Be A Great Day
Rev. Juanita Gardner
As I was preparing to write this newsletter, a friend reminded me of the message that I have as a part of the greeting on my cell phone. The message ends by saying, “be a great day.” I had forgotten that it was still on that phone as I had removed it from my home phone several years ago. And, of course, I don’t call my own cell. Discussing the meaning of the phrase, we started talking about the following version of the prayer accredited to St Francis of Assisi below:
“Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that where there is error, I may bring truth; that where there is doubt, I may bring faith; that where there is despair, I may bring hope; that where there are shadows, I may bring light; that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; to understand, than to be understood; to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.”
Probably all of us have heard this prayer. For me, the italicized part summarizes the whole prayer. Like this prayer, the phrase, “be a great day” reminds me that we must become the Thing or Quality that we want to experience for ourselves or others. I love quotes and this reminds me of many others. Such as: Holmes, “God can do for us only what God can do through us”; and from Gandhi, “be the change you want to see in the world.”
I heard our beloved emeritus minister, Rev Margie Clark, say that this prayer could be the prayer for every Practitioner. And as we know, professionally licensed or not, we are all Practitioners. Thus, this is a prayer for all of us.
Only Love,
Rev Juanita
Rev. Juanita Gardner
Juanita Gardner was introduced to Religious Science in the mid-1970s. She committed to Religious Science in 1996 and received her Practitioner Licensed in 2002 from The Agape International Center for Spiritual Living. In 2005, she was ordained a religous science minister at the City of Angels Chuch of Religious Science. She received a Doctorate in Metaphysics from an independent distance learning program from the University of Sedona. She moved her Practitioner License to Seal Beach Center of Spiritual Living in 2006 where she has served as a facilitator of several certificated classes, including Practitioner Training I and II. She has been married for 54 years and has provided Spiritual Guidance to couples and singles alike. Her emphasis on forgiveness and self-healing is a major part of her Spiritual Practice. As an African American, she is committed to the indigenous people’s philosophy that by healing one’s self you heal seven generations back and seven generations forward.
(Featured Photo used in the blog by Shaira Dela Peña on Unsplash)