Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.
*Gandhi
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Arem offers, today, a heartfelt message from the recent past, after a major life transition. He relates a time following his being dismissed from church ministry - being told by representatives of a major mainline Christian denomination that he did have a divine calling, but did not "fit" anymore with that church group - though he had served it for a decade and been licensed only two years prior. No other reasons were stated to him, or his church, which had voted unanimously for his return to serve them another year, of the reasons for his dismissal.
His story tells of the time, after over thirty years in church ministry as a pastor and professor, when he chose to surrender his Life totally to Spirit and dissociated completely from the Christian religion and religion generally. He shares how this applies to all of us, as we come to that point of surrender to the Divine Presence and provisions of that Presence to sustain us in our needs, as we follow a path of integrity and compassionate inclusiveness.
Arem chooses to withhold from on-line disclosure the church group who dismissed him, but is thankful to it. The dismissal opened the door for Arem to begin again and engage in a ministry of compassionate inclusiveness free of the restrictions of religious dogma and prejudices of much church teaching and politics.
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*New Beginning, NJ, Flickr
We shall rise above with our love
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*On Bended Knee,~whitetara~, Flickr
* * * CLOSING BLESSING * * *
Namaste'
The Sacred in Me bows to the Sacred in You
OM Shanti Shanti Shanti OM
ŠArem Nahariim-Samadhi, 11.19.11. Arem can be contacted at 77ahavah77@gmail.com .
*The opening photograph, Red Lotus, is by Bahman Farzad, and is at Flickr.
