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And what, you may ask,

are these?

What would you do if you were one of many small Japanese grocery store owners, and watermelons were a problem? They are too round and rolly, and take up too much space.

Do you just live with the problem?

Creative Japanese farmers found a solution. Soon they were growing cube-shaped watermelons. While the melons are small, the farmers place them in a box, and as they grow, the young fruits take on the shape of the box.

Although this is a story about fruit growing inside a box, what a great lesson it serves for thinking outside the box!

How often we feel trapped because things “have always been” a certain way. Yet in the infinity of a universal Mind, there must be solutions even to situations that seem hopeless or discouraging. Adopting an attitude of hopefulness opens thought to new possibilities.

When our young family was applying for a mortgage to buy a home, I had unintentionally given an overestimate of my husband’s salary to our contact at the bank. When I discovered the mistake a few days later, I felt very discouraged. From what we had been told, his actual salary was likely to be insufficient for us to qualify for the loan.

We agreed to think outside the box of discouragement. Together we looked away from the economy and facts and figures, and instead to God as Spirit for solutions.

If this house was right for our family, we felt a universally good God would show us how it was to come about. If it was not the right place for us, then there was something more suited to our needs, and this caring God would help us find it.

As it happened, we qualified and lived happily in that home for many years.

While I didn't need to invent a box for shaping watermelons, I did learn an important lesson about being willing to take a new look at circumstances, to look for answers beyond the boundaries of how things appear to be.

An "Aha!" Moment

I'd like to share an “aha” moment.

Writing a word of encouragement to his church community in Corinth, Paul says, “Agree with one another and live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Well, that makes sense. If we are living in agreement and peace, the One who originates harmony and peace would be present.

So, does it stand to reason that if we are living oppositely, in discord and strife, that the god of discord and strife would be present?

If our thoughts determine what we worship at any given moment, and I believe they do, then if we give voice to anger and resentment – would we be bowing down to them, worshipping anger or hate during such high adrenaline moments?

Expanding on Paul’s sweeter promise, we could conclude that as we live with beauty and goodness, then the God of beauty and goodness is with us. As we live with honesty and patience at the forefront of our thoughts and deeds, that God is with us.

We can choose, as best we know how, to live in agreement and peace with one another, being comforted and strengthened by the presence of that God with us. Of course the God of these good qualities is the same God as the God of other good qualities. Goodness originates from One infinite source.

The more consistent we are in backing off from reacting with anger and impatience, to making an honest effort to find solutions that promote harmony and peace with one another, the more consistently will we realize the immense caring of this universal God.

Loving backward?

A friend recently commented, “I can love forward and I can love backward!”

To me this means not letting anger, fear, hate, hurt feelings, bitterness, resentment crowd into one's thinking. It means staying mentally aligned with God's goodness regardless of the circumstances.

If we think of God as Love and filling all space and time, then God or Love is the center of all being. To love forward is to commit to loving what is good and true no matter what. To love backward is to bathe every memory, good or bad, in Love’s warm and cleansing light.

When someone shares a neat idea, it’s useful to see how it relates to our own experience. So of course I had to ask, “Can I love forward? Can I commit to just love, no matter what comes down the pike?”

What about backward? Can I love backward? Can I regard with kind and forgiving eye every injustice, misunderstanding, willful word or act?

To choose to love backward is, amazingly, to live in the present moment. It is to courageously take charge of this moment in our life. It’s to decide to be in control of our thinking and to consciously choose a generous attitude. It is to refuse to let another decide whether we are going to be miserable or cheerful, unhappy or pleasant, guilty or innocent.

Loving forward is to send our good-will ahead of our footsteps, ahead of the clock as it were. Loving forward decides ahead of time to make the best of whatever comes. In fact it is to do more than that. Attitude makes all the difference. Loving forward is an expectancy of good and that expectancy often opens thought to recognize good that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Love, as God, really knows no time, no past no future. Love is now. And that's really all we need to know in order to participate in timeless goodness.

The Lord is my Shepherd

A shepherd carries

his found sheep

Sometimes life and relationships seem very complicated. They are not, really. Truth is simple and direct. Love is caring and honest. Attentiveness is timely and thorough.

It’s when we stray from being true to ourselves as God knows us, that things get blurred. Dishonesty, for example, gets complicated because one deception leads to another. Procrastination gets complicated because neglected tasks pile up.

What cuts through all this is the simplicity of goodness. If God is entirely good – and the Bible, especially Jesus' life and words, assures us over and over of the power of good – then His/Her creation is intended to praise and honor Him/Her by expressing that universal goodness.

Someone once said that if life consists in the unfolding of good – and it does - then procrastination is putting off good. Who would want to do that?

So here’s a little email story going around that illustrates the simplicity of truth.

A Sunday School teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most comforting passages in the Bible: Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the six verses.

