The Power of a Smile

Recently I made an interesting discovery about smiling. I feel better when I smile. I also look better. After making a short video of myself for an online public speaking class, I was pleasantly surprised.

“Well, look at that,” I says to myself. You actually look younger. And better.  And that very expensive dental work from a few years ago... thank you Dr.Gottlieb! Even Rev.Mike, when he saw the video said, It takes off 10 years.  Who knew?

Well, Ron Gutman knows. He’s the founder and CEO of the online health information app, HealthTap. He’s done quite a bit of research on smiling and writes in a column for Forbes online that it’s an “untapped power.”

Did you know a research project involving photos of major league baseball players in 1952 found that the span of a player’s smile could predict the span of his life? Players with broad, beaming smiles lived an average of 79.9 years to the sober player’s measly 72.9 years...a seven year advantage just from smiling.

Also, he found that smiling is evolutionarily contagious. We see someone smile and we want to smile. Ultrasound shows that developing babies are smiling in the womb, and continue to smile a lot after birth. Children smile a lot...up to 400 times a day. Smiles are cross-cultural, basic and biologically uniform expressions of all humans...even cannibals in New Guinea.

Also, we activate happiness circuitry in our brains when we smile, and smiling can actually make us healthier and less stressed.

Even though I’m into health and fitness, this is the first time I realized that my perpetual serious demeanor was a health hazard. I mean, I’ve always been serious. And I thought that might help preserve my face from wrinkles.  Why smile and get those pesky laugh lines?

But now...I know differently! And I’m learning to flex those facial muscles for good health, happiness and longevity.

Plus... I have another reason. I’ve often complained about my raspy speaking voice, and I decided I want to become a better public speaker.  And I just accepted that I couldn’t sing and never would, but secretly I wanted to sing. I hear other people singing and wish that I could express myself that way.

So recently I hired a vocal coach. And the first thing he’s teaching me is to bring my voice up into my head, my facial mask, and to do that I need to open my mouth wide in a smiling way. He comes to my home and we work on speaking the first half hour, and then...believe it or not...on singing. He’s very encouraging. I’m hearing these hoarse unattractive sounds coming out, and he’s playing notes on the piano going up, up, up. And what do you know, he had me actually singing up the scale. Then I was trying Eidelweiss. He says I’m a soprano. Really? Seriously? I actually had an emotional moment, realizing I had this hidden potential to sing.

Am I going to perform? No. I’m not ready for prime time. But I’m going to keep working on this and see where it takes me.

In closing, let me quote an anonymous poet from the Internet:

“Smiling is infectious,
You can catch it like the flu.
Someone smiled at me today,
And I started smiling too.

And so it is.

MOOC Experience

I’ve been exploring the Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs, which seem to be expanding globally. Coursera, with free courses from major prestigious universities such as Stanford, Princeton, Cal Tech, Michigan and others, has recently expanded to Russia and Asia, opening higher education to millions of people.

On the international scene, Future Learn started up in the U.K. with many educational partners, and even more recently Iversity began in Berlin with the goal of becoming the Coursera of Europe. 

As I’ve been exploring how our Center could become involved in online learning, I decided, “I need to experience it.”  I completed a course at Udemy on how to create an online course for their platform, in which anyone with expertise can set up a course for profit as well as for free. 
Then I signed up for a Coursera course, not in the more prevalent high tech area, but in literature: “Fantasy and Science Fiction,” from the University of Michigan.

We have assigned reading each week, complete a short essay of about 300 words and evaluate several peer essays. The professor, aside from creating the course and appearing in course videos, does not evaluate our work. Basically, we’re on our own as self-directed learners.

This is challenging for some students, as peer evaluations can be harsh, and there is a low completion rate. This course reportedly has 15,000 students.  Those who finish have to be dedicated, because there is a time commitment to do the work.

Our first assignment was “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” which are available from the Gutenberg Project...or your public library. Next up was “Alice in Wonderland,” to be followed by Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and other works.

After submitting our essays, we receive five peer essays to evaluate. This is challenging, as writing ability varies.

Evaluations of my work are generally positive and suggest I pull more symbolism from the story and follow more traditional  route of thesis, body, conclusion.  On a scale of 1 to 3, my grades have been a 2. One commented that my tone was refreshing and a bit “snarky,” which could mean that I was being irascible--really? Am I irascible?

There’s also a forum, and I was surprised how uptight students were about the evaluations. One student decided to quit because of poor evaluations. My response is that I’m taking the class for fun and experience, enjoy the feedback-- whether positive or negative-- and see this as a fabulous opportunity to learn something new.

Peer reviews can be useful, but as a Religious Scientist, I know that I’m 100 percent responsible for my own experience here and elsewhere.

I did learn something new. When I purchased the Rapunzel costume and doll for my granddaughter last holiday season, I wasn’t aware of the tower as a phallic symbol and that the fairy tales are all about sex. Live and learn!

There’s a tsusami, a huge experiment going on right now in education. It shows that higher education is open at the top, is responding to changing conditions in the world, and presents great opportunities for those willing to jump in.

One reason Silicon Valley is backing these courses is the huge need for software engineers and coders now and in the coming years. Software is an invisible thread through many disciplines, and embedded in almost all devices, many of which talk to each other. So even musicians and artists may need this coding skill to develop apps or tell computers what to do.

