September 2003, Volume 4 Issue 9
September 30, 2003

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Dear Hearts,

This month marks the one year anniversary of First Mondays. We began in October of last year at the Vineyard Creek Hotel. If you're in the Santa Rosa area, we invite you to join us for the October celebration gathering. A few changes have been made, if you haven't been with us in a while. We've managed to reduce the glare from those fluorescent lights and get the temperature to a comfortable range! And this is the first month that we will be doing music differently. Our beloved First Monday Jazz group: Melissa Phillippe, Hal Forman, and Frank Hayhurst, who have served so faithfully all year, are going off to their own adventures now.

We'll be doing music the way we've done it for Second Mondays in Newport Beach. Each month I select music to support the theme and create a unique CD that includes music for group singing and music to center and inspire us. Occasionally we'll have a guest musician. This will be new for us in Santa Rosa. Come and try it out with me! We're meeting in different rooms for the next two months: October in the Chalk Hill Room, and November in the Sonoma Mountain Room. Look for the Rev. Mary poster on the easel and you'll find us. Our theme for First and Second Monday this month is, Which Universe Do You Want to Create?

In addition to our First and Second Monday gatherings, September included a wedding, guest speaking at the Center for Spiritual Living in San Jose, and attending a magnificent conference in Palm Springs.

This is the first time that the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) have shared a conference together. The combination was magical. I had never attended a conference for either organization, but having been a New Thought minister since 1986, and a longtime member of IONS, it seemed like the time to do so. As an added bonus, a neighbor of mine who's very involved with IONS was attending as well.

Putting the science of consciousness and its researchers together with New Thought/Ancient Wisdom teachings, practices, and music was an impressively powerful combination. Over two thousand people were in attendance with more trying to get in. We heard world class scientists, futurists, and metaphysicians, as well as poets, shamans, and professional musicians and singers. Every moment deepened us and there was much that was thought-provoking, moving, funny or entertaining. The speaker's program included Peter Russell, Brian Swimme, John Hagelin, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston, Marianne Williamson, Mary Manin Morrissey, Michael Beckwith, Dean Radin, Jerry Jampolsky and Diane Cirincione, Edgar Mitchell, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Luisa Teish, David Whyte, Michael Toms, Roger Teel, and others. In addition, there was a great bookstore and a display hall with products of every spiritual, musical, celebrational, and healing, or artistic description. Odile Nicolette, an artist friend from Huntington Beach, was there with her beautiful work, and sold some of her favorite pieces. I managed to try out a video game with incredible graphics that uses biofeedback to move you through enchanted realms of consciousness called The Wild Divine, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Jean Houston has been involved in the development of this game. You can find out about it at http://www.wilddivine.com/.

If these two groups do another conference together, I highly recommend that you register early. It will be well worth it. To join or find out more about either of them you can visit their websites. There are links to Association for Global New Thought and for the Institute of Noetic Sciences on our Links to Our Friends under Spiritual Resources page on this website.

Finally, because the conference gave me the opportunity to remember how much I love the poetry of David Whyte and his wonderful depth, introspective humility, and refreshing humor, I want to recommend his books of poetry to you. The following poem, The Old Interior Angel, is from his slender volume, Fire In The Earth.

Fire in the Earth
by David Whyte

Paperback; Dimensions (in inches): 0.50 x 8.50 x 5.50
Publisher: Many Rivers Pr; (January 1992)
ISBN: 0962152420

Available online in association with Amazon.com. Usually ships within 24 hours. Click here to order this item from Amazon.com.

The Old Interior Angel

Young, male and
immortal as I was,
I stopped at the first sight
of that broken bridge.

The taut cables snapped
and the bridge planks
concertina-ed
into a crazy jumble
over the drop,
four hundred feet
to the craggy
stream.

I sat and watched
the wind shiver
on the broken planks,
as if by looking hard
and long enough
the life-line
might spontaneously
repair itself
–but watched in vain.

An hour I sat
in the clear silence,
checking each
involuntary movement
of the body toward
that trembling
bridge
with a fearful mind,
and an emphatic
shake of the head.

Finally, facing defeat
and about to go back
the way I came
to meet the others.

Three days round
by another pass.

Enter the old mountain woman
with her stooped gait,
her dark clothes
and her dung basket
clasped to her back.

Small feet shuffling
for the precious
gold-brown
fuel for cooking food.

Intent on the ground
she glimpsed my feet
and looking up
Said "Namaste"
"I greet the God in you"
the last syllable
held like a song.

I inclined my head
and clasped my hands
to reply, but
before I could look up
she turned her lined face
and went straight across
that shivering chaos
of wood
and broken steel
in one movement.

One day the hero
sits down,
afraid to take
another step,
and the old interior angel
limps slowly in
with her no-nonsense
compassion
and her old secret
and goes ahead.

"Namaste"
you say
and follow.

Inside each one of us is a hero and an old angel. Spend some time with both of them this month and you'll be immensely enriched.

Until next month dear ones, Many Blessings and Namasté,

Rev. Mary

Rev. Mary Murray Shelton
c/o Sacred Spiral
P.O. Box 372
Forestville, CA 95436-0372
Phone and Fax: (707) 874-1141
E-mail: info@revmary.com