Little Ricky was excited about the task – but he was having trouble learning the whole Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line.

On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Ricky was no longer nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said with conviction, "The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know."

NIU

My friend Krys emailed today, distressed about the senseless killings at Northern Illinois University. My daughter attended NIU, so that windswept campus among the cornfields holds a warm spot in my heart.

Years ago the husband of a friend committed suicide. A mutual friend who knew the couple better than I commented, “Suicide is a very selfish act.”

I hadn’t thought before that suicide was selfish, but I realized where she was coming from. The perpetrator thinks of no one except himself.

Well, we have been shown something even more selfish – the one who kills others before killing himself. We’re told the Virginia Tech killer was mentally unstable. Early reports indicate the NIU killer had recently quit taking his medications and had been behaving erratically.

I can identify with mental turmoil a little. I went through a period of great depression while in college; I felt I didn’t have any friends. But the thing that kept me from suicide was I knew how it would hurt my family. I could not do something so cruel to my family.

God pulled me right out of that pit by directing me to a career where I was actively helping people. For the next three years I learned to put my unselfish desires into practice, and ran my little legs off giving to others by training to be a Christian Science nurse.

What’s the antidote for selfishness? Generosity. The generous heart is so busy finding opportunities to help others that it has little time to mope about itself. I am blessed to count many generous hearts among my friends today.

Peggy, for example, is always asking, “What can I do to help?” Even when she doesn’t say it in words, you know she cares by how she pitches in without being asked.

How do we teach big-heartedness to today’s youngsters? By example. Kindness finds expression in unselfishness, caring, respect for others. It has to do with self-worth, feeling one has something of value to give.

Virginia Tech and now the NIU tragedy can be a timely wake-up call. Perhaps we can all do more to affirm the value of everyone we meet.

A cheery "Good Morning!" or a smile can be just the thing to turn someone’s discouragement around. God’s love includes everyone. Each person is important; no one should be marginalized or excluded.

We should not underestimate the power of a generous heart.

Other blogs on this topic:
The world is not falling apart!
Shooting in Illinois - scroll down to February 15, 2008

Noah - everything we need to know

This email has been making the rounds, and if you would enjoy a semi-light-hearted review of life-lessons learned from Noah, this list may be for you.


Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah's Ark

One : Don't miss the boat.

Two : Remember that we are all in the same boat.

Three : Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.

Four : Stay fit. When you're 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.

Five : Don't listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.

Six : Build your future on high ground.

Seven : For safety's sake, travel in pairs.

Eight : Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.

Nine : When you're stressed, float awhile.

Ten : Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.

Eleven : No matter how long the storm, when you are with God there's always a rainbow waiting...

Turning lives around

Valuing others' lives --

A mama swan protects her babies.

One of today’s encouraging phrases runs something like, “He did a complete turnaround.” Or “She did a one-eighty -- referring to the number of degrees required to change from facing in one direction to facing the exact opposite direction. North to south, east to west.

I love when “one-eighty” praises someone’s ability to make a dramatic course correction.

Jesus was always doing that – turning people’s lives around, facing them in new and promising directions. It was as though he put a gentle finger under a downcast chin and lifted the gaze from the ground – helping them to see their world on an eye-to-eye basis, literally lifting their self-esteem to glimpse their worthiness as children of a loving Father.

The woman dragged to him for judgment makes a great example. From the scant information provided, it sounds like an entrapment – she had been set-up and caught having sex with a man not her husband. The Pharisees, Jesus’ self-appointed very public critics, had tossed her in front of him as so much trash, daring him to not have her stoned to death as Moses’ law required.

Jesus let them rant awhile and then posed a solution. Anyone of you, he proposed, who has never committed a sin, never done anything wrong, go ahead and throw the first rock. His simple statement demanded honesty and self-knowledge. Quietly, they all left.

And the woman! What a sense of freedom and relief when Jesus helped her see that no one was accusing her anymore. He sent her home with the admonition to stay out of trouble - specifically to sin no more. Was he was showing her God-given sinless nature? the satisfaction and self-worth that come from recognizing the genuine beauty and purity of her true femininity?

When he healed people – blind, crippled, diseased – usually long-time sufferers, he restored purpose and value. Jesus' life message was one of hope, healing, transformation.

He told his followers to do what he did. I wonder, if we all made a special effort to value those who come into our lives today, how much hope and purpose we might bring without even knowing it? Might we just help turn somebody's life around?

Simple Politics

A rainy Super Tuesday

outside a local polling place

Super Tuesday in the United States has come and gone. This was the day when 22 states, including my own Illinois, held caucuses or primary elections.

The Presidential candidates all seemed pleased with the collective results.

And judges. Who can possibly know all the judges (or any of them) running for election, and which ones are qualified.

