After I have hibernated for winter and surrendered to the solitary space of waiting, springtime draws me out to celebrate the birth of new days. After over 50 years of this ritual, I anticipate this period of reckoning, so I spend winter making the appropriate sacrifices – doing whatever is necessary to allow God’s good to take shape before the weather breaks. It’s tax time. It’s Lenten time. It’s the awkward
time of removing our outer skin of coats and jackets and scarves to face what’s underneath. It’s time to sigh when we open wide our closets and really focus for the first time on everything that we’ve accumulated over the last nine months or last nine years: stuff that needs to be sorted, fixed, healed, or discarded. Springtime is the gift that Spirit gives us to tidy up loose ends so we can go on about our business. It’s the grace that God blesses us with – to move out of tomorrow’s way.
When we emerge from our winter caves, we know what changes we need to make deep down inside, even if we are not yet courageous enough to make them. Spring is our first baby step full of the sweet breezes of pollen, seeds, and raindrops to remind us that we’ve got work to do. Regardless of what it is – if we plant the right seeds of intention, we don’t really have to worry about making God’s gifts grow. The universe will push the buds beneath the earth, dig roots deep into the soil and form whatever we were summoned to create. As long as we water, prune, weed, and fertilize – new life will manifest itself. All we really have to do is lay the groundwork and move out of God’s way.
We realize even more that we are here for a reason when we have to pay tribute to those who did not make it to new seasons. Two close friends, Mark Fant and William Blakely, not much older than 45, finished their work and made their transition two weeks ago – never to see springtime again in the way that they used to. We mourn the fact that we will not see them anymore and try to wrap our arms around the precious things that life teaches us. “Live life to the fullest,” the March winds whisper. “You never know when your time is up. Have you loved enough?
Have you given your best? Have you listened to the Holy Spirit?” We’re in this habit of ignoring God, but when Spirit carries someone’s breath to other realms – we are forced to pay attention. Now is the time to listen.
Spirit called me to write my third book and have it ready by springtime. God is a Lawyer Too: Ten Laws of Unlimited Success will be presented for the first time at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler next week, by the Practicing Attorneys for Law Student Association, on Thursday, on March 29, 2012, at 6:00 PM. RSVP at www.palsprogram.org/SuccessWorkshop2012.
The book tells the story of a man who learns to listen to the universe to discern the gifts that he was given and to be courageous enough to claim his blessings. So often we stay in one place simply because we refuse to move out
of God’s way so that absolute good can be expressed through us. We are foolish enough to believe that we are here to serve our own will, but we are actually here to bless countless people – those we could never even imagine. The book and its accompanying workbook gives us ten laws to put into practice in order 
to plant the seeds of unlimited success and witness their growth.
I am grateful that one of my friends carries the book everywhere she goes. She has an advance copy, but it’s now on sale at www.amazon.com. God is a Lawyer Too helps us exercise the power that we have to put our lives by consciously aligning ourselves with Spirit. When we realize the kingdom that God has given us to create, plant and birth – we know that perfect, divine order
is present in all things.
In Mark 4:26-28, Jesus says “A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or whether he gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he doesn’t know how. All by itself, the soil produces grain – first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.” That is what 
happens in springtime. A seed is organized potential – the spiritual movement from the invisible to the visible. It is that dream, that desire, that longing, that vision that is buried but merges into the subconscious and continues to move and grow until it manifests itself. This middle ground is the perfect, divine order – the process, the divine mystery, the darkness between every beginning and every ending that we simply have to trust.
It is always time to face the fact that God really is here. But spring is a great reminder that all we have to do is our part, then move out of the way so that God can do the rest.
Namaste,
Cecilia Loving
Join SPIRITMUV every Sunday, at 2:30 P.M. at the Unity Center of NYC, located at 213 West 58th Street, between 7th Avenue and Broadway.
We do so many crazy things in the external to celebrate “Easter” that we should really spend time hunting for its meaning rather than for colored eggs. We long for baskets of jelly beans, chocolate rabbits and marshmallow peeps — delivered by that elusive bunny rather than centering in the Spirit that is always here. We eat hams, hens, ducks, potato salad, collard greens, and coconut frosted cakes rather than spiritual sustenance that would never leave us hungry. In some countries, there is even kite-flying, cross-country skiing, and courtship spankings — rather than the realization that “Easter” is not to celebrate the flesh but to uplift the Spirit. 
There are so many traditions that have evolved through Anglo-Saxon pagan rituals, that the full meaning of “Easter” has been lost — somewhere between the name itself (speculated to have evolved from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre or Eoaster, referring to the goddess 
Easter is about Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross and the blood that was shed for our salvation. But more importantly, it is about resurrection. Even before he was crucified, Jesus taught that death would not contain his Spirit. In Capernaum (John 2:19-21 NIV), Jesus told the Jews who protested after he cleaned out the temple, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The Bible says that the temple Jesus spoke of was his body. Jesus said (John 11:25-26), “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” 
Jesus did not dwell on the actions of the men who were responsible for his crucifixion, he simply asked God for their forgiveness because he knew that “[t]he Spirit gives life; [but] the flesh counts for nothing.” (John 6:63) He said, “I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” (John 8:51) When we understand the awesome power of Jesus’ ministry and embrace it as part of our own life, we are born into a new consciousness; we walk with a new strength; we transcend the appearances of life; we realize that the Kingdom of God is within.
As Jesus told Nicodemus, “no one can seek the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” To fully realize the infinite blessings that Spirit is expressing as us, we have to form new beliefs, new understandings, new celebrations of the all-encompassing power of God. We can no longer be afraid to ask for whatever we want in the material and the physical world. We can no longer be afraid to be the person that God has called us to be. We can no longer care what anyone else says or thinks. 
Our lives are opportunities for spiritual rebirth. Our lives are divine appointments to walk the water of our transgressions and evolve into a completely new creature of faith. Easter celebrates a transformation of the soul that raises our consciousness in a new awareness. If we really open our hearts, our minds and our souls in the resurrecting power of God, our old self will die and a new self will be born.
This calls for a new tradition of Easter: one where we feel the peace that Jesus left his students with and receive the Holy Spirit that now lives in us. After Jesus was resurrected, he told his disciples “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:21-22) As believers, as disciples, as students of Christ, we too are blessed with the peace and the breath and the light. These blessings only require us to release the person we once were and become the phenomenal person that we are. 
Jesus gave us a new commandment. He said love one another. Our resurrection is neither fear nor strife; it is simply love. If God is love, so are we. Love is our story, our truth and our victory. Love is our resurrection. Love is our faith. As my brother Chris said the other day, Jesus’ story is my story. Jesus’ story is forever re-telling itself in the eternal wisdom of the Unlimited Power of the Universe. 
“One Love,” a gentleman in the gym always says. Indeed, we are “One Love” in Spirit. Resurrection Day is to celebrate this Spirit, this Oneness, this Love that is eternal. 
Reinvent. Reconnect. Release. Realize. Restore. Rejuvenate. Recreate. Yes, and by the way, Happy Resurrection Day!
God is a Brown Girl Too 