Is it possible to be separated from love?

A friend called me yesterday to tell me that she and her husband have separated. They have been together a long time and she was very sad about it. But she called me because she knew I would be attending a community meeting later this week where several mutual friends would be…and she wanted me to have a heads-up directly from her.

As I am listening to her I am thinking “How can I help? What can I say to comfort her, even just a tiny bit?” Well, all that came out was, “You wanna have lunch this week?” Must have been ok because she said, sounding a little relieved, “I would love that.”

Later it occurred to me that one of the deepest feelings a wife or husband might be sensing at a time like this is “rejection.” Not only from their partner (bad enough) but from their “couple friends” — those friends who only know them as a couple, not individually. In some cases, these friends might be the only source for support…yet are now unavailable. Phew!!

Maybe this is why my friend (we’re a couple-friend) sounded relieved and even grateful when I asked her for lunch.

There is no purpose (or comfort) served in choosing sides. In my case, it is totally impractical (I see the husband regularly in a community group) but most importantly it sets up a “right vs. wrong” person. Someone must be good and someone must be bad. Sheesh, this is a simple definition of rejection right there. No way am I going to add to that misery. Besides, it isn’t true.

So how can I comfort my friend? It’s situations like this when I find comfort — and answers — for myself in turning to a spiritual source. Have you ever seen a flower turn to the sun to bloom? (I bet you have never seen a flower turn to the dark!) Well, that is what I do in dark times…turn to the light.

The light for me is understanding who God is. Because who She is tells me who I am and everyone else for that matter. We are creations of the one Creator. From my study of Christian Science, I understand Her to be Love, all good, Principle. And this Love is ever-present, always with me and the whole creation…kinda like how we think about gravity, if we think about it. It is always there, can’t change it.

I love this quote from the book of Acts in the Bible:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of  your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

So how I am thinking right now is if Love creates me and my friend and her husband, and this Love is ever-present, how could anyone be separated from this Love? How could anyone be rejected from this Love?

It would take something more powerful than the omnipotent God-Love…and by definition of “omnipotent” that is an impossibility.

So then, could a wife or husband reject their partner from love? Not really — since we live in the allness of Love no one can be rejected from Love.

It might feel just the opposite, if a loved one has turned away from the other. But that is the time when it is REALLY important to turn TO the light of all-encompassing Love and know that can’t ever be taken away.

The love we feel for other people, and even pets, is a hint, a glimpse of that all-powerful, unconditional and unremitting Love that surrounds each of us. Sometimes we may think we can withhold that personal love. But when it is better understood that all good love is rooted in the love of Love, then even the hint of love cannot be capriciously given or taken away. Even when — and especially then — it appears to be.

So when I meet with my friend, I will be thinking about this Love and sharing my love for her — and yes, her husband. Still don’t know what to say to comfort her, but I am thinking that Love will give me the right ideas.

Whose vision do I see?

Years ago I was in the middle of a startup which consulted with companies on how to make their cultures more customer-driven. We had a great USP — we were offering the branded programs created by Tom Peters — but the business wasn’t taking off as well as my partners (2) and I had planned. (Basic rule for entrepreneurs: Plan for the Unplanned).

But we were getting to the point of no return: should we hunker down (even more), borrow more money and hang on, or should we cut our losses and hang it up? I was so committed to the ideal of our work (we had seen some pretty amazing turnarounds in Fortune 500 companies) that I just couldn’t envision stopping…I thought we just might be at the breakthrough point! But my two partners, who were probably more pragmatic, weren’t so sure. Over a period of several weeks we hadn’t come to any decisions. I do remember, however, that many meetings to discuss what to do included at some point my statement, “I have this vision….” Looking back, it sounds like I thought I was the only one who had a vision. Aaargh.

During this period of time, I got afflicted with that weird eye disease — conjunctivitus — that gets progressively worse and hangs around for a long time and for which there isn’t a medical cure (this was about 12 years ago). What a DRAG! It is the kind of thing where you begin to think, “I’m never gonna get better!”

The eye doctor (which is where I evidently caught the thing when I went in to have my contact lenses checked) prescribed some medicine but said it wasn’t going to cure it (he said you gotta let the disease run its course, which could be 3 weeks or more — ick!), but it would relieve some of the annoying symptoms.

Well, humph. If the medication was actually going to do something I would have used it. But since it wasn’t really getting RID of it for a long while, I decided to treat it with spiritual prayer. Through my long-time study and practice of Christian Science I have had consistently positive results in healing diseases through specific prayer treatments — I was sure this was going to be better than “letting the disease run its course”.

So over the next few days I prayed to understand better who Spirit is and my identity and relationship vis a vis Spirit. See, to me, we are all really spiritual beings, created by the Creator of all living things to be the reflected image of goodness and purity. Which means, there is no separation between the Creator and the creation (me!). A good metaphor for this is the sun and the sunbeams. Can the sunbeam be separated from the sun…ever?

Now, most of the time I either forget this or don’t understand what this really means in a particular situation. Which is why praying works to get me lined up with what is spiritually true.

