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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Teacher and Author.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook - OneLife Ministries A Contemplative Interspiritual Fellowship. Blessings.
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There's nothing in the world I know
That can escape from love,
For every depth it goes below,
And every height above.
It waits, as waits the sky,
Until the clouds go by,
Yet shines serenely on
With an eternal day,
Alike when they are going,
And when they stay.
*Henry David Thoreau. Let such pure hate still underprop.
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
Henry David Thoreau (19the Century) was a disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson. These men belonged to a movement called the New English Transcendentalism . Leslie Perrin Wilson, in New England Transcendentalism, clarifies this movement as a reaction to modern trends:
The humanistic focus
arose partly as a reaction against the increasing dehumanization and materialism engendered by the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th Century. It was a response to what Emerson and his educated contemporaries felt to be the spiritual inadequacy of established religion.
Part of my interest in these men is an affirmation that what is beyond Nature is also in Nature; also, that religion had failed to connect persons adequately with the Spiritual. We are in such a time, now.
An example is the Christian religion. Such religion ranges mostly from a liberal deadening rationalism to a fundamentalist deadening superstition. Both can be dogmatic in their different ways. Both tend toward lack of openness to the supra-rational. Such liberalism and fundamentalism are more alike than either would dare consider admitting - even seeing.
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Thoreau reminds us of a healthier religion or way of spiritual wisdom. This way is one in which the person is at peace with God and affirms his or her divine dignity. This peace is not because, as in much religion, an anthropomorphic God was angry with us or upset with us, or even offended by us, and this was resolved by Jesus.
This path of Love is in relation to One we call many names and assign many titles to, One who was never angry with any of us to start with - never upset, never offended. That One is within Nature, and within us as Nature. That One is only Grace, for Spirit is only Love. That Seed-of-All does not give us what we do not deserve, for Pure Affection does not think in terms of deserve or not-deserve.
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But now there comes unsought, unseen,
Some clear divine electuary,
And I, who had but sensual been,
Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary.
I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before,
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
A clear and ancient harmony
Pierces my soul through all its din,
As through its utmost melody -
Farther behind than they, farther within.
*Henry David Thoreau. "Inspiration."
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*For poem excerpts www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/thoreau-poems.html#inspiration; Leslie Perrin Wilson citation from www.concord-ma.com/magazine/nov98/trans.html .
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis.
*Brian is on Facebook: Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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