Maybe What We Need Now is A Course in Miracles.

 Tuesdays with Jo

All through Greece and Italy, my 13-year-old daughter kept saying, “I could be in A Course of Miracles.” (Never take a teenager traveling.)

I’m not going to say how many years ago that was. However, I will say that now my daughter is the finest traveling companion I could ever wish for. However, she was young then and had a boyfriend at A Course in Miracles meeting. (A little motivation there.)

A book titled A Course in Miracles was the rage then, and we were going to a weekly meeting by the same name. Mainly it was a sharing of what miracle we had that week. We would draw from the cards that accompany the book and read it to the group. We used those cards as an oracle. It was fun and a gathering of like-minded souls. We laughed a lot and got a lot of hugs, and it was a fun time.

Strange that I didn’t know who wrote A Course in Miracles.  the word around was that Marianne Williamson wrote it, but she didn’t, although she was strongly associated with it. I guess she was promoting it. And people said the writings in A Course in Miracles was “channeled.” 

The funny thing is it was written by two arguing Professors whose boss told them to get their act together. 

They were Helen Schucman and William Thetford, Professors of Medical Psychology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

Our copy of Miracles must have ended up at Good Will along with a stack of other books. You know how some things are pertinent in our lives, and then for whatever reason, they melt away. Maybe we’re fickle or looking for the next great thing to give us either an adrenaline jolt or a new perspective.

Helen Schucman, one of the authors, wrote this about herself:

 “Psychologist, educator, conservative in theory and atheistic in belief, I was working in a prestigious and highly academic setting. And then something happened that triggered a chain of events I could never have predicted. The head of my department unexpectedly announced that he was tired of the angry and aggressive feelings our attitudes reflected, and concluded that “there must be another way.” As if on cue, I agreed to help him find it. Apparently, this Course is the other way.”

This morning I received an email from Steven Pressfield (The War of Art) who said he had the book, A Course in Miracles in his library. It isn’t an easy book to read, Pressfield said, but it’s one we should have on our shelves to pick up on occasion.

Hey, it was written by Psychology professors—that should tell us something. But, wow, the hit that woman got. It shows what can happen when a person is determined. Reading it, one would think it came from a Christian perspective, but it was intended to be non sectarian and is considered to be a universal spiritual teaching.

Maybe I need it on my shelf again. No, actually, I need it in my heart and soul. Perhaps it’s what the world needs right now, A Course in Miracles.

 The first entry in the book:

1. This is a course in miracles. ²It is a required course. ³Only the time you take it is voluntary. ⁴Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. ⁵It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. ⁶The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. ⁷It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. ⁸The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. (ACIM, T-in.1:1-8)

I remember one Course in Miracles card: “Live forever, you holy son of God.” 

It sounded like you were swearing at the person when actually you were blessing them. I used to tell my dog Jewel that. 

If you’re interested in learning more or reading any part of the book, it is available for free at https://acim.org

I just bought a used copy.

Don't Drain the Well

 Tuesdays with Jo

When I was under 6 years old a Hobo—as we called them in those days—came to our back door asking if we could spare any food. Without hesitation, my grandmother fixed a plate of food for him.

My folks said that men would ride the rails, and when the train stopped in our little town on Mt. Vernon, Ill., they would sometimes hop off, find a bite to eat, and move on. I’m sure my grandmother knew of people facing hard times. It was no disgrace or dishonor, and if someone showed up hungry, you fed them.

I don’t know if the man had stopped at other houses before ours. We had a simple house, we weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either, rather like the neighborhood, I suppose. My grandmother was widowed, had been since my mother was 12.  My father was in the war, my mother worked. We lived with no running water. We had a well in the backyard, the sort that was open on the top. The trick was to throw a bucket into the hole and draw up the water. I think there was a pump in the kitchen, so maybe we had a holding tank. We had an outhouse, electricity, and a furnace.

My Grandmother was an excellent cook. My stepdad said she made the best fried chicken, and I say she canned the best-pickled crabapples and mouth-watering dill pickles. Big ones, like you see at fairs, but her’s were better.

Except for the war hanging over our head–and I learned that war was the very worst thing that could happen. It surprises me that some people don’t necessarily feel that way, but I was young and innocent of the horrors I later learned and ran wild with the neighbor kids. We ate gooseberries that hung over the fence and sat under an apple tree with a saltshaker eating green apples. We put on our bathing suits in the summer and played in the water ditches, and we couldn’t wait for the first day of May when we could go barefoot. This was our way of living. We always had food, and my folks had the luxury of a car. I remember mom and her friends pooling their money for gas so they could go out on Saturday night.

Before my dad became a soldier, a mentally challenged boy lived next door. Often in the summers, my folks would get into water fights, and the neighbor boy loved it., He would egg my dad on, “Glen, I’ll get the water. I’ll get the water.” My mom would squeal and run up the stairs into the house. One time she broke her toe, tripping on the steps.

After being away from the house one day, we came home to an empty well. 

The boy had drained it.

It refilled.

Later my dad got a nanny goat, for he wanted to gain weight and had some stomach problems, and heard that goat’s milk would help. My dad would chain the goat to a stake and place it in various areas around the neighborhood to graze. The trouble was, no matter how deep he pounded in that stake, the boy would pull it out. The boy would then drive it around the neighborhood.  Soon the goat became so nervous my dad gave it away.

Why am I telling you this? I’ve been reading about feeding the homeless, and it caused me to think of Grandmother. And that sometimes it is not the most affluent who are the ones to help their fellow man.

I thought of the tent city in downtown Eugene, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I thought, why don’t we throw a couple of turkeys in the oven and take them down for a feast on the grass. I don’t know about the logistics of that idea or the health issues, but wouldn’t it be grand if when someone showed up hungry, we fed them?

 

Here's a quote from a reader. She found it on the inside cap of her Tazo iced tea.

"Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell."