I finally moved myself out of the way and let Spirit finish God is a Brown Girl Too through me.  I was surprised by the outcome.  It was not what I expected Spirit to do.  I thought that “I” was supposed to narrate the book.  But God pushed me aside and told “me” to shut up.  Instead of “me” reading chapter and verse, or some other character from the spiritual ethers speaking, God speaks directly through the souls of women of color.  God is our voice.  It should come as no surprise that God doesn’t speak in monologues or sermons.  God speaking as a brown girl does not speak through the belts and suspenders of tradition but as bold new teachings, mythical scrolls and poetry.   “Move beyond the sound where your voice asks God, and go to the space where your soul listens,” God tells women of color everywhere.

We need to believe in ourselves again, rather than what someone else says, or what someone else thinks, or what someone else does.  We, as temples of a living God, must begin again to see beyond traditions that marginalize and denigrate us. We need to claim God for ourselves.   If we don’t, we will always think of ourselves as less than, as unworthy, as scorned.  We have been denigrated for long, despised for so long, marginalized for so long that if we don’t embrace our divinity – that kingdom of God that Jesus says is within us – we will never receive the salvation that we need for true deliverance.

“This is not a story,” the book begins.  “This is the truth. This is how we glue the pieces back together that have fallen from our center of spiritual oneness. This is how we re-member ourselves. This is how we get back on our feet. This is how we believe again.”

The following is an excerpt from God is a Brown Girl Too, on love, from a chapter entitled “Love with a New Heart.”

I bless you with the power of regenerating love and by so doing, I ask that you love with every aspect of your new heart. Your new heart does not carry condemnation. Your new heart is only filled with love and its presence and its power. With a new heart beating as me, you will breathe love as your breath, love as your energy, love as the me that you exude, radiating exquisite beauty.

Your new heart will remind you of who you are. Your true roots are not of a place or a people; they are the energy out of which you were formed and made –
and that energy is love. You are not limited; you can shape and mold and create out of anything that I give you.

Your new heart will not allow you to sit on the power that you are. That’s what is creating the shake-up that you are experiencing in the physical realm right
now. You have given your power away. Balance will not be restored until you love with a new heart – by using your ability to create, to manifest, to produce, to generate. The universe needs you.

I am not talking about romance. I am not talking about sex. I am not talking about the glitz and glamour of your exploitation of the gifts that I have given you. I am talking about the deep penetrating love that you must have for yourself, for your proper place in my kingdom. All of my children must stand hand-in-hand, side-by-side in the deliverance of this world. Only the harmony that you create will calm the raging seas and stop the global shifts, not to mention the pointless wars, the hunger, the health epidemics and the despair.

You have become complacent consumers – collectors of stuff – someone who just lives to purchase shoes and bags and designer wigs – forgetting your own callings. You have become lazy couch potatoes, zoned out internet surfers – greedy, selfish, and foolish enough to think that someone else should create for you and be loving for you – instead of tapping into the deepest powers of the universe that are always there – awaiting your instruction.

You are the love that you seek. You do exist to give without an agenda. Your love is secure. It has no need to scheme because it is not here to take – or to profit from anyone. Your love is here to give.

But you have forgotten who gave you birth.  You have forgotten your parents.  You have forgotten that the world around you in the flesh is an illusion because  you really dwell in one place, and that is in my heart.  You are not separate from the infinite force and inexhaustible source of creative energy that called you into being to express the love that I AM – everywhere present and emanating from every pore and every divine vibration and every spirit-infused idea that gives shape to you.  How can you refrain from being anything less than the love that created you.  When you emanate in the powerful energy of all that Love is and allow yourself to be its co-creative channel of good – it will open way to all that you need, and all that you want, and all that you desire.  When you love with a new heart, you will always be filled with my good.

When you shine your light as Love, the love that you seek CANNOT be withheld from you.  If someone is bothering you, send love their way and watch what happens.  If you have an injury or an ailment, send love its way and watch what happens.  If you have a desire or a dream or a goal, keep sending love its way and watch what happens.  If you want a divine partner, send love to the universe and the right person will manifest for you.  Love cannot withhold from you what you need.  Withholding your good defies the very nature of all that love is; it cannot happen.  The good that you seek through the power of love will always be radiated back to you. Love cannot help but attract the right people, situations and circumstances to you.

If you love with a new heart, one that doesn’t hold back, it will infuse you with a bliss that you have never felt before.  Because you won’t hold back, neither will I.

© 2011 By Cecilia Loving

I am grateful to unveil the book at this year’s God is a Brown Girl Too Retreat “Creating Outside the Box of Conventionality.” It is going to be held at the Mariandale Retreat Center, right outside NYC, during the weekend of April 1 -3, 2011.  We are going to have a fabulous time, so I hope that you can join us during this three-day celebration of the divine in us on the peaceful pastures of the lovely paradise overlooking the Hudson River.  For more information, go to
www.godisabrowngirltoo.webs.com.   You can also pre-order the book there.  Also stop by SPIRITMUV, www.spiritmuv.com, 213 West 58th Street in NYC, where we always uplift the God within — each Sunday from 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM.