Servants of Salvation

. . . Easter notes on our function of Love

I would like to talk about service in connection to A Course in Miracles. Service (I am gesturing loosely at something Catholic Workerish) has been a kind of holy grail in my ACIM practice, a mirage that one never quite reaches and yet is mysteriously guided by, past danger, and out of the desert altogether.

I wrote "loosely gesturing at something Catholic Workerish." More specifically, I am thinking of service the way Tara Singh did, especially in his beautiful and puzzling book The Joseph Plan of A Course in Miracles for the Lean Years, in which he imagined local groups responding selflessly to local needs for food, shelter, clothing and healing.

We have to rise to a state of right-mindedness to extend the compassionate nature of Mother Earth with her flowing rivers blessed by rain. Right-mindedness knows nothing of the duality of loss and gain, success and failure. It identifies only with the abundance of goodness (17).

Singh believed that to be of service to one’s brother or sister in this way is to be blessed. It recognizes without resistance of any kind the reality that "miracles are expressions of miracle-mindedness, and miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness" (T-2.V.3:1).

This is reminiscent of Lesson 151 in A Course in Miracles (one of ACIM's handful of references to Easter).

Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified . . . Such is your Eastertide . . . Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us (W-pI.151.15:2, 16:1, 4).

What we do in these bodies in the world matters, but if we start by focusing on behavior - what the bodies are doing - then we have it backwards. We have to heal the mind that thinks it is separate from God. A healed mind - restored to its right place in Creation - cannot help but bring forth peace through bodies in the world. Gratitude and trust render us endlessly creative in responding to cries for Love.

To serve means first and foremost to accept the atonement for our own self (T-2.V.5:1).

This means that you recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only heal (T-2.V.5:2-3).

I think of the resurrection of Jesus as an extraordinarily beautiful attempt by his earliest followers to understand and share what had just happened to them - what they learned about nonviolent service with Jesus in the villages of Galilee but also how what they learned did not end when Jesus's life ended.

The Road to Emmaus story in Luke's Gospel is instructive.

A pair of dejected disciples are walking away from Jerusalem after Jesus's death. They are joined on the road to Emmaus by an apparent stranger. They tell him about Jesus, his death, the empty tomb. All of it. The stranger then reframes their narrative in terms of scriptural and religious tradition. He contextualizes the meaning of Jesus. When night falls, the two disciples invite the stranger to eat with them. And then and only then - as he breaks bread and serves it to them - do they recognize Jesus.

The creators of that story were not stupid or foolish. They were not arguing for the supernatural. They were using fiction to try and make clear a truth that was upstream from logic but nevertheless utterly totally clear to them: Love, which can be expressed through bodies, is not contingent on bodies.

John Crossan correctly observes that "Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens" (The Historical Jesus xiii).

A Course in Miracles is my Road to Emmaus. These newsletters - and all the other writing and sharing I do - are my walk-away-from-Jerusalem with you. When we connect this way - when two or more gather with the express intention to heal in the name of Jesus (Matthew 18:20) - our union is blessed. The possibility for service unto others arises, and in that possibility dwells the remembrance that Christ is the mind we share with Jesus now.

Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3).

Paradoxically, we recognize our oneness with God and Creation not through dialogue only but when dialogue is joined to service. Jesus teaches his brothers and sisters as they walk the Road to Emmaus together but it is when he serves them that they awaken.

Emmaus teaches us to avoid looking backwards for a seminal (much less a magical) event that will explain everything and guide our every move.

Instead, it teaches us to give attention to our lives right here in the present, and to remember that Love holds everything, and then to act like it. Cries for love assume form, and the Holy Spirit will not fail to show us how to respond, formally, while simultaneously teaching us that there is only one cry, and only one response. Love holds everything.

Tara Singh again:

The life of service offers us the possibility to live by holy relationship in a distracted world that knows not what to do. It is an invitation to step out of meaningless existence and walk with God . . . the life of service offers the sanity of a living gratefulness (The Joseph Plan of A Course in Miracles for the Lean Years 66).

Thank you for reading and sharing this path of healing with me. Truly, " . . . our ministry has begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone" (W-pI.151.17:3).

Today, together - in Christ's name and in memory of our brother Jesus - let us make it so.

Love,
Sean