My God Is So Good To Me

This handwritten note was found in a Unity booklet entitled, “Oneness With God.”  The booklet was printed in 1921 when Unity School of Christianity was still located on Tracy Avenue in Kansas City, MO.  This booklet was part of the library of Cordelia B. Lane that her family gave to me after her passing in 1960.  I discovered it just the other day as I was sorting through my own library in an effort to begin releasing my treasures and lightening my load.  I share it with you hoping it blesses you as it has me.

My God is so good to me.

The same God of all good who worked so-called miracles through His beloved Son Jesus is the same God of all good who just as willingly works in beauty and truth and love through you and me today.  The Master Jesus was continually aware of His God, His Father and Creator of all, and that is the requirement for you and me now, to be aware of, to recognize, to acknowledge, and to accept, good only.  Our aware(ness) of good awakens through prayer, through our putting our thoughts and hands to good and constructive use.

It is then, dear friend, “that unto every one that hath” this growing faith in and awareness of the dominant power of good, shall indeed “be given, and he shall have abundance.”  (Matthew 13:12)  Then our loving Father shall be heard speaking from within our heart saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.  Thou has been faithful over a few things; I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”  (Matthew 25:21)

“In thy presence is fullness of joy; In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11)

The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul.  The testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple.  The precepts of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart. (Psalm 19:7, 8)

(Healing prayer:  Weekly Unity, May 31^st 1953.)

God’s life, a river of healing, flows through me, and I realize that I am renewed, refreshed, restored.

When I received these treasures from Cordelia Lane’s estate I could never have known that fifty-eight years later I would be reading this beautiful note from a wonderful woman who believed so deeply in the presence of God blessing her life.  I am sure I did not notice the note when I received the booklet those many years ago at my first ministry.  It wasn’t until I actually started typing them for this posting today that I realized they were meant for me at just this time!  I looked up the biblical references and added them to her original note.

I am so blessed to have had many wonderful experiences through the years.  Sometimes a few simple words will send our attention back in wonder to times that have enriched our souls.  In remembrance shall my strength be renewed and my joy made full once again, today!

And Now About Social Engagement

As soon as I posted the quotes on solitude I knew I was going to have to balance those ideas with thoughts about how we engage socially with each other.  Below are just a very few of the thoughts that great minds have shared.  Enjoy both sides of the story!

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
Mohandas Gandhi

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.
Andy Warhol

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him. 
Samuel Johnson

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
William James

You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you..  You have to go to them sometimes. 

Winnie the Pooh

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
Helen Keller

This is the way we want to interact with everyone. . . .That’s always our goal.  The more that we can interact on a positive level, the better, . . . We are out there stressing cooperation and building positive relationships. 

Chief Joseph

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.
Robert Frost

The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when people can finally define a formulation of patterned interaction between all things within the universe. 

Toba Beta

(And just for the heck of it--)

I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair.  
Erma Bombeck

Wise Words About Solitude

Many great thinkers have found solitude to be the best company.

The best of all is to be alone to experience one's soul in Silence. To be nakedly alone, unseen, is better than anything in the world, a relief like death. To be -- alone -- is one of life's greatest delights.

-- Sunyata

To find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.

-- Henry D. Thoreau

Many teachers praise love as the highest of virtues; I, however, place solitude higher than love.

-- Meister Eckhart

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.

-- Plato

The greatest saints avoided the company of men as much as possible, and chose to live with God in secret.

-- Thomas a’ Kempis

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

-- Aldous Huxley

The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.

-- Voltaire

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

--  Arthur Schopenhauer

Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon God in yourself.

-- Teresa of Avila

(Excerpted from “Spirituality For Dummies”)