Emissaries of Divine Light was born out of divine inspiration and out of America’s culture in the 1930s. In that culture, there was a prevalence of Christianity. So, in many ways, this program was born out of that Christian culture. And yet, from the very beginning, what we have offered transcends the culture from which this ministry was born, with great love and honor, not only for that culture but for the truth it pointed to. Still, from the very beginning, we have welcomed people from all faiths, lands, and races. Our service is not unique to Christianity; it is not unique to America. It is universal.
In last week’s Pulse of Spirit, I wrote about the divine Mother. The cultures of the world have their way of representing this reality. Mother God is acknowledged, whether it is as Mother Mary, Sophia, Kwan Yin, or Our Lady of Guadalupe.
I grew up in a Unitarian household and learned about Mother God from a series of books my mother read to me. They were from Thornton Burgess, an American conservationist born in 1874. He was a prolific author of children’s stories that portrayed the life of wild animals in America. One of the characters in the story is Mother Nature. That was the author’s way of speaking of Mother God. Mother Nature was always there for the animals of the forest. The stories gave my child consciousness a way to think about the universal Mother, the Mother that surrounds all living things and is everywhere.
Sometimes, when I hear people addressing Mother God, I think, Don’t you get it? That is us! In the world for which we are responsible, if the Mother is not present through us as human beings, if we are not an expression of love and compassion and protection, if we are not there to foster the growth of people, to enfold them in our love and care, who will? You might say Mother God loves them. That is nice and good, and it is true. But is it really enough? Is that what we say to a young child? “Well, Mother God loves you.” No, I am here to offer that kind of surround. For my world, I am Mother.
In a similar way, people look to the masculine face of God, by whatever name. In Christian circles, perhaps they look to Jesus, or God the Father. In other faiths, it is Allah, the Buddha, or El Shaddai.
One of the names for the masculine face of God is the Creator. There is the Creator of all and the creative power within all things. It is within the atom and all living forms. That power is no different in you than it is in me, even though it manifests uniquely in everyone. It is universal. It is one reality of Creatorship that is bigger than us all, the Creator.
We don’t have to think twice to know that, as a human being, we are not the Creator of the universe. The thought is so preposterous that it makes me laugh. But try this on:
I am the Creator of my world.
It is a radical thought. And it defies a mechanical view of the world that attributes the cause of human experience to external factors. You weren’t your parents who gave birth to you. You didn’t create the culture into which you were born. You aren’t that person who just made a rude comment. You are not the leader of your country who seems to hold so much power to influence the nation.
And still, in what way is this statement true?
I am the Creator of my world.
Adopting that stance in life certainly defies any sense of victimhood you might have. It might bring you to the awareness that regardless of anything that has happened in the past that has led up to this moment, you are the Creator for all that is present. You are here to receive and bless it. You are here to bring the power of Creation to it.
This power to create is the power of Love, though using that name does not define or limit it. It is the power to activate and transform. It is a vibration that moves from a source deep within the human soul.
Standing as the Creator for your world, you inherit the power to bless and heal. You inherit the powers of Creation relative to your world.
The more you know yourself as the Creator, the more you inherit the powers of a Creator. And the more those powers move through you, the more faith you have in them, and the more faith you have in yourself as a Creator. The more you have this faith, the stronger are the powers that are at work.
Love transforms. Have you been transformed by Love? By Love, face-to-face with another person who radiated Love to you and changed you because of it?
Love, the power of Creation, is, by its nature, forgiving. The Love within you is like that. It isn’t deciding whether you are good enough to receive its power. It isn’t judging you for your limitations or failures. Did you just breathe another breath? You were just forgiven. Not as an act of extraordinary kindness. Just because that is Love’s nature.
As we know ourselves as the Creator of our world, it is like that for us. We may notice an injustice committed by someone. And we may consciously choose not to withhold Love, the power of Creation, from that person. But that is not an exceptional act of forgiveness. We are simply refusing to stop being the Creator of our world.
Forgiveness might seem like a humanly generated thing.
They have been such an awful person, but I am so enlightened that I am loving them in spite of it.
That kind of forgiveness can be filled with ego and arrogance. The Creator you are forgives simply because that is your nature.
The attitude of forgiveness is based on a recognition of the wonder of what is already happening for all of us. And now I get to participate in that with you. I am simply taking the attitude that the Creator of all things is taking. With every breath, we have another opportunity. And so do I, with you, and you with me.
There may be a course of wisdom in the affairs we are responsible for that requires our action. If somebody behaves destructively, we may need to protect the world from that person’s actions. But that is not a lack of forgiveness. That is an act of Love.
The Love you have as a Creator is hard to define. You can’t put your finger on just what it is. But it is there, deep within us all. The Creator radiates that Love to our world.
Love forgives in all things. That is our nature. As we acknowledge that for ourselves, we are set free. Nobody can stop us from loving; no matter what happens, that is who we are.
Viktor Frankl was a psychoanalyst from Vienna, Austria. Nazi Germany imprisoned him in a concentration camp during World War II. Viktor lost his family and saw people dying around him. And yet he had an attitude of service for the people in the camp. He noticed that where others had a similar mindset, they tended to survive. They kept going. They had tapped into something within themselves that gave their lives meaning.
He brought a manuscript with him to the camp. When the guards discovered it, they took the manuscript from him. But when he got out, he rewrote it with the benefit of all that he had learned, and that became the epic book on human psychology, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Here is this quotation from the Book of Malachi:
Unto you…shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings. (Malachi 4:2)
Here is a vision of the presence of the Creator emerging through a person. We rise as the Sun of righteousness, with healing in our wings. That is us as the Creator.
What are our wings? The aura, the human energy field that carries the power of Love. We rise with healing in our wings.
The re-creative power of Love is moving through our energy field into the world—healing, uplifting, restoring, bringing faith and hope.
We arise like the Sun, with healing in our wings.