This is the Lenten season, when we’re invited to give up something “for Lent,” for God.
]]>This is the Lenten season, when we’re invited to give up something “for Lent,” for God.
The practice comes from the early Middle Ages, when this six-week period was called the famine time, starvation time, for autumn stores had ran low by February and spring planting still lay far off.
Brilliantly the Church invited us to offer something up for God with the idea that our hunger (inescapable) could be shifted to the constant contemplation of God and warm our suffering. Today we trivialize it: giving up ice cream, smoking, alcohol, food.
But why give anything up? Why not take up something instead? For Lent, you say, I will practice forgiving everyone, from the violent abuse to the littlest slight—turn my will and life over to the God of my understanding and with the help of angels act as I would like to be acted on.
Or why not practice smiling for Lent? Smile at everyone. Or practice kindness, practice joy, practice (and this is hard for some) transforming every negative thought into a positive one, so that you shine with optimism and hope.
There’s a practice for the love of God.
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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One day my friend Doug was returning from a Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Portland, Oregon. Driving down I-84 just south of Twin Falls, Idaho, while listening to Rene Fleming's CD Sacred Songs, he said a prayer. He wanted to feel God's unconditional love.
]]>One day my friend Doug was returning from a Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Portland, Oregon. Driving down I-84 just south of Twin Falls, Idaho, while listening to Rene Fleming's CD Sacred Songs, he said a prayer. He wanted to feel God's unconditional love.
Immediately his car ran out of gas! He was driving a Toyota Prius, a hybrid electric and gasoline car which switched then to running only on electricity. When that happens you may as well be in a big, slow golf cart, running on the side of the road at about 25 miles an hour, while the traffic zooms past.
Within a eighth of a mile he came over a rise in the road, and there saw a Jeep flipped over on its side, metal scattered all over the Interstate.
He was the first car on the scene, followed almost immediately by a car from Texas with two vacationing ER nurses. The third car to stop pulled over from the far side of the interstate: a highway patrolman from Southern California. These three took charge of the accident scene until the local emergency people arrived.
It was only later that Doug remembered what he had prayed for and realized that he would have been in the middle of that messy accident if he had continued driving at 65 miles an hour—if his car had not run out of gas. Something inside him said, "Oh my God!" with all levels of possible meaning. No angels, just the unconditional love of God.
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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Have you ever heard a disembodied voice speak aloud outside your head? Not another person, but a voice?
These are rare and dramatic occurrences, but they happen more frequently than you might think: A nurse suddenly hears an external voice call out, "Run! Check Room 12!" and finds the patient there has ripped out his life support.
]]>Have you ever heard a disembodied voice speak aloud outside your head? Not another person, but a voice?
These are rare and dramatic occurrences, but they happen more frequently than you might think: A nurse suddenly hears an external voice call out, "Run! Check Room 12!" and finds the patient there has ripped out his life support.
A woman wakes up in the middle of the night and hears, "You must leave. Get out!" Wide awake, unable to return to sleep, she wanders out on the lawn to look at the stars, just as an explosion rocks the empty house.
Sometimes the voice brings not a warning but simple information. "You're beautiful," a young woman heard while talking to a man. She was shocked. Had she telepathically picked up his thought? Or had she spoken her own embarrassing words out loud to him? No matter—they were soon a couple.
A man reading his paper heard a voice speak out loud, "Beware the Bald Man." He told his wife, and they pored over their friends, wondering who was bald enough to warrant such a warning. A year later his wife met the bald man whom she would marry years later after she and her husband divorced. She ran home and pounded on the bathroom door, where her husband was taking a shower. "I know who the bald man is!" she shouted over the running water. "Who is he?" "He's in my Reiki class." Already she was falling in love. Today the former husband jokes, "She left me for a bald man! I can't believe it. For a man who's bald!"
One woman heard a voice saying, "Remember him! This is the man you're going to marry." Sometimes the information comes not as an external voice but a quiet inner knowing. "My sister is pregnant" before the sister herself even knows.
But what is going on? Is it your subconscious mind, your intuition? I like to think they are angels warning and helping us.
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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What happens to our animals when they die? Recently I got a letter from Janina Brooks in Ontario, Canada, who had lost her two beloved German Shepherds.
Soon after they died, she woke up at 3:00 a.m. to see small glittering lights floating and flashing round the room. The spots grew bigger. They whirled and swirled around, landing on the floor in a ball and then transmuting into what looked to her like a howling head. She thought they were her dogs, but when the lights suddenly shot toward her, she was so frightened that she ran out of the room.
