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James Freeman Clarke (1810 – 1888)
I have been placed here to grow, just as the trees and flowers. The trees and the flowers grow unconsciously, and by no effort of their own. We also grow unconsciously, and are educated by circumstances. But we can also control those circumstances and direct the course of our life. We can educate ourselves. We can, by effort and thought, acquire knowledge, become accomplished, refine and purify our nature, develop our powers, strengthen our character. And because we can do this, we ought to do it.
Use and improve, or lose. Use and improve your muscles and your perceptions, or they will gradually but certainly fail. Use and improve your memory, your understanding, your judgement, or they will become feeble. Use and improve your conscience, or it grows torpid. Use and improve the powers which lookup and infinite truth, beauty, and goodness, and they lift you toward these. Let them sleep, and they cannot see this kingdom of God, this divine element in the universe.
I do not believe that we are able to make of ourselves anything we please. But we can make ourselves what God pleases we should be. The germ of great future is deposited in every soul. Every soul is a seed. It does not yet appear what it shall be – it is bare grain. Of some seeds may be born beautiful roses; others will become modest violets; some will tower into graceful elms; whose branches shall bend and wave in the summer air, and beneath whose far-reaching shadows the cattle shall stand resting in the hot days. Others shall become grasses for food, herbs for the cure of disease and the solace of pain –“ to every seed its own body.”
One shall be a rose in the garden, “angry and brave”; another a buttercup or a sweet pea. And yet another shall open as a tender morning glory, and give the poet a hint of a strain so sweet that it shall comfort all mourning mothers’ hearts; and another may be a daisy, turned up by a Scottish plough, and, dying so, be born again in an immortal song. Why should you envy your brother or sister because they are more wise, or have more genius, more business faculty, than you? Why envy anyone because he or she is more fair or brilliant?
The buttercup does not envy the rose, nor the prairie vine complain because it is not a Virginia creeper. God has made everything beautiful in its time and place; let it be contented to unfold into that which it is intended to become.
We grow only when we become more and more ourselves, our best selves, our truest selves, selves that God made us to be. We do not grow when we try to be like this person or that, or strive for tis person’s wit or that person’s scope, to become like this saint or that genius. The rose grows when it unfolds into a rose, not when it tries to become any other shrub or flower. The palm springs erect to haven, and grows up a palm; the vine creeps and hangs, and swings in the air, and pours fragrance on the breeze, and grows into a vine.
Thus God has made each of us to be something, to have a real place, and do a real work in this world, and that our own work, which no one else can do. If we are faithful to the inner light of our own conviction, and to the daily duties which God sends to use, we shall grow. With glad surprise we shall find ourselves becoming genuine in the garden of our God.
Healthy Living through the Heart
No Judgement
No Charge
Prayer through the feeling – connected though the feeling – allowing the feeling/experience
Alignment of Heart, Thoughts and Feelings/Experience
Be all you can be and inspire the world
A Great amount of something can be found within doing nothing (Paraphrase from the movie Christopher Robin)
Jenn is the co-Founder of Bolts of Love, Ordained Spiritualist Minister, and Spiritual Leader of Unity in Edinboro.
Find more information at http://boltsoflove.com
http://jennshepherd.com
http://unityinedinboro.org
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- Religion & Spirituality