Soooo, if my true and only self is actually the reflected image of the Creator then either the Creator has conjunctivitus or I DON’T have conjunctivitus….one or the other can only be true. One morning, I was pondering this and many other thoughts about my spiritual identity when I went to church and the sermon was on the story about Jacob who is wrestling with an angel. At one point, the angel says “Let me go…” and Jacob says, “Nope, not until you bless me…”

Boy, did I want to be blessed right then, too. This eye thing had been going on for about a week and I wanted it GONE.

Then, right at that moment, something flitted across my consciousness. It is hard to describe actually because it was just a fragment of an idea about true VISION. And I mentally struggled to hang on to the idea, to get a fuller picture of it — and it hit me it was like Jacob and the angel!

The idea that came to me was this: the only vision that mattered was the vision of the Creator. Since I was the reflected image, I reflected Spirit’s vision, but I wasn’t the creator of it. Talk about a big bull’s-eye on my business “vision” that I was clinging to.

I hung on to this idea, and it became stronger and clearer in my consciousness…until I truly felt I was blessed with it. And when I felt truly blessed, the weight of the business decision lifted from me. I still wasn’t sure what we should do, but I wasn’t hanging on to “my” vision of the way it should work.

And that’s not all. Within a few hours the conjunctivitus cleared up. Went away. Disappeared. I could see clearly again. When I visited the eye doctor later in the week he was pretty surprised and said, “Gee, your eyes have cleared up a lot faster than anyone else’s.”

True vision about the spiritual creation is what I needed to get a clearer picture about.

My partners and I came to a good resolution not too long after that. I continued with the consulting work, incorporating it into the value set of another business that I was running. Everyone was pleased…and blessed.

My spiritual guide for life

The other evening, at the end of a very fun dinner, a newish friend of mine here in Santa Fe said something that was totally cool and quite profound to me. He is a medical doctor and had just learned that my husband and I study and practice the principles of Christian Science in our everyday life…and we both have for most of our lives.

He said, “That is so cool, to believe in something as an adult that you did as a child.” I said that it was when I was an adult that Christian Science proved its worth as a way to live my whole life.

When I was a kid my brother, sisters and I attended the church of my mom. My dad attended the Christian Science church. (My parents agreed that was a reasonable plan. Pretty typical of the era, I think.) At around 7 years old, I was stung by a bee. We hustled off to the pediatrician and he gave me a shot of penicillin. As I remember, in a day or so I started to swell up and itch everywhere…feet, hands, joints, face, even inside my mouth.

Back to the pediatrician who prescribed another drug to alleviate the swelling and the itching. Didn’t work. I remember being very uncomfortable — and being popped into a cold bath with baking soda to relieve the itching.

This went on for several days. Finally, with no progress in my condition, in fact my throat felt like it was closing up and it was hard to breathe, the doctor told my mom that he was very concerned about giving me any more of the drug because it could have a harmful, long-lasting effect. But that he didn’t know what else to do.

My mom called my dad at work, very frightened. Dad said, “Can we use Christian Science now?”

To my dad, relying on spiritual healing as defined by Christian Science was a natural and effective remedial practice. He had relied on it for most of his life. But to my mom, who had only relied on medical treatment, Christian Science was a radical approach to physical healing. But it appeared that nothing more could be done by the doctor. So she said yes.

My dad called a Christian Science practitioner, someone who is a professional spiritual healer in the Christian Science method.

He prayed through the night. Now since I was the patient, I don’t know how his specific prayers actually went. But knowing what I know now about how to pray scientifically, he probably started with the definition of God as Love, as the ever-present, loving Father and Mother of His entire creation. He is the All of every living thing. And since He is Love, then His creation, His Allness, must be good.

Then the practitioner would have seen me as a creation of this Father-Mother Love, so I must be good too. Could this good Creator have made anything bad, like a deathly reaction to a bee (one of His creations) or a drug? Not possible. As a child of the Good One, and a reflection of His good qualities, I cannot be susceptible to anything He did not create. I must be free. This is the principle, the law of my true and only being.

Whatever the specifics of the practitioner’s prayer, I WAS free the next day. The swelling and the itching were gone.

To my mom, this experience changed her whole view of a spiritual practice. We all (kids too!) began the study and practice of Christian Science.

For me as a kid, Christian Science was a faith tradition. But as an adult, learning how to apply the principles of its teaching, it has become a scientific practice, a practical application to any situation in my life: relationships, healing, financial challenges, career guidance, etc. The more I apply it, the bigger its worth is proven.

It is pretty cool, when I think about it…that something I accepted in my childhood (because it was all I knew) has become bigger, stronger and grander to me as an adult.

If you have ever gone back to the house you grew up in and seen it shrink before your eyes, you can get an idea of how profound the opposite effect can be.

I’m pretty grateful to my parents — to my dad for never thinking it was “too late” or “not enough time” for Christian Science treatment, and to my mom for saying “yes.” They gave me a guide for life.