longer serves us, and to feast on the goodness of Life. …

“The word Lent derives from the Anglo-Saxon and is the word for spring, which is a verb meaning to lengthen. The season of Lent begins in the spring when the days become noticeably longer. In recent times the celebration of fasting and feasting has been a 40-day cycle to honor the 40 days of prayer and fasting Jesus spent in the wilderness, dealing with the temptations of mind and body. The number 40 is sacred in many wisdom traditions, and is a symbol of spiritual completion, of the time it takes for a new state of consciousness to be reached. It means that we stay with our practice for as long as it takes.

“The season of Lent, and its culmination on Easter Sunday, is a season of spiritual growth, a time for progressive unfoldment, for the dying off of old habits and patterns, and the soul's resurrection as new life expressing, and as the expansion of awareness and the raising of consciousness.”

This Easter Sunday, we invite you to reflect on Nona L. Brooks' words in “Mysteries:”  “Glorified by the baptism of the Spirit, we go forth powerfully equipped to meet life.”