Insight | Bonnie Barnard - Part 10

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More Love, Please

I am seated at a local restaurant known for their fresh funky pizza and gourmet salads. Across the table from me is a robust South American woman with a space between her teeth, afro cut close to her head and a wickedly joyous laugh which produces an inner smile when I hear it. Glenda is my new friend, although she calls me a sister. It took many years for us to meet. Seven years ago my L.A. friend, Nina, brought me to a meeting at her local chapter of Women for World Peace (WfWP). Founded by the Unification Church, this group of women attracts members across faiths and countries bonding women as sisters creating a network of peace. I actively tried joining the Phoenix chapter and emails went unanswered, phone calls not returned. I let it go. Until now. Glenda became the new president of the local chapter. She dug through past files to find my name, call me, and take me out for lunch. With a pizza between...

Politics, Conflict and Division

A beloved friend of mine has gone through a treacherous week of FaceBook bashing for his political views. On his FB page a mini-war has erupted with name calling directed at him. He called me really torn up inside. He is a deep, deep lover of humanity and serves his community through action. He is a good guy. And, his political views aren’t mine. Neither are the views of half of my friends. Half of my friends are Democrats and half are Republicans; and I don’t love either group of my friends more or less because of the road each party believes will create our brightest future. Somewhere in our history we have trained ourselves to hate the people, not the views. To attack people, not the views. To kill people, not views. Hate, attack, and killing views or people have never worked, anyway. People become damaged or dead and views still remain. In a dualistic world we will always have black and white, right and left,...

YOU Can’t Make Me!!

There is some High Spiritual Truth in the childish saying “YOU Can’t Make Me!” My friend Glenda would add “I am boss of myself.” Each one of us is at choice and held responsible by the choices we make. Newton’s third law of motion says for every action there is a reaction. The Buddhist would call it karma; what I do to others, I do to myself. The Jew and Christian would say we sow what we’ve planted. No one else is responsible for me. I am the choice maker, I am it. With that said, I have made a commitment to myself to disengage from the public political conversation based within the paradigm of right and wrong, we and they, and hold counsel within my own being aligning to a Presence and Power far greater than divisive politics. My commitment is to come from a place of Love in all discourse, or to not open my mouth. I have come to know words usher in an...

Six Impossible Thoughts Before Breakfast

In the movie Alice in Wonderland, Alice says “I sometimes think of six impossible things before breakfast.” This past weekend I attended a two day conversation with Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith where he began by inviting the group to enter into the spiritual practice of stretching our minds daily by making a list of at list six things we find impossible. The underlying premise is the more I mentally stretch, the less impossible and more possible something feels. I began my list. 1. Ten thousand regularly readers read my blog. 2. Grocery stores decide to sell only organic food which is affordable to all. 3. The song I write is recorded by Lady Gaga and tops the chart. 4. Individuals realize how powerful they are and harness this power to transform the relationships with others in the world. 5. War ceases within my lifetime and I have to explain to my grand daughter what it once “was.” 6. I live from a place which accepts and doesn’t...

You Can’t Go Home — You Are Always Going Home

Spiritual living is filled with paradoxes. The spiritual practice of tithing teaches me it is by giving I receive. Through quiet meditation I learn to hear. By loving my enemies I know what love really is. I know peace through accepting what is while taking action toward something else. The paradoxes of spiritual living are many. In high school I was captivated by the book title You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Although I tried reading the book, in my teens, several times without success, the book title haunted me. It is not possible to return home. This, too, I believe is a great paradox. As I can never return home, I am simultaneously always going home, making home, or home. This past month I spent ten days at writing camp in Port Townsend, WA where my family had a vacation cabin while I was in my twenties and thirties. I concluded my stay in Seattle, WA where I have lived most of my life. I was...

Living Without the Idea of Sin

I am on the final edit of a book I have been working on for over a year. It is a book of daily lessons based upon the work of Emma Curtis Hopkins, a Christian Mystic. Yesterday I edited a lesson based upon the idea “In God there is no sin.” This was written in the late 1880s and was a radical idea. Even today it can be for many of us. Who would you and I be without the idea of sin? Without the idea of good, bad, right, and wrong and myself as the judge of it all? How much energy would we have in my bodies to utilize for creative endeavors if it wasn’t tied up monitoring sin? Judgement is a big business in our country and we tend to feed upon watching and commenting upon “wrongs” we perceive others have made. This morning, then, as I was involved in my spiritual practice, I read from Dr. Ernest Holme’s book The Celestial Voice. In it...