*      Amanson: Tonight we shall speak on Worship, the greatest activity in which a human being can engage, for it takes all forms: service is worship; prayer is worship; singing is worship. Anything providing a longing to connect and deliver the sacred trust you have in the Sacred and the Sacred has in you is worthy of being called Worship.

Worship in its common definition, the one usually associated with the word, is a conscious revelation from within of adherence to a Higher Power -- a devoted love, a stated love to a power greater than ourselves. But that is only partly worship. Worship, as has been said, is any activity that will connect you with that Living Presence you are inspired to worship. So, being on one’s knees, hands folded in the traditional sense, in the traditional posture, this is but one small definition of the act of Worship. Given your propensity to express your dedication to this greater Source, the original Source, this great battery of Love, it makes sense that any activity you would engage in for the purpose of spreading this Love is Worship. The small bit of change you hand to the homeless person is Worship; the smile you give to a passing stranger on the street is Worship; the helping hand you lend a neighbor is Worship; the deep breath you take upon completing a task is Worship.

For what is Worship but the acknowledgement of your own need to worship? This inner urge, this spontaneous ‘thank you’, this affection that springs from deep within your very soul that would link itself up to the Higher Power calling down to you: this linkage is Worship. This embrace is Worship. It is not a dry, arid exercise of hope; it is a rich passionate blood-invigorating embrace of the highest Truth as you know it. Love rains down like rain from a cloud that you stand beneath umbrella-less, happily absorbing, getting soaked by, this grand vibration of the healthy and holy healing power of Love, sent by the Author of Love because you asked. In your worship you thought you were merely giving devotion. But in this act you are receiving an equal amount – a greater amount – of devotion from on high, devotion to you: true love sent your way through the gate that you had opened to send yours His way (choose your pronoun).

Life is itself Worship when lived with sensitivity to its nuances, nuances that are redolent with worship-worthy qualities. You are surrounded by the results of an interior worship, that which you give your thought and focus to; your heart. This surrounding landscape is a reflection of your worship. The interactions you experience during the day?... these are reflections of your worship for they become your worship. “Worship is the act of time striking step with eternity.” This is a quote from a precious book. And it is true. Christ himself loves your worship for it reflects his acts through you. You become his worshipper on earth. Not worshipping him but worshipping his children, your brothers and sisters, through these acts of love, the individual acts of love which, as has been said, are themselves Worship. It doesn’t merely extend upwards from the pews of a church, Worship extends outward, horizontally, from the altar of your heart.

Worship is the very stuff of life. It is life transformed as Appreciation, as Gratitude, and is the motivating power behind Truth, Beauty, and Goodness on the earth plane. Worship extends itself beyond itself, and its magnificence is reflected far and wide in the eyes, through the hands, beaming from the heart of each individual worshipper as they recognize one another, whether they know it or not.

Worship is life itself. Live. Live. Amen.

May 26

Tonight I would speak on kindness, the ‘quality of mercy’ that appears so often lacking in your society’s day-to-day story.

But kindness can be found in the strangest of places. Kindness is most often missing in one’s relation with one’s self, hence missing in our relations with others. When a work of great feeling is displayed before a public that lacks feeling, that actually fears feeling, an artist will recoil in an attitude of defense. For who wouldn’t?  But if all the artists were to stand up and display their creations at once to the world, then feeling might break forth in a wave and, through tenderness being proffered en masse to a puzzled public, might actually inspire and engender a wave of kindness within each of the witnesses -- a kindness directed at the heart of the matter: that someone had dared to be kind, to be vulnerable, to risk defeat at the hands of a hardened constituency; that in his or her faith in the latent ability of this seemingly callous public to feel deeply and react with kindness toward if nothing else the sheer bravery of risking rejection, then the shell of defensiveness that is ruining your social discourse and threatening the very fabric of society might be penetrated, broken up, relaxed, and civility – kindness – might reign.

But it takes the courage of display, the willingness to appear the fool in the eyes of a massively destructive community of brothers and sisters who have forgotten they are precisely that – brothers and sisters.

This is of course an allegory, this notion of artists and artwork. For ‘artists’ read ‘citizens; for ‘creations’ read ‘acts’. Kindness is the result of either an innate burgeoning of empathy for one’s brothers and sisters or a thought-out decision, a conceptual realization that this – kindness – is the best, the most creative, indeed the most logical way to go, the most productive way to live. But there is much at the moment holding it back, blocking the way, and it is only by example of the Living Force that is Kindness that the blockages shall be cleared and Kindness will be made to live and breathe as the heart and lungs of your society, your country, your world.