I am not a victim of the world I see.

1-31-2024

“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free … so other people would be also free.” ~ Rosa Parks

Hollie offered this quote with her notes for this lesson. It reinforces for me that it is a person who is feeling their freedom (or right to be free) that can state the lesson theme with clarity.

“I am not a victim of the world I see.”

I feel this strength today. A blessed day.

1-31-2023

Hollie’s notes on the lesson relate to how in claiming our freedom we help free the world. My thoughts keep going back to the CAC reflection today by Paula D’Arcy who lost her husband and infant daughter in a car crash. The CAC reflections this week are on the second half of life motivations. (The first half being survival, security, and forming identity.)

In Hollie’s example of Rosa Parks, if staying on the bus was her life shifting experience, was she able at the time to see outside of herself to know her step toward freedom would bring freedom to so many others?

D’Arcy’s shifting experience is what so many say to expect, the pain, the life shattering experience. I don’t believe that this is the only way to mature, and I don’t think the Course supports that one path. (Why the gift of hundreds of pages and a year of lessons if a great suffering is expected to break us open?)

“I am not the victim of the world I see.”

Life can be hard, and these lessons give tools to see and soften the everyday burdens we put on ourselves. God’s gift to us. I expect that when there is a great heartbreak that God sends much greater support to Their child in pain.

But still, I don’t get it. We are told to believe, have faith, pray, when history tells of so many loving, faithful people who were tortured. Such horrors are in our history. I tell myself there is a bigger picture here and a bigger purpose as represented by Jesus.

To aid in settling my thoughts, I think again of a tree, the leaves die and fall away each year.

Help!