Hi Connee!
This is such wonderful news, this new opening with your mother! I'm so
happy to hear it and I do have some idea how welcome in your life is this
blessed recognition and validation from your Mom.
And I see her conflict with her neighbor easing dramatially as a result of
her changed attitude toward him. I know my own situation with a difficult
neighbor saw a miraculous turnaround immediately upon my own attitude
adjustment.
I won't burden us with the details -- and it DOES make for a lengthy and
detailed saga -- but I had not even really had a change of heart, merely had
DECIDED that I WANTED to have a change of heart (the resentment had been
eating me alive for years).
I was amazed at the virtually instantaneous turnaround in our relationship.
"Outta Nowhere," Tim and his wife Pat were greeting me with genuine
friendliness and empathy, bringing me piping-hot homecooked Chinese deep-fry
in Tupperware, seeking to resolve in mutually acceptable ways the issues
which had separated us for years, etc.!
And that astonishing accommodation on their part really DID facilitate a
change of heart on mine!
I don't KNOW how much of this may have been Coincidence and how much of it
maya have been Conscious Creation, but it certainly made me sit up and take
notice, and I certainly took grateful advantage of a wonderful opportunity
for improved relationship with my neighbor!
<3 <3 Green
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From: Connee Chandler <connee@...>
Hi, friends,
I am sitting here in total amazement and joy this morning. I
keep thinking about the discussions we have had here lately about
how to tell Christians who are venting and escalating their
problems about Abe.
In order to completely appreciate this, you need to know that my
Mom is Roman Catholic and goes to Mass every morning of the week,
and that I am (to her) a lapsed Catholic, a sinner on the God
chart. She prays for me daily to return to the True Church. (I
tell her I am grateful for prayers, whatever their content.) To
me, I am a Licensed Religious Science Practitioner, which an
ecclesiastical officer position in our church. Being love for/as
God is my life's primary focus. We have had an uneasy truce
about not talking about God/Jesus/religion for many years.
Sounds kind of like the stories Abe tells about Esther and her
Mom.
My mom has been having a feud with her neighbor about trees. He
keeps cutting down parts of her trees that stray over his lot
line, in ways that are ugly. They live on an island, and he
wants to see more of the water from his home. She loves the
privacy the trees bring, that they are a wonderful habitat for
the birds she loves, and feeds and provides homes for, and shade
for the gardens, the house and the yard that she loves to sit
under.
At any rate, when she called me, the war was escalating, he was
talking about poisoning the trees, and she was talking about
suing him in court, having already reported him to the county
authorities who confronted him about his illegal pruning and
dumping on county land.
At that point, as we talked on the phone, I was faced with a
choice. So I decided to give her the choice instead of making it
myself. I said, "Do you want me to give you advice from my
Science of Mind point of view, or do you just want sympathy and
agreement?"
She gulped, and said, "I need help here, this is way out of
control, give me advice."
So I basically taught her Abe's Book of Positive Aspects process
(under appreciation games on my website below if you don't
already know it.) I suggested that she list all the good things
she has ever seen him do over the 20 years they have lived next
to each other. And I couched it in nice Christian terms about
learning to "love your neighbor."
She said that "love" was too strong a word, so I suggested she
try for appreciation and she agreed to try.
She called a little while ago with the results. She spent half
the night staying up working on her list, and she wasn't feeling
the outrage anymore. She came up with a fairly long list,
including that he has helped her out when she was stuck several
times since my father died. She could see that he was basically
a good man and had been a good neighbor, and that this thing just
has been blown up way out of proportion. And she wanted to know
if she was to give her list to her neighbor.
She also said that before Mass this morning, she asked to talk to
her priest. And told him what I had suggested she do, and he
said, "That was very good advice!" And he approved of her letter
when she showed it to him.
I told her that I thought the list is best kept between her and
God, and that it had to do with her opening her heart to love,
not about changing him, which could be perceived as manipulative
and "holier than thou". That I believed that it is important to
draw a bigger circle that says it is not me vs him, but both of
us in this together. And we talked about how they both love the
island, and appreciate its beauty, just in different ways. He
prefers beautiful grass, she prefers trees. He prefers a view of
the water, she prefers privacy and protection from the winds that
come off the water. Just differences, not right and wrong.
Nonjudgment and appreciation became a big part of the
conversation!
And I suggested that for now, she just appreciate her trees. Not
from a place of lack, but from a place of love, just as they are,
hacked and scarred. And I pointed out that most of us in life
are hacked and scarred in some ways, but we are still loveable.
And she got it! And she said that she could love her trees just
as they are, and appreciate them. And I suggested that she pray
for God to take care of her trees, and Let Go and Let God, just
for a week. And she agreed to give it to God for a week, and do
her job of loving those old trees, as they are now.
It was awesome! And at the end, she mentioned she was doing this
because the first commandment is "love your neighbor." And I
said I'd given a sermon on that lately, and that the first
commandment as I understand it is to love God with your whole
heart and soul, and then to love your neighbor as yourself. And
she agreed I was right, but that love your neighbor was right up
there, and I agreed she was sure right about that!
So now, I have, for the first time in my seven years of being a
Practitioner, received recognition from my Mom that, just
perhaps, my practice of my religion is useful, practical,
grounded in Spirit and comes in handy in a crisis. And I even
received the blessing of the priest! Can you imagine? I am
dancing around the room in joy!
My Mom and I just connected on a heart level on the subject of
God that we have *never* even come close to achieving before in
this lifetime. Since my love of God is the greatest driving
force in my life, this is a very BIG deal to me!
I give thanks for the blessings of Abraham, for the law of
allowing, for all the work I've done to honor her path, respect
her choices, and keep quiet about my own. For Abe's advice to
not ever try to answer a question until it is asked. And for
this incredible demonstration of the power of living this
philosophy and teaching by example *until* the question is asked.
I feel like I have been given an incredible gift of joy. Thanks
to the eclipse, the Grand Cross or Mercury retrograde or whatever
it is that is moving this planet into the times when the Pope
says people create their own hells and parish priests validate
the wisdom of Religious Science practitioners! <grin>
Or perhaps it is just each of us, after all, and so many other
beings of light on this planet, working at learning to love
unconditionally, to allow and to not push against, to open our
hearts to all ways of being, to live in joy, that is making the
change...
Love and hugs,
Connee
--
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