Magazine - Year 2009 - Version 1
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Language: ENGLISH
Language: ENGLISH
A Divine Economy
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I breathe into the air. Outside my window is a tree. The tree takes my breath, mixes it with water and sunlight, and makes green leaves. As it does this, the tree in its turn breathes into the air. I breathed out carbon dioxide, which the tree needs, but the tree breathes out oxygen, which I need.
The universe is a divine economy. It runs by the free interchange that takes place between its elements. I take. I use. I give. Another takes, uses, and gives in his turn. Each part of being has its own gift to make. Nothing that I receive do I give back exactly as I received it. Because I am in it, the universe is more than it was. I enrich it by my gifts.
All of us must give - willingly or reluctantly. And we must give all we have; in the end, life will let us hold nothing back. We have the use of many things - for a moment, as with a breath or a thought; for a year or two, as with a coat or a pair of shoes; for many years, as with a house or an inheritance. But we cannot hold on to anything too long. If we do, we will wish we had let it go. We cannot hold on to breath. We cannot hold on to time. Mice and mold spoil the grain kept too long in the granary. The most cleverly hidden gold - the treasures in the tombs of Egypt and China - in time falls into the hands of robbers or is forgotten by all and returns for a season into the bosom of the earth. .
This is the parable of the talents. When we merely try to hold on to what life has given us, life may take away even that. But when have use what life has given us, when we in turn give freely, then we may hear the voice of the Master of life, saying; “Well done”.
Life seeks to give itself. Aeons of evolution culminate in every sprouting seed and would sweep further on. Every living creature is the product of perfection's hungering to bring forth a perfect thing, and all the forces of heaven and earth converge around it and offer themselves to bring it to fulfillment.
The universe holds nothing back. Atom and sun offer their fire. Truths imagination has not dreamed of trip over themselves, trying to make us see them, hoping to be found and used. Powers that would stagger reason lie pent in every crack of space and coil of mind, eager to come forth and do our bidding. Blessings wait everywhere, hungering to bestow themselves, to reshape life and the world, to enable us to surpass all we have ever done or been.
The universe holds nothing back.
Why then do so few of us reach out and partake? Why are there so few George Washington Carvers? Edisons? Einsteins? The music of life gushes forth continually. Why do so few Mozarts ever seem to hear?
Is it that we believe that all things must be earned by sweat and tears? Is it that we believe that life is meant to be hard and full of suffering? Is it that we do not believe in the good will of God?
Truth beats at the gates of our mind, but we will not let it in.
Love offers itself in love, and we demand, "What is your price?" We will not accept our good, though it reaches out to us. "I am unworthy. I am inadequate," we cry.
We insist that life be miserly when it would be only spendthrift with us. Life loves to be spendthrift. It weighs the vine till it sags and bends the tree to the ground with fruit. It crams the meadows with daisies. It spills song out of the bird. And it beats at our brain with ideas like rain against a window.
Life cries, "Yet more! Yet more!"
Life gives itself as the sun gives itself, with no thought of holding back. The sun has no thought of making its light hard for us to have.
Life gives itself as a flower gives itself. Effortlessly, easily, in its own perfect time, a flower opens its petals.
Life gives itself as rain gives itself. Rain does not ask of one, "Are you worthy" or of another, "Have you the price?"
Life gives. Life gives abundantly.
"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly," said the Master of life. "Give, and it will be given," cries the Lord of life," pressed down, shaken together, running over."
Not pay, and you shall be paid,
Not suffer, and you shall be suffered.
Not labor, and you shall be recompensed for your labor.
Everywhere we look we see life giving itself. We hear it telling us that it is meant to be a giving. It is not meant to be hard and painful. It is meant to be natural and easy.
We have our part to fill, but it is not a hard part. We do not have to pay in pain for the good life lavishes on us. We pay by giving in our turn our own gift.
Life never asks payment for anything. Life gives. We only have to pay when we refuse to give.
This is the great lesson of nature. All things offer themselves. The water does not shrink from our lips, nor the light from our eyes, nor the air from our throats, crying, "Suffer for me. Labor for me. Pay for me."
The earth gives. The sun gives. The universe gives. The furthest stars rain down their light and ask but that we lift our eyes and look up through the dark to take in the golden glory.
Consider how the beauty of God pours out of the great artists. Because they labor over every word? Because they rewrite every phrase of music? Because they rub out and repeat the brush stroke ten thousand times?
Ah, no! Poetry gushed out of Shakespeare. Music cascaded out of Mozart. Michelangelo filled walls, ceilings, canvases with his masterpieces, carved stone and molded metal.
