When Magic Ruled In the days of myth, when the land was wild, and the animals talked, and the people knew the shape of time and the color of laughter, and the gods spoke from the grass and the clouds and the creek, magic filled the pores and cells of every creature and every stone, and the people and the cosmos were one. Magic was the thread. It connected the creation to the gods and embedded humans solidly into the natural world. As it wound its way through everything, magic made the universe whole. Sometimes it was huge and dangerous, for it could trap people as easily as save them.…
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Removing Blocks to Love
We Are Love At the Universalist Recovery Church meetings, we talk a lot about love. Not long ago, we concluded that our essential nature is love. That’s not a unique idea. Many religious traditions endorse that belief, especially those comfortable with mysticism. Sufism, which is the mystical branch of Islam, is all about love. Called “lovers of God,” Sufis often speak about the blissful union between us and the divine, one that is better than the most intimate oneness between a lover and her beloved. [1] Before we were born, no separation existed between us and God. With birth, we lose the memory of that oneness. For the Sufi, our…