Woo Hoo! I am on vacation. Yes, once I complete writing this, my vacation begins. It is a staycation and I plan to sleep, read, play, and enjoy the time off. We are very blessed to have an awesome guest speaker, Fred Brancato, to be with you this Sunday. Fred has just published a new book that he will be sharing with you. I am reading it now and it is wonderful.
Other news I want to share… a women’s retreat team has been formed and we have secured a location for the retreat. We will be going to Ferry Beach Retreat Center in Saco. The exact date hasn’t been confirmed; however, it will be a two-night retreat.
We are soon going to be entering Holy Week. It begins with Palm Sunday on April 2. Our tradition has been to do a Spiritual Baptism and a Palm Walk during meditation and that will resume this year. On Holy Thursday will be a Zoom service with Deana and me; a Zoom link will be made available to you in Heart Thoughts on Wednesday, April 5. And then of course Easter on April 9.
As we are winding down with the series Ethics For A New Millennium, this week the focus was on commitment and ethics in society. The question is asked: What level of commitment is needed to bring enough compassion into one’s life?
The Dalai Lama states: We start where we are. It isn’t necessary to do a radical makeover and adopt an entirely new way of life. It isn’t necessary to abandon our current work to live a peasant life like Gandhi. What is necessary is to begin with our current life situation and begin to bring more compassion into our everyday living. We can start where we are and do as much as we can.
And as for ethics in society, the Dalai Lama suggests six areas be addressed:
• education,
• the media,
• our natural environment,
• politics and economics,
• peace and disarmament, and
• inter-religious harmony.
We focused on the first four this Sunday. I did talk about a website that was interesting about the evolution of education. Here is the link: https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2246/Moral-Education.
Here are some practices you might want to implement in your daily life this week.
- In thinking about your life situation, are there ways you can imagine living with more compassion and universal responsibility?
- What would constitute “what you can do” at this point in your life to live more compassionately? If you wish, choose a specific way, and put this into practice for a period of time.
- Choose one of these arenas for concerted ethical discipline and develop a plan of action in your daily life. Whatever your level of commitment, walk the talk over the next month.
You are a blessing in my life,
Rev. Patricia Bessey
