II. SECTION 13. What is a Miracle?
Lesson 341 I can attack but my own sinlessness, and it is only that which keeps me safe.
- Father, Your Son is holy. I am he on whom You smile in love and tenderness so dear and deep and still the universe smiles back on You and shares Your Holiness. How pure, how safe, how holy, then, are we, abiding in Your Smile, with all Your Love bestowed upon us, living one with You, in brotherhood and Fatherhood complete; in sinlessness so perfect that the Lord of Sinlessness conceives us as His Son, a universe of Thought completing Him.
- Let us not, then, attack our sinlessness, for it contains the Word of God to us. And in its kind refection we are saved.[1]
A miracle is a correction. A miracle reminds us of who we really are and what we are about. A miracle redeems us from humanity and restores our divinity. Today Jesus leads us in a prayer of holiness. Our prayer reminds us of our Father’s love and tenderness toward us, the words tell us of how deeply the universe holds us in esteem. Today’s prayer is our correction, it is where the miracle happens – the miracle brings us out of our ego life in the body, restores our sense of oneness and wholeness with God, and keeps us from being tempted to think of ourselves as sinful and shameful and deserving of anything but God’s Love.
When Jesus tells us not to attack our sinlessness, He is telling us to not accept the ego’s version of ourselves. Today I fell into a sense of despair and sorrow. It was my daughter Manda’s 39th birthday. She died over 20 years ago, and while I have tried my best to stay thankful and to keep the right attitude toward her passing, today I fell into a pit of anguish, grief, and guilt. I say guilt because as Manda’s mother I was here to watch out for her and to protect her. She was not supposed to die before me. Before Manda died, I sent her to her father’s to live because we were not getting along – and now that thought tormented me. All the bad things that I ever did came back to my mind and plagued me. There was a cold little voice in my head that told me that I did not deserve to have a lovely daughter like Manda, that it was my fault that she was snatched away from me because I was immoral, self-centered, and reckless. Instead of taking the voice to God and laying it down at His altar, I listened to it. I began to believe it. I made myself sick with it.
It was only when I reached out to my holy friend, that I received the miracle. She reminded me not only of God’s love and tenderness toward me, but Manda’s love and forgiveness. She rescued me from attacking my sinlessness. She reminded me that it is not in condemnation that we are saved, but in our sinlessness, in accepting our innocence.
As parents, we will fail our children in so many ways. No matter how hard we try, there are things that happen in this world that are beyond our control. My mother worked overtime to keep me from harm’s way. Overbearing and overprotective, the buzzword helicopter parent comes to mind. While her intentions seemed good, the resulting angst, depression, and poor decision making that resulted from not engaging in normal childhood activities, was something I vowed to never put my own kids through. And yet, I failed them by being too permissive, too free-thinking, too quick to say yes, too reluctant to say no, to set limits, to use safeguards, to be a good example.
No matter our mistakes with our children, with each other, or with ourselves, we are to accept our holiness and not attack it by accepting the ego’s version of our identity. Mistakes are correctable. Nothing that happens in time, happens in forever. One by one the bodies of our loved ones will all perish, some before us and some after us. And yet the Lord promises us immortality because of our innate holiness, the Word of God which made us and in which we still abide.
Holiness reflects upon us kindly. Holiness extends the miracle of forgiveness, of remedy, of healing. When I called upon my faithful friend she did not remind me of all my wrongdoing; she did not blame me for not being a positive role model; she did not agree with the ego’s assessment of who and what I am. She corrected the false perception. She gave me a miracle and set my mind right.
Today be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself for all the ones you seem to have failed. Accept the miracle of correction. Come to know yourself as God created you – holy, without blemish, spotless, and pure. As we see ourselves as holy, we can be kind toward our younger, foolish, arrogant selves. We can forgive our stupidity, our carelessness, our strut and swagger. We can forgive ourselves for those we did not protect, for those we lost through death and mean words and cruel deeds. We cannot offer miracles until we accept them for ourselves, for giving and receiving are simultaneous and one. They restore unity. They restore our true identity. They correct false perceptions and make whole again.
[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 341. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 473.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
