Unlock the Door!

    I consider myself to be an Omnist, believing that most religions contain some truth, but that none contains the whole truth; the whole truth being unknowable in this physical existence. Unlike many people who claim to be "spiritual but not religious" I do like to attend church for the fellowship and stimulation. I have attended a wide variety of churches in my lifetime, including Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian-Universalist, and Unity. In our new Wisconsin home Mark and I have been attending the United Church of Christ which I like for its progressive theology and it's comma logo, which "invites us to believe that God speaks through other people, nature, music, art . . . the Bible, and in so many other ways."

    Today's sermon centered on the story about Jesus entering the locked room where the disciples were sequestered after his crucifixion, and about Thomas not believing they'd seen Jesus until he saw the nail marks in his hands and put his fingers in his side where the sword had pierced him. When he had done this and proclaimed, "My Lord and My God" Jesus said, "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed."

    Our pastor spoke about the way so many people are like Thomas, needing physical proof before they can believe something. I have always been comforted by the words, "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed," because I know people who have actually seen angels, spirit guides, and even Jesus, while I have retained a strong faith in the unseen side of life without having seen any of it myself. Pastor Christie also spoke about the symbolism of the locked room, something I had not thought about before. 

    The locked room can symbolize our minds; our creativity and imagination that so many keep under lock and key because we have not seen proof that anything exists beyond the limits of our senses and the acceptable beliefs of society. Jesus is the divine messenger of Love who can enter our locked minds when we seek spiritual knowledge as did his disciples. Divine Love can then release our creativity, our imagination, and our sense of wonder. 

    With open minds we can understand that Jesus was resurrected to demonstrate that life is eternal and always has been. If life is eternal there must be an infinite universe full of beauty and wonderful experiences beyond the confines of the world we know. Everything that exists began in the imagination. So let's unlock our minds and let our imaginations go wild!

    Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way and about 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. I can't begin to imagine how many planets revolve around all those stars, and how many are hosts to intelligent life. Not to mention the possibility of other universes that might be accessible through black hole portals (Black Holes Are 'Portals to Other Universes,' According to New Quantum Results).

    I know people who say it's silly to wonder about life on other planets when we have to take care of our own Mother Earth. I very much agree that we must take better care of our world, but I also believe that we must use our imagination to create a better world, and imagining a world where everyone lives together in peace and harmony can make us realize the possibilities for humanity. What would a world at peace look like? How would its inhabitants resolve conflict? With millions of worlds, there must be some where the inhabitants exemplify a peaceful life. Perhaps they want to help us and they're just waiting for the earth to become more hospitable so they can make themselves known.

    In addition to other physical worlds, we can imagine multiple dimensions right here in our own world. I know people with clairvoyant vision who have seen some of the nature spirits and other beings who dwell on other planes. I cannot see them myself, but my imagination reminds me that these invisible ones are helping my garden to grow and are doing their best to clean up the mess that we humans are making of God's creation!

    Once we unlock the door of our imagination, there is no limit to what we can discover about our universe and the possibilities for the advancement of the human race. I recommend these few books to jumpstart your imagination: 

    On Angels' Wings by Mariana Stjerna 

    Telos: Revelations of the New Lemuria by Aurelia Louise Jones

    The Real World of Fairies: A First-Person Account by Dora van Gelder

    There are many other wonderful books by authors who are not afraid to cross the boundaries of conventional thought. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments! 

Flowers and Fairies

These crocuses first opened in my yard on March 8th. Today, a beautiful warm spring day, more crocuses opened and the honey bees came to visit! I'm sure I've never had crocuses open this early in March before - not since I moved from Tennessee to central New York 24 years ago. We are expecting a whole week of warm weather now, and some people are worried that the sap won't run in the maple trees and we won't have fresh syrup this year. I do love maple syrup as much as anyone, but I love spring flowers more, so I just can't feel too bad about it.


This afternoon I went out in the sunshine to gather the dead branches that collected around the yard during the winter, and to clean up the dead leaves around the crocuses, hoping that I might spot a fairy. No such luck, but it's comforting to know that many people have seen fairies. I have read too many first-person accounts of fairy sightings not to believe in their existence, and so I can hope that I will see one someday, too! 

   illustration by Cicely Mary Barker

Right now I am reading The Real World of Fairies: A First-Person Account by Dora van Gelder, which says: "Love for flowers and a conscious invitation to the fairies to help is a way to come to know them and perhaps even to see them. It is love of living things which is the great bridge between the two kingdoms." So while I tend my flower gardens I invite the fairies to help me build a bridge between my world and theirs. Even though I haven't seen them yet, I think they sometimes answer the questions I ask myself while I'm observing nature. For instance, today I noticed a couple of daffodil shoots poking up through the brown leaves in an area where I know I planted lots of bulbs. I wondered why these two were coming up so far ahead of the others, and immediately the answer came: These two are just more eager to come out than the others! They are willing to take the risk that it may freeze again while the other daffodils would rather play it safe. Apparently each flower has an individual personality, something that never occurred to me before! (I'm not really sure if it's the flower or the flower fairy that decides when to emerge, but whoever it is, some like to come out sooner than others!)


Another interesting observation I made today was a little clump of crocuses blooming way in the back corner of the back yard, quite far from where I had planted the bulbs. The neighborhood squirrels enjoy digging up crocus bulbs and transplanting them in odd places. While it's annoying to have my carefully designed plantings re-arranged, it's also a delight to go out in the spring and see what nature has done all on her own, with the help of her creatures, the fairies, and the elements. Later in the spring or summer I will probably discover two or three flowers that seeded themselves from someone else's garden, and I will find out which plants the deer have a yen for this year. 


Of course I always eagerly anticipate the arrival of the new flowers I planted bulbs for in the fall. Last October I put a few of my daffodil bulbs in my neighbor's yard, and I can't wait to see the reaction of these friends who have always admired my spring flowers but never planted bulbs of their own. Bulbs are such amazing, miraculous things! How could anyone plant one of those plain, brown objects, see its flower bloom in the spring, and not KNOW with absolute certainty that this is the work of Divine Love? 

In reading The Door of Everything, I learned that we humans are like flower bulbs ourselves. Ruby Nelson compares us to tomato seeds and chrysalises, waiting to turn into tomatoes or butterflies. Flower bulbs and acorns offer the same kind of imagery. We just have no idea what magnificent beings we are going to turn into, but the promise is in the world all around us if we just use our eyes and don't take it all for granted. Spending time in nature - appreciating, observing, tending, and preserving - is a way to build the bridge that will take us from our bulb-like life to a life of beauty, peace, and love.

Fairy Bridge near Kewaigue