I was at a wedding yesterday. One of the things they said in their vows was this: “I will hold a space for you that is safe, and because of our communion together our friends and our world will be blessed.”

Later the minister said, “In human form, this kind of agreement can be difficult, because there will be things that will come your way that will try to enter into the space of that agreement, the space where you said, ‘Yes, we’ll keep this safe.’ Something else might try to get in there, and you have to protect that space and keep it a home for love.”

The other day I had a dinner party where I made spaghetti for all the people who watch my cat when I’m out of town, and they all happen to have kids. So this morning, as a result of the sense of safety felt by these children, there were two six-year-olds up in my tree, three three-year-olds on my porch swing, and a two-year-old riding her Big Wheel on my porch with roly-polies in the back of it. And I thought, I’m not sure I wanted to be that safe; they are taking over my home!

When you hold a place of safety, things want to come and be with you. And it’s not just children. It’s ideas, it’s projects, it’s people. And it is important to figure out how to continue to be trustworthy, how to sustain a clear loving atmosphere, how to be the kind of person that someone knows they can trust is holding a world with them.

This week I was reading the Reader’s Digest, which this month happens to be all about trust. Listed within are “The One Hundred Most Trusted People in America.” Do you want to guess who’s number one? Tom Hanks. Second, Sandra Bullock; third, Denzel Washington; fourth, Meryl Streep; fifth, Maya Angelou. Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, Alex Trebek (he’s not even American; he’s Canadian), Melinda Gates and Julia Roberts top off the top ten. All I can say is wow, because when I speak about trust, I don’t know how that is achieved if you don’t have a real experience with the person. Would you trust Tom Hanks to hold a sacred space? I think he seems like a really nice guy. He’s done some great movies and his interviews reveal him to be a substantial man. But when I’m talking about trust, I’m talking about my life. I’m really talking about someone to whom I could bring what’s unfinished into their atmosphere and know it will be held and blessed and lifted up. Someone who I know holds their own integrity, no matter what. I don’t think any of those ten people have proved any of that to me personally. The idea that someone would vote for that person is just so intriguing. I guess it was a bit of a setup even asking the question. Somewhere else in the issue it reveals that people put their doctor at the top of the list and yet elsewhere it states we trust TV doctors more than our own.

This Monday was Memorial Day here in the United States. Originally, it was called Memorial Day to honor those who gave their lives in serving this country. It currently honors all those who have served. This country has stood for something high and fine. It was founded on principles of freedom and possibility. It was Benjamin Franklin’s declaration that this country be a beacon of light to the world. So many of the people who fought and died for this country were doing something honorable in the giving of their lives to sustain the freedom of those who live in the United States.

Today I’d also like to remember the people who lived their life in integrity so that I might find out what it’s like to be a real woman in the presence of people who hold the space of integrity and truth and love—the people who did not let anything else violate their agreement to keep their living sacred. In doing so, I touched someone who was living in that sacred agreement, that kind of service, and felt that vibration. I could feel within me the cells of my being that remembered. I had come here on this earth and forgotten, but something was kept alive in their living that made it possible for me to remember.

The name of this holiday, Memorial Day, might make you feel like we are living in the past, because the word memory implies that. So I would like to call it Honoring Day. May my life be an honoring of those who went before me. May I live an honorable life in integrity to carry forth the legacy of anyone who has ever done that, ever. I may never have met them, but in their decision to keep their highest agreements sacred and to live in their integrity, they affected my life.

There is an idea that many people have, that they’d like to find the Garden of Eden. They think of it as some kind of Shangri-La, so that if you could just find the right GPS coordinates you could get there. The fact is that the Garden of Eden is an experience, and you enter that experience when you know the magic words: I surrender. I surrender to the truth of who I am, and I live my life in integrity. Then you enter in. And the only person who can throw you out is yourself. To sustain the experience, you must continue to surrender to the holy spirit within you. You must serve unconditional love and protect the agreement to do so at all costs.

A friend of mine once said if you take a person who lives in a beautiful home and put him in a rundown house, it will become a beautiful home. And if you take someone who has let their yard and their house become run down and put them in a palace, it too will fall apart. The Garden of Eden works the same way. If you bring it, it appears. If you violate it, it goes away.

So how do you create heaven on earth? How do you keep the Garden safe so that life might be there more abundantly? You must commit to serve unconditional love and be trustworthy to that agreement. So when we decide that we will sustain what it takes to live in Paradise, to surrender to the truth of ourselves and not let anything in to violate it, Paradise appears. When we keep that experience pristine, it becomes a womb of love and truth, so that life might actually come, and we live in a glorious kingdom. As a result, power builds amongst the people. The Garden serves those who have surrendered to the truth of who they are. And so the kingdom builds up power amongst those people. It is a powerful place to live. You create in that place. You are the Almighty representation in that garden. And then what happens? Glory upon glory.

People think glory happens because somebody gives it to them. I have never known any glory that sustained itself that was not a result of my serving, my creating from a sacred place of love and agreement. Glory is created from the powerful experience within the clear and beautiful sustained experience of the Garden. That glory is shared amongst people who sustain their agreement to bring it.

In my life, there has been a lot of time dedicated to building and then rebuilding because I didn’t know how to sustain, or I let negative elements in. Anybody let things in that violated your space? Bad relationships? Friends who took over? Bad ideas? Bad habits? Bad thinking? Whatever it is, it comes in for a visit and you give it a room—and it takes over. So you have to clean house and you have to do that cycle again to rebuild. Thankfully, the entire house is usually not ruined. But I am ready to build and sustain, from glory to glory.

Here is my prayer. Let me honor all the people who have given their lives to what I serve. May my living honor the legacy they have given me. And may the way I am as your friend be a constant invitation to a safe place for you. Let me sustain my sacred agreement.