Text Box: Interfaith Celebration Gathering Sunday, October 22, 2000 Interfaith Celebration Gathering Service Service agenda: Opening Prayer Readings Message OPENING PRAYER: Dear Mother, Father, Great Spirit, God, please hear my prayer. Please lead me into my Higher Self that I may know how to express my love to others. I ask this knowing that all I need do is ask and it is granted. AMEN READINGS: All the treasures of earth cannot bring back one lost moment. (French proverb) Remember, every time you open your mouth to talk, your mind walks out and parades up and down the words. (Edwin H. Stuart) MESSAGE: Before It’s Too Late “I didn’t have time to…” “I really meant to, but I forgot…” “I didn’t tell them how I felt about them and now, it’s too late.” What sad words! My husband lost his aunt this week. She was a beautiful spirit who exuded love and concern for everyone around her. Her death was sudden. It was heart-wrenching for her husband, a physician. He was by her side when it happened, and none of his medical skills, practiced over fifty-some years, could bring her back to life. His comment to family after the funeral was, “I didn’t tell her often enough how much I love her.” How many times do we let slip by an occasion to reach out to others? How often do we fail to let others know we care? Putting things off is so easy in our busy daily lives. Taking others for granted is also easy. Sometimes we even get miffed with our loved ones, and we fail to affirm to them how much we love them. After all, in our frustration, we might not even feel very loving toward them. Or we expect them to know we love them even if we fail to say the words, and no matter how we act toward them. My husband’s uncle will live with his regrets. As my brother-in-law told him, “You can keep on beating yourself up for what you didn’t do, or you can start now to change all that and make sure everyone else knows how you feel about them.” You and I can follow this sage advice, too. We can start today letting everyone know how much they mean to us. We can thank folks for the things they do that make our lives better. We can reach out with a word, a touch, or a gentle look to others. We can praise others rather than tearing them down. And, let’s not forget, we can also praise ourselves and give ourselves love. Our treatment of others only mirrors our treatment of ourselves. If we feel we do not deserve love, we will have trouble giving it to others. Our mission on this earth is to become more Christ-like so that when we finally return home at the end of our lives, we will be ready to recognize that we are not really separate from God or from each other. Our mission is not to involve ourselves with busyness to the exclusion of relationships. Only by cultivating closeness with each other can we learn that we are not really separate. As Christians put it, we are all part of the body of Christ. So, my message to you today is: I am so grateful for the opportunity you have given me to continue my call to the ministry via the Interfaith Celebration Gathering. Being able to do these weekly services has helped me feel I am making a meaningful contribution to the world in some small fashion. When I began them, I was not certain I would be alive for the next few months, and that was nearly two years ago. They have provided me with a reason to keep going, no matter how ill I was. I have also grown in my faith and spirituality since I began them. (As A Course in Miracles says, we teach what we need to learn.) I treasure it when someone reaches out to me via email to say that something said in one of these messages has meaning for you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for this wonderful opportunity. I love you all. May God add a blessing to these humble words. AMEN © 2000 Rev. S. Suzanne Fisher