"Our Divine nature never deserts us. Like the prodigal son we may wander into far countries of despair, but the Divinity within us ever gently urges us back to the center of our true being; It ever reminds us of Its presence. If we permit It, this spiritual Self will direct our every decision with intelligence and make perfect our way before us." ~Ernest Holmes, Spiritual Awareness
On October 19, 2002, I shifted my life from drug addict and alcoholic to drug-free, alcohol-free, and cigarette-free. It was my personal epiphany. My life changed for the better. I am not saying I didn't have challenges. More than once, my finances were disastrous, and yet I never lost or questioned my faith.
Being a minister during the pandemic had its own opportunities. Carey Nieuwhof, a Christian minister I follow, said at the time that ministry had always had its challenges, but now it was just hell. I still never lost or questioned my faith.
I didn't lose my faith this past year, yet I certainly questioned my beliefs. Does Spiritual Mind Treatment really work? Have I been fooling myself believing in something greater than me? The answers are absolutely and no. The thing I needed to remember is that which I choose to call God never leaves us. We may have moments of doubt or fear or disillusionment, and It stands like a sentry, waiting for us to acknowledge Its presence.
The truth is, life doesn't come with a playbook. I look at a group of friends I have who are all widows. My first thought is that each one is too young. My deeper, more compassionate thought is to honor their perseverance. Each handles her heartbreak with absolute grace, and each carries that grace in her own way. These women, in spite of their loss or maybe because of it, have the audacity to be comfortable. By comfortable, I don't mean complacent. I mean at home in their own skin, at rest in the Presence even when life isn't easy.
Every single one of us is going to face loss sometime in our lives. Grandparents, parents, children, friends, partners, pets—it happens. And that was my biggest fear this year. Was the person I lean on, the one who always has my back, going to be taken away from me? It is not "easy" to watch the person you love go through chemotherapy and gallbladder issues and then prepare for radiation. And yet I have come to the place of knowing I, too, have the audacity to be this comfortable.
How we live our lives through all the ups and downs is a choice. If we let them, they can make us bitter victims. Be like my friends—it's not the cards you're dealt that matter; it's how you play the hand. Like the prodigal son, we may wander, and that sentry is still standing, gently calling us home.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
"God is Spirit, or Self-Knowingness; God is Law and action; God is result or Body."** ~Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind
Here's a sentence I never expected to type: your body is a theological statement.
Not a mistake. Not an inconvenience you're dragging around while the "real" spiritual you does the important work somewhere up in the clouds. Holmes puts Body right there in the same breath as Spirit and Law — not underneath them, not despite them. The body is where the invisible becomes visible. It's God, showing up with a face and a heartbeat and — let's be honest — some genuinely strange noises.
I grew up with a mother and older sister who believed if you weren't thin, you weren't happy. I am sure my sister learned this from my mom, and my mom probably was taught this jewel by her mom. A couple of real memories: hugging my sister hello and her whispering in my ear, "you should really lose at least ten pounds"; or from my mother, "I always know when you're unhappy — you start wearing jeans to hide your weight." It is not easy to love your body when those you love demean you.
We are so practiced at being embarrassed by our own bodies. We apologize for stomachs that growl during meditation, for the wrinkle that showed up overnight, for the fact that grief made us cry in the church parking lot and someone saw. Somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that a "spiritual" person floats slightly above all that — untroubled, unbothered, un-embodied. It's a lovely idea. It's also nonsense.
Because here's the truth Science of Mind keeps handing back to us: we don't get to Truth by escaping the body. We get there by moving *through* it. "We shall never know peace until we embody it," Holmes writes — not think it, not theorize it. Embody it. That word is doing a lot of work. It means the Divine isn't allergic to your body. It moved in on purpose.
I'll be honest, I like my body when I am wearing a size eight versus a size twelve. Is that conditioning? Probably. And it's the truth. Am I ashamed of liking my body at a smaller size? No — the truth is, I feel healthier, I move more easily, and I have a lot less aches and pains. I'm comfortable in loving my body, and I am comfortable knowing everyone has a right to choose how they appear in the world. I love Lizzo. I love her confidence and her loving herself enough to be exactly who she is without letting an industry shame her into being something different.
