A Meditation on Thankfulness

On the day I am writing this, we are blessed with glorious winter sunshine. I have just been walking on the Downs beside the sea in one of my favourite earthly places in all the world. A gentle breeze was blowing on my face. I listened to the sound of the sea breaking on the shore below me and sea gulls calling. I looked spellbound at the glorious views in the misty early morning light. ‘This is heaven on earth’, I thought. ‘When I die, this is where I shall be, with loved ones at my side’. (I had felt them there with me in their ‘bodies of light’ as I walked in my physical body.)

Remembrance Sunday has only just passed by—a day of remembrance and thankfulness for loved ones and many lives of service. The theme of thankfulness was deep in my soul as I walked, and I started to list all the things for which I wanted to say ‘thank you God’. I’m sure many of you have done this, but if not maybe you’d like to try it next time you go for a walk in nature, or an inner walk in your body of light! I find it really wonderful the way a simple ‘thank you God’ opens the mind and heart to receive even more blessing, deep peace and true and lasting happiness.

Remembrance Time

I write this on Remembrance Sunday as I prepare to go to the Temple at New Lands for our Remembrance Service. This beautiful day of late Autumn sunshine lifts my heart. It is easy to believe in heaven and eternal life. As I sit outside the Temple in the golden sunshine, golden beech leaves drift down upon our beautiful gardens... like a shower of golden petals from heaven. White Eagle has often told us that whereas the red poppy of Remembrance Day is a symbol of our remembrance of the physical life of loved ones, golden rose petals are a symbol of eternal life. Today our Temple altar steps have both symbols upon them... as we remember our loved ones and commune with them in the heavenly ‘Infinite and Eternal Garden of Reunion’.

As White Eagle says (in his Little Book of Comfort for the Bereaved from which I am reading at the service):

‘We should like to say one thing in particular to those of you who are bereaved. It is that in every case release has been the most beautiful experience for each of those individuals. It has been as easy as sleeping and awakening into the eternal and infinite garden and to life in the spirit world. Be thankful for the love and the life that you have enjoyed with them. More than this, be thankful for their release into a world of indescribable beauty and peace, happiness and fresh opportunity.’