"Unnatural" Disasters

Written by Rev. Tony Ponticello Friday, 30 September 2005 12:00

(On Sunday, September 4, 2005, Rev. Tony Ponticello addressed the congregation at the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco, CA. Six days prior, on August 29th, hurricane Katrina had hit the city of New Orleans in the early morning. What follows is a lightly edited transcription of that lecture.)

Everybody knows what the news has been about this past week, Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina turned into a category five hurricane just before it hit the New Orleans, Louisiana / Biloxi, Mississippi area. If you are not familiar with categories of hurricanes – category one is when they have between 74 and 95 miles per hour winds. Category two is when they get between 96 to 110 miles per hour winds. Category three, which is considered “strong”, is when they get to 111 to 130 miles per hour winds. Category four, considered “very strong”, is when they get between 131 to 155 miles per hour winds. When they cross over past 155 miles per hour winds they go to category five and they are called “devastating” hurricanes. That’s what hit New Orleans, a devastating hurricane, as we can see.

Frequently we call these things, “natural disasters.” Insurance companies like to call these things, “acts of God.” (laughter) We in A Course In Miracles get to challenge this thinking as the reading for today said.

“God did not create a meaningless world – With eyes closed, think of all the horrors in the world that cross your mind.” Obviously, a hurricane. “Name each one as it occurs to you, and then deny its reality. God did not create it, and so it is not real. Say, for example: ... God did not create that disaster ...” And then it wants you to “specify” quite specifically. So, God did not create Hurricane Katrina ... “... and so it is not real.” (W-pI.14.4.2,3,7) “Suitable subjects for the application of today’s idea also include anything you are afraid might happen to you, or to anyone about whom you are concerned.” (W-pI.14.5.1)

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Subverting The Dominant Paradigm

Written by Rev. Tony Ponticello Monday, 28 February 2005 12:00

(On Sunday January 30, 2005, Rev. Tony Ponticello addressed the congregation at the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco. What follows is a lightly edited transcription of that talk.)

I have been, am now – and probably always will be – a subversive. I realize that. I was born, of course, in 1952. That means I was eight years old when it became the sixties. The sixties is usually thought of as the big, subversive decade. It was the decade of great social change. Actually, I don’t think of the sixties as starting in 1960. It was more like 62, 63 or 64 when all the great change started to happen and subversive elements seemed to be around in society, elements that were changing things – changing the dominant paradigm, or the way that people thought.

Forty years from now people will look back and at this current decade and probably think this decade was subversive. I don’t know. Things do seem to be changing. At least in my mind, in my perception of things.

There’s always a lot of speculation about what happened in the sixties. Why do we single that decade out and talk about it? A lot of things actually did happen in the sixties. The sixties was the decade of the United States of America’s big military presence in Viet Nam, that very strange conflict, a war that turned out to be disastrous for us. In the early sixties we were in Viet Nam mostly as advisers but with a growing military presence there. Then, it was in 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed that vastly increased the number of armed forces that ended up in Viet Nam. By 1965 we had 200,000 troops in Viet Nam and we would be mired down there for another six or seven years before we were able to get our troops out. So, a lot of people point to the Viet Nam war as being one of the reasons why there was a strong undercurrent of change, this subversive element.

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Personal Resurrection

Written by Rev. Larry Bedini Saturday, 31 March 2007 16:00

(On Easter Sunday morning, April 8th, 2007, Rev. Larry Bedini stood before the congregation at the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco. What follows is a lightly edited transcription of that lecture.)

Good morning. My talk today is on personal resurrection. I didn’t want to talk about the Easter story because we’ve heard it every Easter and if we don’t know it by now, good Lord, we never will. It’s a wonderful story and of course we all enjoy hearing it from time to time. However, I’ve been thinking about what I really want to say today and that is the idea of personal resurrection. Jesus had his personal resurrection and we should have our personal resurrection. I certainly want mine.

So, I want to talk about what that means to us – what it might mean to us on an individual, personal level, yours and mine. We think of the resurrection more in connection with Jesus rising from the dead, after being crucified and placed in the tomb. Resurrection means, by Webster’s dictionary: “rising from the dead.” But the A Course In Miracles says there is no death. It says there are many forms of death but there is no actual death. We can lay the body aside when we choose to do so but we don’t literally die. We are immortal; we are eternal. God created us that way. So, we cannot die. What God created cannot literally die. We can only move on. We can go back home when we’re ready to. The Course even teaches us that we never really left home and that we never really left God. So, we lay down the body and we move on or into another dream.

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Community Voices 4

Written by Various Authors Monday, 31 March 2008 12:00

On April 6, 2008 the Community Miracles Center officially celebrated it’s 21st Birthday. On this Sunday five of our active ministers took to the stage and gave short talks. After hearing from these “Community Voices” we had a wonderful potluck celebration. What follows are lightly edited transcriptions of these five presentations.

Rev. Geri Baskind:

Tony had said to me, when he called, “Just talk about what’s going on in your life – how the Course is impacting your life.”

I decided to go to law school. I’m a single parent. I have two kids who have issues that manifest in behavior and I work full time. I thought, “Well this is never going to happen.” But to tell you the truth the whole experience at law school has taught me more about detachment, and more about perception, than I ever thought I would ever learn. I need to be able to not only argue my side, but I have to show that I understand the other side of the argument as well – to be able to do that. But originally I was thinking “I can’t do this.” “I’m never going to be able to do this.” I called my brother who has always – I call him the one I don’t pay – he’s always been really influential for me. I told him, “You know ‘Bro’, I’m just really scared.” He said to me, “You already know how to do that. Do something different.” (laughter) I thought, “Excuse me!” I looked in the Course and it said, “Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat.” (T-11.V.10.1) I said, “Oh! Okay.”

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