None of this means every ache or limitation is secretly a blessing in disguise, or that we're supposed to grit our teeth and call our suffering holy. It means something gentler: that the body having needs, limits, sounds, and seasons is not evidence that something went wrong. It's evidence that something is alive. Shame has had a long, lucrative career convincing us otherwise — that the right body is quiet, controlled, and endlessly cooperative. Yours doesn't have to audition for that role.
We will stay whole — not despite having bodies, but because we finally stopped treating them like the secret we have to keep.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
Before I became clean and sober, I didn't much like myself, which meant I wasn't really fond of other people either. I used to hang out with a group; we nicknamed ourselves the "fashion police." Not that we ever really handed out tickets and we were in constant judgment about what people were wearing. The thing I have learned about judgment is if you judge other people, they are certainly going to judge you. It is a reciprocal universe.
Last week I wrote about learning to inhabit my own body instead of just occupying it. What I didn't say is that the same lesson applies to every body I encounter — not just mine.
Here's the truth I don't love admitting: I have judged bodies that weren't mine. Not out loud, not even always consciously — but the thought crosses before I catch it. Too old. Too much. Not enough. We've all absorbed decades of messaging that tells us which bodies are acceptable and which ones need explaining. Diet culture, fatphobia, ageism, racism, colorism — they all whisper the same lie: your body is a problem to be solved.
I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think it's harmless. If the Divine chose to show up as physical form — if, as Ernest Holmes put it, humanity is the place where heaven and earth meet — then every time we treat a body as unacceptable, we're rejecting a little piece of God showing up in the world. If judgment is reciprocal, so is grace.
I have never felt so much love and support as I have experienced from the Light on the Mountains CSL community, especially after my Achilles tendon surgery. From being carried down to a canoe while in a non-weight bearing cast and then floating down Silver Creek like Cleopatra floating down the Nile. This community has opened its hearts and homes to me prior to, during and after my injury. It's how that Divine presence shows up for us. I love the quote, "Don't tell God you've got big problems, tell your problems you've got a big God." ~Unknown. That is what the Light on the Mountains community demonstrates time and time again.
Togetherness is not an abstract, spiritual idea. It is bodies — in pews, at tables, in hugs held a beat too long because someone needed it. You cannot be in community without being in a body, near other bodies. That's not a limitation of the spiritual life. That's the whole point of it. Spirit didn't choose the physical as a compromise. It chose the physical as the way to know itself at all — and it chose to do that in more than one body, so we could know each other, too.
So, this week, the invitation isn't just to inhabit your own body — it's to notice how you inhabit the space around other people's. Where do you make room? Where do you flinch, compare, or quietly withhold? What would it look like to greet the body in front of you — whatever shape, age, ability, or color it comes in — as the place where God also lives?
We say we want to build a world that works for everyone. That has to include everyone's body, exactly as it is today, not as it is once it changes to meet somebody else's standard.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
It took me a long time to be truly comfortable in my body. In fact, it is something I still work on.
I don't know about you, I treated my body like a tool. I come from the "no pain, no gain" era. The body wasn't something to be cherished, it was my own personal meat suit.
I pushed through exhaustion because rest felt like weakness. I ignored the ache in my shoulder for two years because stopping to tend it felt like an inconvenience to my schedule. I treated my body the way you'd treat a rental car — drive it hard, worry about the damage later, it's not really mine anyway. Looking back, that's an odd way to treat the one vessel I actually get to keep for this entire lifetime.
Yes, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And we chose to be here in this dimension in this body. It is good to remember that this is the place where God lives as me.
Ernest Holmes says, "In humanity we seem to have that point where heaven and earth meet, a place where the spiritual and the physical meet. The intangible spiritual always becomes the tangible form. But in humans the spiritual retains its identity as spirit and mind, while at the same time being tangible as physical body." –Ernest Holmes, A New Design for Living
Read that again. Heaven and earth meet — not in a temple, not in a sunset, not in some far-off spiritual plane. In humanity. In this body. In your body, reading this right now. If that's true, then every time I've treated my body like an inconvenience, I've been treating the meeting place of heaven and earth like an inconvenience. That's a sobering thought, and also a freeing one — it means I don't have to go anywhere else to find the sacred. I'm standing in it. I am it.
