Help for the Homeless

Every Effort Counts

I love writing about positive news items! Just after watching more scenes of refugees in Mosul queuing for food and a mother’s sad account of how hard it is to explain to her hungry children why maybe there would be no food left for them, I heard something very positive about our UK homeless.

I visit London often to be at our London Lodge (now re-housed in comfortable rooms in the Friends’ Meeting House near Trafalgar Square), and I am often shocked to see the number of sad figures huddled in their sleeping bags in doorways and underground stations.

Everyone must long for a solution to this problem and I know many charities are doing their best to help. Even individuals—and this is what struck me as I watched the local news item. It was decided to buy an old bus and convert it into a shelter for up to twenty homeless people. (In the process, also helping them find work.) The project (the idea of one individual) has turned out to be so successful that more old buses are now to be bought in a number of big cities throughout the UK. Hurray! This shows that individual efforts and ideas really can make a difference.

Our Star prayers are invaluable too, as they encourage everyone to do something if they can, whether by gift, action or prayers. As White Eagle says:

‘Every individual life, however humble, however simple, is of vast importance in the great plan. Every effort you can make to send forth the God-vibration is a contribution to God’s work. Every effort which we make in the silence to send forth good, to send forth that vibration which is of God, and the love quality, is a great service to humanity.’

Another Star Miracle?

Memories came flooding back as I watched the news stories on the death of Martin McGuinness. What an amazing transformation in his life from IRA terrorist leader to peacemaker in Ireland, with his iconic meeting and handshake with the Queen!

I remember the days when IRA bomb scares were a frequent occurrence on the streets of London and hopes for peace In Ireland seemed far fetched. But throughout those troubled years, we kept on keeping on with our brotherhood prayers for Ireland, and many individuals working quietly with the Star in their groups and homes. We all believed, and do still believe, in the Power of the Star to bring about change - change of heart and change of entrenched views which have been carried down through generations. We knew and know that Star miracles DO happen.

Although those deeply affected by the bombings and events in Ireland and elsewhere, those who lost loved ones in the violence, find it very hard, forgiveness is possible and has been embraced by many. It was heartwarming to hear Ian Paisley`s son speaking eloquently about the reconciliation between his father and Martin McGuinness.

I feel this reflection on the past history of violence in Ireland, and the peace and forgiveness which have followed, can give us cause for renewed hope that one day peace will come in the Middle East and other troubled lands.

White Eagle says: ‘No kindness or love is ever lost. That which is good is creative, and it lives and it acts in due time.’

'All the world's a stage...'

‘All the World’s a Stage

and all the men and women merely players. 

They have their exits and their entrances, 

and one man in his time plays many parts...’

We have just celebrated over eighty years since the first White Eagle Lodge was opened on 22^nd February 1936. In the talk I gave in the New Lands Temple on Sunday I quoted Shakespeare’s words above and suggested that one secret of being happy, no matter what age we are in this particular life time, is to be thankful for  individual blessings every age brings. We can be happy no matter what, if we accept the flowing of time and remember that the earthly world is not the real world at all—it is an illusion, a stage—which we act upon for a period of time before returning to our heavenly home, hopefully having learnt useful lessons at every age.

One of these lessons could well be tolerance! As we relate with one another in families, with colleagues at work and in groups in many different situations we have many opportunities for learning lessons of understanding, forgiveness, and letting go previous preconceived ideas. As a teenager I had quite fixed ideas about how I thought things ‘should be’ and I was, I think, (on reflection) quite impatient with some older people. I could not imagine being old enough to be a grandmother!

Now I am at that stage in my life and happier than I have ever been. I don’t want to be twenty or thirty—I am embracing the joy of getting older, and learning from my lovely grandchildren. On Saturday I walked along a beautiful beach with my two granddaughters—Daisy 17 and Ellie 14—amd was touched by their maturity and wisdom. We talked about death and reincarnation, the origins of the White Eagle work and many aspects of spiritual philosophy. I learned a lot from them. We can all learn so much from one another, whatever age we are, and grow old gracefully!

And finally, a few words of great wisdom from White Eagle in Seeking Serenity which links with these thoughts:

‘When you make a so-called mistake, it is a certain step forward that you have to take so that you may learn wisdom. It will bring you in the end to perfect love. Never blame other people for your troubles. Neither blame yourself. Instead, always look within and seek the divine love within your heart; then you will see the reason for the conditions that limit you, and you will see the work you have to do within yourself. You can only rise by making the effort to put aside all that troubles you and reaching up to the heaven world.’

The Best of Times

The other day a friend gave me a newspaper cutting with this surprising headline: ‘2016 : it was the best of times’. Reflecting on the year that is past, I don’t think many of us would have said that! It seems to have been a year of great world challenges, and for many people, serious personal ones too. But the newspaper lists some surprising and wonderful statistics (actually given in a reader’s letter):

‘We are living in a world that is getting richer, in which the number of people living in extreme poverty has for the first time fallen below 10 per cent. Since 1990, almost 1.1 billion have escaped extreme poverty. World hunger reached its lowest point for 25 years in 2016 and, for the first time ever, the death penalty has become illegal in more than half of the world’s countries. The world got healthier too: since their peak a decade ago, Aids-related deaths have fallen by 45 per cent and infant mortality has halved since 1990.’

When so much of what we read and hear in the media seems negative and often very depressing, a report like this is truly a reason for New Year celebration!

White Eagle encourages us all the time to think positively, reminding us of the power of good thought to transform negative conditions and of the healing magic of the Star. ‘Read something negative, think healing Star magic’ is my philosophy, but how heartening it is to read something positive like this; it truly does lift the heart!

Just before writing my blog I found by chance these affirmative words of White Eagle in the book of his teaching Spiritual Unfoldment Volume 3:

‘Think of spiritual evolution as a most perfect procedure…… all the broken fragments of life are used and brought together in an indescribably lovely way to perfect the pattern of man’s life on Earth.’