Rachel Talley

Staying in the Present

"When you stay present, in the moment, taking careof what comes your way to the best of yourability, keeping your heart open, and asking forSpirit's assistance and blessing in all that you do or say, then you are in good territory."

-John Roger,"Loving Each Day for Peacemakers", p. 220 - 221

by Rachel Talley

Letting Love Lead

When I talk about letting love lead, I'm referring to a very
profound inner movement that comes from the depth of our
being. Putting love in charge is not how we normally live;
usually, we let our reactions and ego lead us. Though love
is all around us, we seldom give it our full attention;
there are so many other places where we focus our energy.

It's amazing how easy it is to give up our loving nature.
We're conditioned to deriving our worth from outside
ourselves - from what other people think of us, from what we
achieve materially, from what we look like. "I don't really
know who I am," we may say to ourselves, "but if these
people love me, I must be okay."

That's another example of living life from the outside in.
It's an empty promise, because if, in the next moment,
people stop loving you, or don't look at you the way you
want them to, you will no longer feel okay. When others
withdraw their love, you find yourself withdrawing, too, and
contracting. Contraction is a kind of pulling back -
physically, emotionally, or mentally - that closes us down
to life.

The objective of letting love lead is to move you to a state
of expansion, of opening to life and fully embracing it.

- John-Roger with Paul Kaye
(From: Momentum, Letting Love Lead - Simple Practices for
Spiritual Living, p. 21-22)

by Rachel Talley

Observing Without Evaluating

I have been reading a book called "Nonviolent Communication." It has helped me to understand the importance of how we see our world and what interpretation we give to it. This is an excellent poem that teaches us to observe the world around us but we don't have to evaluate it.

"I can handle your telling me what I did or didn't do.
And I can handle your interpretations but please don't mix the two.

If you want to confuse any issue, I can tell you how to do it:
Mix together what I do with how you react to it.

Tell me your disappointed with the unfinished chores you see,
But calling me "irresponsible" in no way motivates me.

And tell me that you're feeling hurt when I say "no" to your advances,
But calling me a frigid man won't increase your future chances.

Yes, I can handle your telling me what I did or didn't do,
And I can handle your interpretations but please don't mix the two."

-Marshall Rosenberg

by Rachel Talley

Unselfishness and LOVE!

I have finally found time to post more on this page. Someone emailed this to our homeschool group and I really liked what it had to say. Email me your comments about it. I would LOVE to learn what your ideas are. It really opened my mind more to alot of things I have already been pondering and praying about.

"If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love." (I wonder what virtue good people today would say is the highest?) He goes on to say, "The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point."

"It may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often of too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious think to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. . . . There are not ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. . . . But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit. . . . our charity must be a real and costly love with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses."

-Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

by Rachel Talley

Rejoicing

A friend just emailed this to me today. I LOVED it! I hope it speaks to you as it spoke to me.

"When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice."
-Ancient Sanskrit Saying

by Rachel Talley

The Life of Our Savior

Happy Easter!!

Let our hearts be FULL of GRATITUDE today for what He did because He LOVED us!

"Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and then for 3 years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He had nothing to do with this world except the naked power of His own divine manhood. While still a young man, the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two theives. His executioners gambles for the only piece of property He had on the earth while He was dying-and that was his coat. When he was dead He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today He is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that every marched, and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that One Solitary Life."

James Allan Francis, One Solitary Life, pp.1-7 (1963)

by Rachel Talley