The great Sung painters of China, masters of Zen, painted pictures as beautiful as men have ever painted. It is told of one of them that after a long productive life he painted a landscape so perfectly that he then stepped into it and vanished from human view.
Yet these men worked on silk with brushes, so it was impossible to erase a single stroke! They gave themselves to their subject. Then, as freely, easily and spontaneously as life forms a cloud or a sunset or a daisy, they fashioned their painting.
Love does not exact pain payment. Love does not give so that it may receive. Love does not ask to be returned. Love does not offer terms. Love gives because its nature is to give.
God is love. God does not say, "you must do thus and so. Then I will love you"
Does the spring rain say to the seed in the ground? "You must do thus and so, then I will let you grow?
God is not a keeper of accounts. God is the Giver of good.
The most important things you have were not earned. They are gifts. Your body is a gift. Your mind is gift.
Your capacity for life, thought, feeling, and action is a gift. Your children are a gift.
Do you have talents? The other name for talent is gift. Youth is a gift. Long life is a gift.
Let us then give as we have received. Life will always strike the balance in our favor. If we give as freely as we are able, we will never give back more than a fraction of what we receive. But that is the way life would have it. We are life's beloved children. It gives to us as we give to our children and to those we love.
Nothing in life says, "Pay!" But the whole universe thunders by its example, "Give!" What a world of difference between these words! So long as we think in terms of payment, the world is a drab place where we labor for hire. It is a counting house, not the palace of a king. It is a slave compound, not the house of the children of God. But we only have to labor for hire when we do not give ourselves in love. ..
The law of the counting house is: Work and you will be paid. But love and life whisper the promise: Give and it shall be given. How different life would be if we were not to labor grudingingly but to give willingly.
"Lord, make of me a productive channel." If I could make but a single prayer, it would be this.
It is not that I would not have money and fame and happiness and health and many other things, but above them all I would be a working part of being.
Every person knows in his heart - even if he himself can not live by what he knows - that we live to our utmost when we give to our utmost. It is those who give the most who live the best. Such are the heroes and the geniuses and the saints.
If what I am able to produce is perfect, that is good. And if what I am able to produce is not perfect, that, too, is good. I shall have given the world what I had to give - the gift of myself.
God is no respecter of persons. We do not have to be perfect or great or good for God to use us. We have only to want to give.
This is to give as a well gives. A well is little in itself but taps the deep and hidden rivers under the earth. A human being is more than a well. God Himself is the river at his root.
Give, and it shall be given - not out of the littleness of self, but out of the largeness and largess of the Lord of life.
- James Dillet Freeman
(Courtesy – Unity Books, USA)
The universe is a divine economy. It runs by the free interchange that takes place between its elements. I take. I use. I give. Another takes, uses, and gives in his turn. Each part of being has its own gift to make. Nothing that I receive do I give back exactly as I received it. Because I am in it, the universe is more than it was. I enrich it by my gifts.
All of us must give - willingly or reluctantly. And we must give all we have; in the end, life will let us hold nothing back. We have the use of many things - for a moment, as with a breath or a thought; for a year or two, as with a coat or a pair of shoes; for many years, as with a house or an inheritance. But we cannot hold on to anything too long. If we do, we will wish we had let it go. We cannot hold on to breath. We cannot hold on to time. Mice and mold spoil the grain kept too long in the granary. The most cleverly hidden gold - the treasures in the tombs of Egypt and China - in time falls into the hands of robbers or is forgotten by all and returns for a season into the bosom of the earth. .
This is the parable of the talents. When we merely try to hold on to what life has given us, life may take away even that. But when have use what life has given us, when we in turn give freely, then we may hear the voice of the Master of life, saying; “Well done”.
Life seeks to give itself. Aeons of evolution culminate in every sprouting seed and would sweep further on. Every living creature is the product of perfection's hungering to bring forth a perfect thing, and all the forces of heaven and earth converge around it and offer themselves to bring it to fulfillment.
The universe holds nothing back. Atom and sun offer their fire. Truths imagination has not dreamed of trip over themselves, trying to make us see them, hoping to be found and used. Powers that would stagger reason lie pent in every crack of space and coil of mind, eager to come forth and do our bidding. Blessings wait everywhere, hungering to bestow themselves, to reshape life and the world, to enable us to surpass all we have ever done or been.
The universe holds nothing back.
Why then do so few of us reach out and partake? Why are there so few George Washington Carvers? Edisons? Einsteins? The music of life gushes forth continually. Why do so few Mozarts ever seem to hear?
Is it that we believe that all things must be earned by sweat and tears? Is it that we believe that life is meant to be hard and full of suffering? Is it that we do not believe in the good will of God?
Truth beats at the gates of our mind, but we will not let it in.
