The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.  Abigail Van Buren

One day a member of a spiritual community who participated regularly just stopped attending. After a month the minister decided to visit her. Guessing the reason for his call, she welcomed him in and offered him a chair by the fire. He made himself comfortable, and together they watched the fire dancing around the logs. After a time of reflection and silence, he got up, picked up one of the burning logs with the tongs, and placed it away from the fire. Returning to his chair they watched as the log slowly lost its radiance and glow and eventually died. Not a word had yet been spoken when the minister looked at the clock and indicated he had to go. He got up, returned the cold log to the fire, and they watched as the other embers immediately brought the life and glow back to it. As the minister went to the door, his hostess got up, gave him a big hug, and thanked him for his message—she said she’d heard him loud and clear, and she’d see him next week at services.

Sometimes when the routine of life knocks you off course, you might think you’ll find some extra time if you give up your spiritual practices. But when you feel depleted and tired, a community has a central flame that blesses you, and a love that can rekindle and awaken your spirit when it goes into slumber. The more you isolate yourself when you’re feeling down, the wider the chasm becomes. The gift of community is the energy and love it offers you in the downtimes. Don’t remove yourself—reach out and know the fire burns with more light when you are there to receive your blessings.

Spiritual Contemplation: Do you have a spiritual family from whom you’ve withdrawn? Drop back in and see if there is still fire there for you.

Affirmation: My life is brighter with a community!

How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world.  Anne Frank
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. Edmund Burke

Now is the time to share your final tithes and gifts for the year. You have been well supported and nourished by Life this whole year, in many different ways. Make your “Declaration of Abundance” by willingly giving of that abundance. Think of those places and people who have spiritually nourished you. These are the perfect places to contribute a little extra to. It’s like planting seeds in the fall, knowing they are busy preparing to burst forth into new growth at the first hint of spring.

Spiritual Contemplation: Where have you been spiritual or personally nourished? How much support are you willing to give back?

Affirmation: I cheerfully and joyfully give back. I lovingly support others as the Universe has supported me.

Divine Grace, which is Spirit’s givingness, is always percolating just under the surface. It invites you to give and forgive, even when part of you wants to withhold or hang on to hurt and resentment. Your rational mind doesn’t always know what to do with this. There’s no question that it’s important from a psychological point of view to develop healthy boundaries and not enable others, and to speak up when something isn’t okay. However, there is also a place of spiritual living that sees through the foibles of others to the truth of their essence. This is especially important during the holidays as we manage all our family obligations. Rather than falling into the same old arguments or relationship dynamics, we might simply allow Grace to bubble up and take over. A more compassionate, kinder way of engaging in the world emerges without effort or force. Allow Love to spring forth throughout this holiday season.

In its broadest sense love is the impartation of the self, the givingness of everything we are or hope to be or have, and giving it in joy and without reservation, in complete abandonment. Ernest Holmes

Spiritual Contemplation: With whom might you allow Divine grace to soften your relationship? How can you bring more love into it?

Affirmation: I see with the eyes of Love and open my heart to my family. Divine Grace flows through me in all our holiday gatherings.

Keep your head and heart going in the right direction, and you won’t have to worry about your feet. Unknown

Too often we polarize things because we are so much more comfortable with black and white than we are with shades of gray. We want to know the right answer, the best way, and what we are supposed to do. This attitude tends to create pendulum swings in our culture, teachings, and within our own selves. Yet the truth is usually that it’s “both/and.” Sometimes one side is “right” or needed, and sometimes the other. Most often what’s needed is a dynamic blending of both sides. In spiritual teachings the pendulum often swings between the head and the heart. Yet scientists now tell us that there are brain cells in the brain, heart, and stomach, and that they are all equally important in different ways.

Balancing the head and heart, Law and Love, invites us to step into the fullest expression and experience of Life. Do not be afraid to be all that you came here to be! Your mind is brilliant and your heart is deep. Allow all of Life to play through you like your breath plays through a flute, making beautiful music throughout your whole being.

Spiritual Contemplation: Do you have a tendency, between the head and the heart, to make one primary and the other wrong? What would it be like if they actually formed a single heart/mind unity?

Affirmation: I treasure my heart and my mind, for both operate from a consciousness of wholeness and the presence of the One.

He who sees Beauty, sees the Whole within
Apparent parts; the beauty of the dawn
Is not the sun, nor mist nor spuming sea,
Nor oak-tree challenging the raging wind.
For Beauty lies in him who sees and what
He sees and how he sees and what he feels.
Ernest Holmes

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so are joy, truth, love, peace, and every good thing you desire. It’s not what you’re looking for that counts. It is where you are looking from. The consciousness with which you look is what you will see. The best way to see the truth of this phenomenon is to start looking at new cars. Once you narrow the field and choose a car you like, doesn’t it seem like you see those cars all over the place? You are looking at life “from” the eyes of seeing that particular car.

