Photo: Julie Louther
Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace
I love St. Francis. I like to think of him as the “Patron Saint of Animal Communication.” Although I’m not Catholic, I love the beautiful mysticism of the Catholic tradition, and I love that there was a saint, so many centuries ago, who understood and communicated with the animals and natural world and whose traditions have been kept alive through the ages.
I’m an “equal-opportunity mystic.” I ask for and receive help from masters from many traditions (and I need all the help that I can get!) I often call upon St. Francis when I work with animals who are sick, hurt, lost, or have been traumatized. I feel the quiet, gentle strength of St. Francis’ energy frequently when I am outdoors hiking or meditating.
I like to begin my day with the Prayer of St. Francis. This prayer reminds me of what I’m here for, what my intention is for how I want to live my life and do my work. I fall short of this all the time, but St. Francis reminds me that I’m human, and all I need to do is to continue to ask to see everything, everyone, and every situation through the eyes of love.
Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Click here for a YouTube of one of my favorite musical versions of this prayer, by Sarah McLachlan.
Only Love Is Real
As I prepare to travel to be with my beloved whale family at the end of this month, I have felt the whales already beginning to teach me…giving me “previews” of our time together, and showing me some of the reasons that I was called to join them again this year.
Photo: Gene Flipse, Conscious Breath Adventures
The whales’ messages and transmissions are remarkably consistent. Although they can and do communicate about many things, from the details of their daily physical lives to the deepest spiritual and cosmic principles, fundamentally, their message is very simple:
LOVE.
The whales shower us with pure benevolence, patience, and understanding, despite our species’ misunderstanding and often terrible mistreatment of them. They look at us with their giant eyes and we are touched to the core by their grace, their gentleness, and the enormity of compassion and love that emanates from them.
Love is the core teaching of all spiritual traditions. It’s the essence of who we are as living beings of all species. I love this quote from Marianne Williamson, based on the principles in “A Course In Miracles”:
Becoming more spiritually advanced does not mean becoming more spiritually complicated. It means we become simpler, as we learn to universally apply some very basic principles to all of our circumstances:
1. Only Love is Real.
2. What is not Love is a call for Love.
3. Forgiveness Heals all things.
See Beauty Everywhere
I’m often asked how I deal with the suffering that I witness in my work, particularly the suffering of animals, often caused by humans. I respond by saying that the animals have taught me more about this than I ever would have learned on my own. Animals consistently show us that they understand these principles of love, forgiveness, and healing…and that they are willing to help humans to learn these principles, as well.
After years of working in animal rescue, and years as an animal communicator of listening to animals’ stories, helping them heal their traumas, and helping humans who have also been wounded, I have learned that these principles of love, of understanding the creations of fear as being a call for love, and of forgiveness healing all things, are the core understanding that we need to heal ourselves, heal our communities, and heal our world.
The animals have been teaching this forever.
There are people who believe that we are beyond the point of doing anything to heal the degradation of our planet home. There are those who believe that we are even beyond spiritual healing for our Earth.
I’m not one of them. I don’t believe this for a minute.
And, from what the whales and other animals tell me, they don’t believe it either. The solution?
Love. Forgiveness.
I witness incredible healing and miracles every day. I see transformation in myself and others every day. I see goodness, grace, and beauty expanding in our world every day.
The whales and many other advanced beings show us that from a place of love and forgiveness, all things are possible.
When we love and forgive ourselves and others, we find solutions that previously we couldn’t even see. Our perspective shifts. Suddenly, we see clearly.
We discover miracles…we find or rediscover technologies and practices that heal our bodies, the waters, the soil…we transform and transmute the energy of hatred with the energy of love, and matter responds by reorganizing and re-forming itself…whether our bodies, or the land, or the air…we heal our own wounds and the wounds that we have created in others as we love and forgive, and transformation is created within and all around.
Sometimes love and forgiveness show us where we need to make big changes. We need to leave a situation, or a relationship, or alter our behavior, either as individuals or as a collective. We need to ask for forgiveness from ourselves and others where we see we have acted from fear.
As we practice this in our personal lives, we also extend this practice out to our communities…and beyond that, to our world. And in that expansion, love shows us what it has always been: the basic organizing principle of our universe.
At 109, Alice Herz-Sommer is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. This short video expresses her profound wisdom about love and life:
Peace. Love. Forgiveness. Faith. Hope. Joy. Light. Joy. Beauty. What we focus on expands.
Namaste.