A lot has happened over this past year for me to truly "feel" my body, not as a tool, more like a spiritual companion. I have been given the opportunity to truly understand there is no separation from my spiritual self and my human self — they are one and the same. True, eventually the physical form of me will lay off this old garment and don something new. And yet until then, it is important to love and respect this material form I have been graced to take care of.
This is the work of inhabiting — not just occupying. There's a difference between living in a house and inhabiting a home. Occupying is passive; you're just there. Inhabiting is active — you tend it, you notice it, you make it yours on purpose. For most of my life I occupied my body. I showed up in it. I didn't inhabit it. I didn't know its rooms. I didn't know what it needed to feel like home.
I recently spent an hour and a half having an Ayurvedic Bliss Massage. I used to be that person who thought the only massage worth having was a deep tissue
massage. I am sure they have their place, and what I realized is that a deep tissue massage feels like an attack on this temple known as my body. For me, there is nothing more relaxing or aligning than being on a table and having someone treat your body like it truly is the place where God lives.
I remember lying there, warm oil, no urgency anywhere in the room, and thinking: this is what it feels like to be cared for instead of pushed through. My whole nervous system exhaled. It occurred to me that I had spent decades unconsciously teaching my body that softness wasn't safe — that the only way to earn rest was to collapse first. That hour and a half undid a little bit of that teaching. One session doesn't erase forty years of "no pain, no gain," but it planted a different question in me: what if my body doesn't have to earn tenderness? What if it's owed tenderness, simply because it's the house God lives in?
Am I going to become vegan and give up espresso milkshakes? Never! And there are ways I can be more mindful in aligning my physical being with my spiritual being, because right now they are one and the same.
So, here's an invitation, not a prescription: this week, pick one small way to inhabit rather than occupy. A slower shower. Three real breaths before you answer the next text. A hand on your own chest for ten seconds, just to say I see you, I've got you. Radical Embodiment doesn't ask you to overhaul your life. It asks you to notice you're already home — and to start acting like it.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
“In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel it’s impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but what it is to be human. All of us derive security and comfort from the imaginary world of memories and fantasies and plans. We really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down…so whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Discursive mind? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay! That is how to cultivate steadfastness.” ~Pema Chodron. “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.”
Ernest Holmes reminds us that fear is “nothing more nor less than the negative use of faith … faith misplaced.”
So, the question becomes, can you listen to your fear without giving it the wheel to drive the bus of your life? First let me explain the bus analogy. I believe we are made up of a lot of different parts, which you can actually name: Angry Abbie, Abundant Angi, Bashful Betty, Beautiful Bea, etc. All those emotions want to consume you and want to drive the bus. Some of them make you feel powerful, and some of them, let's be frank, make you feel like shit. The trick isn't kicking any of them off the bus — they're all allowed to ride along. The trick is deciding who gets to hold the wheel.
Honoring and listening to your fear with curiosity and compassion helps you identify what the impetus is to what you're feeling. This can work with all your parts, by the way, and today we are discussing fear. If you're comfortable, sit in a quiet space and talk to your fear. Why is it showing up? When was the first time you experienced this particular fear? Then close your eyes and listen. You might be surprised how much your fear has been trying to protect you all along, even clumsily. Once you have a clear understanding, maybe write down some notes; also known as journaling. Notice patterns. Fear often repeats itself in disguise — same root, different costume.
I am kinder to other people than I am to myself. I had a discussion with a prayer partner this week, and we agreed that is probably true for most of us. Nobody on this planet knows you better than you. Maybe the next time you start to be critical of yourself, you show yourself the same compassion you'd show a child instead. Ask yourself, if this was a three-year-old, what would I be saying to it right now? You'd probably explain to them that there is nothing to be afraid of and give them examples of when they have been brave. Say those same words to yourself. You've earned them too.
It is impossible to eradicate fear. Instead, let's bring some spiritual awareness to it and let it be a catalyst for our courage.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
