I spent an hour on Skype with a friend last Tuesday and when we hung up, I wrote a piece that just came from my heart. It also came together on the tail of a correspondence I'd had with a gentleman who written to us (FCNB) for the first time, and that also really struck me.
I sense that this is coming out of my inner preparation for the Divine Love retreat that FCNB will sponsor in Sept 2014 in Washington DC. Even though it feels a little 'intellectual,' I will risk sharing it with you. Just ignore it if it doesn't speak to you.
Here it is:
They Are Welcoming Us In
We in the Divine Love community know about the Divine Love by name. Most of us are aware of the Padgett messages, and even within this community, some are not—yet.
I’ve met many who have been praying for the Love for decades. Sometimes new people have joined their prayer circles, and have begun to pray, have begun to receive the Love even before knowing some of the details of the world of spirit, the details that fill the Padgett messages. Those details are important, but they are not The Divine Love.
And there are so many around us who have not yet joined our prayer circles, have not met any of us in person, who still attend their own churches, synagogues, mosques, but their souls are yearning, and their souls are beginning to receive the Divine Love. They may still express many erroneous beliefs—beliefs that they have learned in their families and communities. Those beliefs can be a deterrent, but they cannot stop the yearning heart. Regardless of the words used, when the heart yearns, the Love comes.
And there are so many who have been disillusioned by the religions and who have left them behind. Many feel betrayed; I did, for ten years, between the ages of 25 and 35. I blamed God for the mistakes of His so-called representatives, the priests, the ministers, anyone who considered themselves a ‘cleric’ or a religious person. Of these disillusioned folks—who resist ‘religion’ and who resist a belief in God—many cringe at the words used by the religious; they shrink away and they comfort themselves with more secular terms like love, brothership, caring. And yet, many of them also have yearning souls, and are receiving our Father’s Divine Love—or at least, it seems so to me.
Today a man wrote to us at FCNB, worrying that God is not “there” in his church, because he knows they do not know of the divine truths. He’s torn. He added that there seems to be so much healing going on, so much joy, so much rapture, and when people say “God is here,” he worries that they are wrong, because they hold some beliefs that are erroneous, according to the Padgett messages. When I read his letter, I remembered the preacher that Jesus wrote about to Mr. Padgett, telling him that the preacher did teach erroneous beliefs, and yet, the minister’s soul was actually yearning for Divine Love and receiving it.
I am looking around me. Who are my brothers? Who are my sisters? Do they need to agree with my beliefs? Do they need to read the books I’ve read? Do we need the same vocabulary for talking about what matters to us the most? Do they, do we, need language at all to express our souls’ yearnings for That which takes us all beyond our limited selves?
Today I spoke on Skype to a woman in Kyoto, Japan. She is my friend. She has never read the Padgett messages. She considers herself a Catholic. Perhaps she believes all of the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps she believes in only some of them. We did not discuss that, and I don’t know.
What I do know is that while we talked in a very heartfelt way for an hour, we both witnessed—in silence—the presence of Divine Love. We did not ‘pray’ in the traditional sense. And yet, at the end of the conversation, we agreed that it seemed that we were “on a continuum” of increasing awareness, as though we were moving from being an “image” to becoming “that” which the image depicts. We had a heightened awareness of: “I am” and of what the “other is”, and then we became aware of “that” which is beyond us.
We came to a place of utter stillness and tranquility. We chose not to give it words. I began to feel a vague sense that there were angelic beings somewhere near. I said simply, “They are welcoming us in.” She smiled and nodded. And we both knew this was so.
“You need not wait for occasions or opportunities to formally pray but all during the day and evening let your longings for the love ascend to the Father. A LONG PRAYER, OR EVEN ONE FORMULATED INTO WORDS, IS NOT NECESSARY, AS IN ORDER TO HAVE THE LONGING IT IS NOT NECESSARY THAT WORDS SHOULD BE USED TO GIVE IT FORM. THE LONGING MAY BE RAPID AS UNFORMED THOUGHT, AND AS EFFECTIVE FOR THE FATHER TO CATCH, AS I MAY SAY. THE LONGING IS QUICKER THAN THE THOUGHT, AND THE ANSWER TO THE SAME WILL COME WITH AS MUCH CERTAINTY AND LOVE AS IF YOU WERE TO PUT THE LONGING INTO THE MOST EXACT FORM. “ (True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus, Vol I, p.2).
