From One Mountain, Many Paths
An American Freemason Speaks Out for Peace
by Dr. Patrick SwiftAn American Freemason Speaks Out for Peace
Click book or here to go to the page and buy it for yourself,
Patrick has added a beautiful video to his site. I recommend you go and watch it.
Today is the International Day of Peace.
KJV
Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Modern Version (which Patrick Uses)
Let mutual love continue
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Hebrews 13:1
Christianity
Christianity
Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. Is it not because he has no personal and private ends, that therefore such ends are realised?
Tao Te Ching 7
Taoism
Taoism
This is in the chapter "Love One Another" - This being the International Day Of Peace it seems appropriate to me for the book to have opened here. I think (emphasis on I think - you may think something else) that the advice is to really put ourselves last and put others first. And it is expressing the idea of hospitality to all. Hospitality was always an important part of early cultures. I have read many tales of strangers being treated as honored guests in early cultures. For the most part we ignore them. It always bothers me when I see someone who is new to a situation having to sit by himself or being ignored and not made to feel welcome. We have no idea of just how important they may become to us.
My mother used the KJV of the Let Brotherly Love continue scripture when she was Worthy Matron of Eastern Star. She did "not know a stranger" and in that she was just like her mother. I have seen her sit and talk with someone like an old friend and found out later that she had never met the person before. Both she and my grandmother were "loving and loved" - And it wasn't just my mother her sisters were that way also. (actually I should say are because my Aunt Jo is still with us.)
Sometimes those "chance encounters" develop into deep friendships and they enrich our lives. Even if they don't the moments of love are very important in our world because they counterbalance the other types of moments of which there are far too many. These folks become "angels" in our lives. In my old church we were taught that angels are "God's thoughts passing to man." What a beautiful concept! And what a beautiful definition of another person. We are one of "God's Thoughts. We exist because He thought of us and we are a "Child of God" and deserve to be here. Just as everyone else does. So if we get caught up in ourselves and are rude to or ignore others we aren't "entertaining angels."
I need to remember that. I do not always live up to my better self. I don't like that in me. I need to take ME out of the foremost place and put OTHERS in there. Then perhaps I will be doing His will. Thank you Patrick for your beautiful book. It is helping me to be more peaceful on this "day of peace."
My mother used the KJV of the Let Brotherly Love continue scripture when she was Worthy Matron of Eastern Star. She did "not know a stranger" and in that she was just like her mother. I have seen her sit and talk with someone like an old friend and found out later that she had never met the person before. Both she and my grandmother were "loving and loved" - And it wasn't just my mother her sisters were that way also. (actually I should say are because my Aunt Jo is still with us.)
Sometimes those "chance encounters" develop into deep friendships and they enrich our lives. Even if they don't the moments of love are very important in our world because they counterbalance the other types of moments of which there are far too many. These folks become "angels" in our lives. In my old church we were taught that angels are "God's thoughts passing to man." What a beautiful concept! And what a beautiful definition of another person. We are one of "God's Thoughts. We exist because He thought of us and we are a "Child of God" and deserve to be here. Just as everyone else does. So if we get caught up in ourselves and are rude to or ignore others we aren't "entertaining angels."
I need to remember that. I do not always live up to my better self. I don't like that in me. I need to take ME out of the foremost place and put OTHERS in there. Then perhaps I will be doing His will. Thank you Patrick for your beautiful book. It is helping me to be more peaceful on this "day of peace."
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