]]>What happens to our animals when they die? Recently I got a letter from Janina Brooks in Ontario, Canada, who had lost her two beloved German Shepherds.
Soon after they died, she woke up at 3:00 a.m. to see small glittering lights floating and flashing round the room. The spots grew bigger. They whirled and swirled around, landing on the floor in a ball and then transmuting into what looked to her like a howling head. She thought they were her dogs, but when the lights suddenly shot toward her, she was so frightened that she ran out of the room.
Later that morning, she got a phone call saying her dog's ashes were ready to be picked up. Feeling awful, deeply depressed, Janina, an abstract painter, started painting.
Lost in thought, she wasn't paying attention to what she was painting. But when the paint dried she saw, not her usual abstractions but the profile of her female dog in perfect detail and beside her in the painting stood the male dog, howling.
"I will never sell that painting," she wrote. She feels it was a gift from them.
The great Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg says that our beloved animals go to heaven, and are with us later when we die. I think it's true. For our animals are full of love, and heaven is love, and how could a God of love not find space for love?
Send in a prayer for your pet.
Plus, read our stories about grieving a pet, Pet Project, Angels Rest and Do Pets Go to Heaven?
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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Not long ago I got a letter from a woman who said she had always loved angels, always felt the angels hovering around her, surrounding her with love. But recently it was not angels but Jesus. She said that the presence of Christ felt entirely different, although she could not describe the sensation or difference. I sympathize.
Not long ago I got a letter from a woman who said she had always loved angels, always felt the angels hovering around her, surrounding her with love. But recently it was not angels but Jesus. She said that the presence of Christ felt entirely different, although she could not describe the sensation or difference. I sympathize.
Once Christ came to me. I had been praying with all my heart to see Him, to have a true relationship. It was Easter Sunday when I looked out the picture window of my little house and saw Jesus walking toward me across the lawn. He was dressed in a long white robe and sandals, and had a beard, just as in the pictures. He walked toward me, and he was shining with a joyous luminence.
I saw that He saw I saw Him. He smiled. I don't remember if He slowly faded or vanished suddenly, but one moment He was there and the next gone, and I went back to my book, thinking, That was Jesus Christ.
What's interesting: I didn't fall to my knees in worship, or change my life—I just went on. But with a happy heart.
Another time I saw a ragged, long-haired hippie walking up my street in Washington. He was barefoot, and carrying a backpack. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I crossed the streeet to catch up to him and as I passed, I offered him some money.
He waved it away.
“I don't need it," he said, or "No, thank you." I remember only that he spoke. And then he passed on. I opened the door to my house, but I was quivering. Was he an angel? In my heart I thought, "I've just seen Christ."
In a strange way, this encounter was more compelling than the vision on that Easter Sunday. To this day I wonder about it. What happened? Why was I so moved by this young man? Was it my imagination?
I wish I had more stories of present-day encounters with Jesus Christ. I wish I knew what usually happens and whether those to whom He comes are changed.
If you’ve encountered Christ, please comment below.
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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I have found that when I want something passionately and constantly and with all my heart, the universe eventually brings it to me.
The thing is that I don’t get it on my timetable and never in the way I would have imagined. Instead it comes to me later, when I’m not thinking about it!
Have you ever had that experience? “My gosh! I remember wanting that,” you say in surprise. “And here it is! How wonderful!”
Several spiritual principles are involved:
]]>I have found that when I want something passionately and constantly and with all my heart, the universe eventually brings it to me.
The thing is that I don’t get it on my timetable and never in the way I would have imagined. Instead it comes to me later, when I’m not thinking about it!
Have you ever had that experience? “My gosh! I remember wanting that,” you say in surprise. “And here it is! How wonderful!”
Several spiritual principles are involved:
I think the angels of God bring us everything we want. The irony is, you only get it when you don’t care anymore.
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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This is the time of year when our thoughts turn to loving-kindness. We long for harmony, peace, simplicity. Too often we find loneliness and despair.
Last year at the holidays, I was at the hospital, waiting, irritated, to see my doctor, and anything but peace and loving-kindness was on my jaw-clenched mind. I had things to do. And here I was, waiting!
My foot jiggled. My fingers tapped. Impatient, annoyed, I despised the surly clerks behind their desks, the pitiful tinsel tree on the counter with its hopeless ornaments.
]]>This is the time of year when our thoughts turn to loving-kindness. We long for harmony, peace, simplicity. Too often we find loneliness and despair.