Love offers itself in love, and we demand, "What is your price?" We will not accept our good, though it reaches out to us. "I am unworthy. I am inadequate," we cry.
We insist that life be miserly when it would be only spendthrift with us. Life loves to be spendthrift. It weighs the vine till it sags and bends the tree to the ground with fruit. It crams the meadows with daisies. It spills song out of the bird. And it beats at our brain with ideas like rain against a window.
Life cries, "Yet more! Yet more!"
Life gives itself as the sun gives itself, with no thought of holding back. The sun has no thought of making its light hard for us to have.
Life gives itself as a flower gives itself. Effortlessly, easily, in its own perfect time, a flower opens its petals.
Life gives itself as rain gives itself. Rain does not ask of one, "Are you worthy" or of another, "Have you the price?"
Life gives. Life gives abundantly.
"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly," said the Master of life. "Give, and it will be given," cries the Lord of life," pressed down, shaken together, running over."
Not pay, and you shall be paid,
Not suffer, and you shall be suffered.
Not labor, and you shall be recompensed for your labor.
Everywhere we look we see life giving itself. We hear it telling us that it is meant to be a giving. It is not meant to be hard and painful. It is meant to be natural and easy.
We have our part to fill, but it is not a hard part. We do not have to pay in pain for the good life lavishes on us. We pay by giving in our turn our own gift.
Life never asks payment for anything. Life gives. We only have to pay when we refuse to give.
This is the great lesson of nature. All things offer themselves. The water does not shrink from our lips, nor the light from our eyes, nor the air from our throats, crying, "Suffer for me. Labor for me. Pay for me."
The earth gives. The sun gives. The universe gives. The furthest stars rain down their light and ask but that we lift our eyes and look up through the dark to take in the golden glory.
Consider how the beauty of God pours out of the great artists. Because they labor over every word? Because they rewrite every phrase of music? Because they rub out and repeat the brush stroke ten thousand times?
Ah, no! Poetry gushed out of Shakespeare. Music cascaded out of Mozart. Michelangelo filled walls, ceilings, canvases with his masterpieces, carved stone and molded metal.
The great Sung painters of China, masters of Zen, painted pictures as beautiful as men have ever painted. It is told of one of them that after a long productive life he painted a landscape so perfectly that he then stepped into it and vanished from human view.
Yet these men worked on silk with brushes, so it was impossible to erase a single stroke! They gave themselves to their subject. Then, as freely, easily and spontaneously as life forms a cloud or a sunset or a daisy, they fashioned their painting.
Love does not exact pain payment. Love does not give so that it may receive. Love does not ask to be returned. Love does not offer terms. Love gives because its nature is to give.
God is love. God does not say, "you must do thus and so. Then I will love you"
Does the spring rain say to the seed in the ground? "You must do thus and so, then I will let you grow?
God is not a keeper of accounts. God is the Giver of good.
The most important things you have were not earned. They are gifts. Your body is a gift. Your mind is gift.
Your capacity for life, thought, feeling, and action is a gift. Your children are a gift.
Do you have talents? The other name for talent is gift. Youth is a gift. Long life is a gift.
Let us then give as we have received. Life will always strike the balance in our favor. If we give as freely as we are able, we will never give back more than a fraction of what we receive. But that is the way life would have it. We are life's beloved children. It gives to us as we give to our children and to those we love.
Nothing in life says, "Pay!" But the whole universe thunders by its example, "Give!" What a world of difference between these words! So long as we think in terms of payment, the world is a drab place where we labor for hire. It is a counting house, not the palace of a king. It is a slave compound, not the house of the children of God. But we only have to labor for hire when we do not give ourselves in love. ..
The law of the counting house is: Work and you will be paid. But love and life whisper the promise: Give and it shall be given. How different life would be if we were not to labor grudingingly but to give willingly.
"Lord, make of me a productive channel." If I could make but a single prayer, it would be this.
It is not that I would not have money and fame and happiness and health and many other things, but above them all I would be a working part of being.
Every person knows in his heart - even if he himself can not live by what he knows - that we live to our utmost when we give to our utmost. It is those who give the most who live the best. Such are the heroes and the geniuses and the saints.
If what I am able to produce is perfect, that is good. And if what I am able to produce is not perfect, that, too, is good. I shall have given the world what I had to give - the gift of myself.
God is no respecter of persons. We do not have to be perfect or great or good for God to use us. We have only to want to give.
This is to give as a well gives. A well is little in itself but taps the deep and hidden rivers under the earth. A human being is more than a well. God Himself is the river at his root.
Give, and it shall be given - not out of the littleness of self, but out of the largeness and largess of the Lord of life.
- James Dillet Freeman
(Courtesy – Unity Books, USA)