In recent years, state and city bar associations have created websites that rate the judicial candidates as Well qualified, Qualified, or Not qualified.

I was pleased to note in reading the brief comments about the Well qualified judicial candidates, that most were noted for their integrity, and were well respected by their peers.

These sheets can be printed out and taken with you into the voting booth. Choosing the Well qualified and the qualified helps keep good people in the judicial system.

Mary Baker Eddy -- whose life spanned the 19th and 20th centuries -- founded the Christian Science church, several magazines, an international daily newspaper; she was a popular teacher and author.

It's hard for us to realize today that there was a time when American women did not have the right to vote. Eddy passed on nine years before the passage of the 19th amendment granted this right.

Even so, such was her stature that in 1908 the Boston Post asked about her politics.

“Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy has always believed that those who are entitled to vote should do so, and she has also believed that in such matters no one should seek to dictate the acations of others.

In reply to a number of requests for an expression of her political views, she has given out this statement: --

I am asked, ‘What are your politics?’ I have none, in reality, other than to help support a righteous government; to love God supremely, and my neighbor as myself.”

That rather simplifies things, doesn’t it.

A tale of two vendors

Innocent looking panel box -

but something needed fixing.

Condo living is great. Somebody else is responsible for shoveling the snow, cutting the grass, raking the leaves.

However, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. What's behind the scenes is called the condo board, elected volunteers who connect with the management company and the vendors and make sure things continue running smoothly.

In one of our buildings, the alarm panel that automatically alerts the fire department in case of emergency, malfunctioned. The state requires that panel to function properly. So the fire sprinkler inspection people came out and checked their equipment and said everything was working fine. Therefore, it must be the telephone people's responsibility.

The phone company technicians came out and tested their equipment. Everything worked properly, they said.

It was back to the fire sprinkler inspection vendor. They came out again and confirmed their equipment was fine. Back to the phone company, and so on. Would you believe, for months?

Solutions are not supposed to be this complicated.

So, what exactly wasn’t working, and who could find it and fix it?

Since I was the contact for these vendors, I finally realized (better late than never!) I’d better pray about this puzzle. My prayer went something like this: Dear Father, You are Mind itself, infinite intelligence, and it is your loving nature to meet every human need. It’s a human need to comply with state regulations, and I don’t know what to do next. But you do. So I am ready to hear what it is you want me to do.

It came to me to call the sprinkler inspectors again, and talk to Brad, the service manager. Brad wanted very much to solve this lingering problem. So he sent a technician who came armed with 30 years' experience. He studied the alarm panel parts carefully and then asked an out-of the-box question for a sprinkler inspector. “Where is your phone equipment?”

In that room he opened a box to find a little rectangular green module that connects the alarm panel to the phone lines. He ran some tests on that little rascal, discovered a bad wire, replaced it and, quick as a bunny, the alarm panel was back on-line. We were connected and in compliance – for the first time in months.

Did prayer make a difference? I believe it did. Because phone calls without prayer had, for months, solved nothing. Phone calls after honest prayer resulted in a quick and permanent solution. As I see it, the successful technician was inspired to push the boundaries of where to find what needed fixing.

Hurray! Or as a dear friend often cheers, sincerely, "Yea God!"

Baby boom decline - unavoidable?

A friend forwarded part of an email conversation in which she protested the apathetic acceptance of "over-the-hill" thinking. You've seen it in greeting cards. People hold Over-the-hill parties. Ho, ho, ho. While there is some nobility in making the best of a bad situation, there is nothing funny about inevitable decline. (Names changed):

She and Jim were engaged in email conversation. He had sent one of those cutesy mass emails about Baby Boomers reaching Social Security age – and all the problems (so funny, yeah right!)

Jim and Ann are good friends, so she talk bluntly, and shared what she felt should be the Boomer email going around, and included some forward looking thoughts about aging, such as Eddy's statement in Science and Health that,

“Except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise. Man, governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness.”

Jim shot back, "Three score & ten is a little short sighted these days, don't ya think?"

So this sent Ann to some research. “Yes,” she replied, “BUT - Since the average life expectancy when Eddy wrote that was about 45 – and 70 is about 60% more than that, we could take the average life expectancy at any time, multiply by 60 % , and change that sentence accordingly.

Furthermore, Ann googled and found that in 2004 the life expectancy at birth was 77.9 – let’s say 78. 78 x 60% means that her sentence, when put in the early 21st century scale would read:

"Except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than sixscore years and five (translates to 125 years!) and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise."

That’s as wild as Eddy's statement would have seemed to the readers of her day! And the concept is as true today as the original was then. Which all goes to show that we have to stop measuring and limiting – even in “cute” ways!

Ann concluded, "That little word “except” is key to that sentence’s promise! And even a Boomer’s life embraces 'all that is good and beautiful.' ”