A negative way we experience this is when we collect evidence in support of our limiting beliefs. Because we easily feel left out or overlooked, we notice all the times, no matter how small, that we are left out or overlooked. We have a tendency to completely miss all the times we are actually included.

Spiritual Contemplation: Where are you looking from? What kind of eye are you beholding your lives from?

Affirmation: I behold my life from the eye of Beauty, Joy, Peace, Love, Abundance, and Wholeness.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity . . . . Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Melody Beattie 

Gratitude is the most powerful way to increase your blessings. Be grateful for all you have, and it increases. Be grateful for situations in which you are learning, and you deepen. Be grateful for what you are becoming, and you grow. Gratitude blesses your whole life.

Spiritual Contemplation: What people, things, and experiences are you easily grateful for? Which ones are difficult to be grateful for?

Affirmation: I am grateful for every person and experience in my life for they grow and prosper me in ways I can’t even begin to know!

Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet. Matthew 7:6

Share gentle truths with those around you, but be careful not to go too deep with those who aren’t ready or don’t want to hear them. Many have their eyes on the demonstration part, but don’t want the principle behind it. This is not the right time to blurt out the sacred pearls of spiritual truth. Ridicule is sure to follow, leaving you with an empty feeling inside. It will be as if you offered a pearl of great value and it was taken and lost, leaving you with less than what you had when you began.

Share some easy pieces, not a whole boatload. When you experience the depth of the Divine merging with the Whole and have your awareness expanded and filled with truth, there’s no need to flaunt it or convince anyone else of your experience. You can’t save people who aren’t ready by telling them about your mystical moments because they’ll put you under a sarcastic light and challenge you to prove what you say. Whether they want you to manifest cash for them on the spot or perform a healing of their choice on demand, skeptics will expect miracles without concern for the principle behind it. You never have to convince others because when their mystical moments appear, it will be in their own right time. In the meantime those who do their work in secret will be blessed. Share your gifts where they are appreciated.

Spiritual Contemplation: Are you offering pearls that are just not being embraced? What is it that makes you think you know what’s best for others at this time in their life? Let it go and just be the expression of Truth.

Affirmation: I give up being spiritually pushy!

In everything give thanks. An attitude of gratitude is most salutary and bespeaks the realization that we are now in heaven. How we love to do for those who cooperate with, and are grateful for, our small endeavors! Gratitude is one of the chief graces of human existence and is crowned in heaven with a consciousness of unity. Ernest Holmes

God is always and forever giving of Itself into Creation. Spirit is always providing everything that is needed for life—It is the fountain of Love and Joy and Abundance. We don’t thank the mountain for being a mountain—we feel overwhelming awe and gratitude that it exists and we get to see it in all its grandeur and beauty. In that same way our prayer of gratitude is because we so are grateful for all the beauty and mystery and blessings in our lives and that we get to experience and share them. We don’t say thank you to God because God needs our thanks. We say thank you because we need to be grateful for our blessings.

Spiritual Contemplation: What is your prayer of Gratitude?

Affirmation: I am so grateful that Spirit is my life and that I am experiencing and expressing it in very way I possibly can! I am grateful for all the ways Spirit shows up and blesses me.

Take time to be kind and to say “thank you.” Zig Ziglar

Writing thank-you notes is a wonderful way to warm the heart with thoughts of how you’ve been loved. When you’re busy it’s easy to forget to tell others how they have blessed your life. But when you pause to write a thank-you letter you are doubly blessed because you enter into the remembrance of that field of love. Taking time to appreciate people is an important part of a healthy daily routine that will prolong your life in an enjoyable way.

A grateful heart greatly revitalizes the body. It lifts the soul out of bondage to your needs and wants and instead places the awareness on blessings. As you turn your attention to the grateful side of life through appreciation, you bring yourself into harmony with a multiplying frequency of what you are looking at. All increase is from the seed. You will have stepped into the magnetic force of duplication of expanding your good. Your subjective goes into overdrive attacking only the experiences that support your present state of mind. Looking through the filters of thanksgiving draws forth more to be grateful for.

Spiritual Contemplation: Make some time, grab some stationery, and enter into your heart. Then handwrite some thank-you notes to those individuals in your life that you’ve been wanting to extend your love and appreciation to.

Affirmation: My heart is filled with gratitude for those who grace my world!