Last year at the holidays, I was at the hospital, waiting, irritated, to see my doctor, and anything but peace and loving-kindness was on my jaw-clenched mind. I had things to do. And here I was, waiting!
My foot jiggled. My fingers tapped. Impatient, annoyed, I despised the surly clerks behind their desks, the pitiful tinsel tree on the counter with its hopeless ornaments.
Then, realizing that all I was doing by nursing my annoyance was increasing my misery, I sent out a tiny plea: “God, help me!”
Suddenly everyone—the clerks at their computers, the hurrying nurses, the patient in her wheelchair, the man on his cane staggering down the corridor—everyone was shining with light. I sat up, startled.
Suddenly I understood: we are spiritual beings, all of us, encased in light. Myself included! And in that moment, the clerks behind the counter, the frightened woman in her wheelchair, her tired husband pushing her—were as beautiful as angels. Shining like angels.
For a week I saw with my spiritual eyes not only people, but dogs, cats, the trees and grass, the squirrels scurrying for nuts—every single living thing is surrounded by and emitting this interior spiritual light. I could only bow before it, in gratitude and awe. The grace of Christmas, given me.
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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Angels are such interesting beings. It seems they are different from spirits and ghosts. When you see an angel (more commonly you “feel” one), you are swept up in warmth, safety and unfathomable tender love. Mother! cries your soul, or Home!
]]>Angels are such interesting beings. It seems they are different from spirits and ghosts. When you see an angel (more commonly you “feel” one), you are swept up in warmth, safety and unfathomable tender love. Mother! cries your soul, or Home!
Unlike humans, angels know that all things proceed from God. We humans, on the other hand, give way to doubt and even deny the existence of God when things don’t appear to be working out the way we want—or on our timing. We forget that what seems a misfortune may come with a golden crown, or that the delight we desired may carry with it a nest of thorns.
But angels know one thing that we poor humans don’t (it’s one of the laws of the universe): Whatever we want will be given us, not necessarily when we want it, but if it is good for us, we receive it when we’re not thinking about it!
In other words, you get everything you want, when you don’t care anymore!
My friend Judith wanted a horse when she was young. Her colleague, Stuart, told her to get a vanity license plate for her car with the name of the horse she’d like. She chose the Welsh name, Ceilhe, pronounced Kay-lee, and for years she rode the horse of her dreams as her car.
One day years later, when she owned several horses, she was riding, Aquella, her white Lusitano when she heard herself say, “Whoa, Quellie,” and remembered her dream, her car named Ceilhe (Kay-lee). God had brought her the horse with almost the same name!
As a child you wanted a dog...and 30 years later you find yourself buying a dog for your own child. You wanted a particular job...and one day, to your surprise, it pours itself on you. You broke up with your childhood sweetheart...and marry him 40 years later.
How many examples in your life can you think of where you received the prayers of your heart after you’d totally forgotten wanting them?
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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No words in the English language give more pause than “I’ve been thinking.” But I’ve been thinking lately about angels—and why we aren’t more grateful for the blessings poured on us.
Angels are messengers of God. Their business is to watch over us, guarding, guiding, loving, caring—because being a human is hard. We can’t do it all alone!
]]>No words in the English language give more pause than “I’ve been thinking.” But I’ve been thinking lately about angels—and why we aren’t more grateful for the blessings poured on us.
Angels are messengers of God. Their business is to watch over us, guarding, guiding, loving, caring—because being a human is hard. We can’t do it all alone!
I have folders filled with stories of how the angels come: in dreams and accidents, serendipitous coincidences (how hard these must be to orchestrate!), as animals (especially dogs), as other humans, and sometimes you yourself will act as an angel, unexpectedly saying just what another person needs to hear.
Sometimes the angel comes in its own radiant and exquisite form, and then you are swept away by awe. They may be large or small, male or female, with wings or without. They are formed of light—and the amazing thing: they always say the same thing. They always say, Don’t be afraid. Fear not! We’re taking care of things. And then they do.
Unlike humans, angels can utter only words of love, praise, kindness, thanks.
I’ve been wondering—what would the world feel like if we acted more like angels every day? What would happen if one full day we uttered for only words of praise, joy, kindness, generosity, recognition, thanks?
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Read more Inspirations and Angels!
Sophy Burnham is the author of 12 books. She is best known for her ground-breaking books on the spiritual dimension of life, including A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey and The Path of Prayer. She is a frequent public speaker and gives workshops worldwide.
Find out more at SophyBurnham.com.
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