It’s like learning a new language, a language that is becoming all pervasive in the global society. Even children can learn coding. Search on the web for “coding for children” and links come up for Code.org or Khan Academy, or one that says “How to Raise the Next Zuckerberg: 6 Coding Apps for Kids."


That’s not to say online education is replacing traditional education. Only time will tell where all this is going.

When Ernest Holmes says, “There is an inner urge in our own minds to grow, to expand, to break down the barriers of previous limitations and to ever widen our experience,” he didn’t know about computers, online learning or any of the 21st century innovations.  But as he continues: “This persistent urge (to grow) is a driving influence, an irresistible force, and constitutes the greatest impulse in human experience....It is the urge back of all fulfillment.”

As we create our own experience here on this plane of existence, it’s good to know what opportunities are evolving in the material world, opportunities of which we or our children can take advantage. We know that life externalizes at the level of our thought, and we can use the one Power for Good in the Universe to guide us through the ever-evolving conditions of the 21st Century.

And so it is.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day! This special day was created back in 1908 by Anna Jarvis to honor her deceased mother, and became a national holiday by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson back in 1914. Today it’s a global holiday celebrated all over the world.

This got me thinking about the mothers in my life, and in my lineage. The furthest back I remember is my grandmother, after whom I was named.  She came to this country from Ireland in the 19th century, and married my grandfather who came over from Germany when he was two years old. Together they created a life for themselves and raised four daughters.

The eldest was my mother, who came of age in the flapper era and married my father, a Swedish immigrant. Together they had two boys in addition to me.

I came of age in the 1950’s, married in the ‘60s and birthed a boy and a girl in the 70’s. The girl married in this new century, the 21st, and has also birthed two children, a boy and a girl.

So I see five generations of women in my personal history, four of them mothers and one, now a five-year old, a possible future mother.

As Ernest Holmes says, We have all emerged from that One Whose Being is ever present and Whose Life, robed in numberless forms, manifest throughout all Creation. All of us, different personalities, are propelled by the cosmic Urge to bring us into being, into perfect manifestation.

I looked for commonalities in these different family feminine life experiences Different times, different places. Three generations enjoyed long, stable marriages.  My grandparents, parents and myself were married some 40 years, with no divorce or early widowhood. The men in the families did not experience the killing fields of wartime military,

My great grandfather was in the German military under Bismarck, and --the story goes -- one night he and some buddies drank too much beer and cut down the trees in front of the Kaiser’s palace. I assume they used their swords. In any case, that prompted a swift trip out of the country to America, followed by their wives, children, feather beds, pots and pans.

My grandfather did not serve in World War I, avoided the flu pandemic, and made it through the depression with a solid job as a postman. My own father was a bit old for World War II, but managed a toy factory converted to producing munitions for the war effort.

My own husband, Larry, served stateside in the army in the 50’s.

I might have been raised by a single mother, if my father had died as expected from a deadly pneumonia. But my mother wore out her rosary praying for his recovery, and just in time, a totally new sulfa drug saved his life.

So aside from that near miss, and the late life illnesses of transition, my ancestors as well as my own family have been blessed with good health. I survived a bout with breast cancer in my fifties, and enjoy grandmama status today.

One recurring theme through my family history is education. For my grandmother. a high school diploma was enough to become a school teacher. My mother, with two years of Normal school, was a grade school teacher before marriage and insisted we children all go to college. My two brothers and myself earned masters’ degrees. I married a college professor, have done a bit of college teaching myself, and my own children have advanced degrees...my son a doctorate and my daughter a master's degree. Education is highly valued in their families as well.

So as I look back at the generations of mothers before and after me, I realize we have manifested very positive life experiences. I am humbled, amazed and thankful that I am privileged to be a link in this chain of motherhood...this tangle of love, caring, wisdom, guidance, hard work and more created from the divine urges of the Cosmos.

As the poet Rajneesh has said:

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.”

And so it is, on this Mother’s Day, May 11, 2014.

Small Things That Change Our World

Sometimes it’s the smallest things that can change the world.

Here’s an example: In June 1812, Napoleon marched on Russia with an army of 600,000. By December, that number had fallen to 10,000 as the remnants of his force retreated from Moscow. Napoleon’s downfall followed. Why did this happen?

One theory is described in the book, Napoleon’s Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed the World. Buttons? Yes, the buttons that held together everything from officers’ greatcoats to the jackets and trousers of the foot soldiers were made of tin. And tin disintegrates into a gray powder when temperatures fall.

So picture this:  soldiers grasping their clothes in the freezing weather when they should be grasping their weapons. Napoleon’s influence disintegrated along with the buttons.

True or not, the authors Penny LeCouteur and Jay Burreson were inspired by this story of to explore connections between something as small as a molecule and momentous events in human history.

Take nutmeg...a spice we can buy easily in the supermarket and keep in our kitchen cupboards to spice up our foods. But it wasn’t always so. A small bag with nutmeg around the neck was highly desired in the middle ages to ward off the Black Death, the plague that devastated Europe for centuries.

Superstition? As it turns out, nutmeg contains a natural pesticide, isoeugenol, which could have repelled fleas. We now know the bubonic plague was transmitted by infected rats through the bites of fleas.

And because the Dutch, who were successful spice traders, wrested a nutmeg monopoly from Great Britain by trading Manhattan for the tropical island of Run, we have New York instead of New Amsterdam.

The authors cite many examples of human demand for specific molecules as the stimulus for great changes: spices and voyages of discovery; cotton, sugar and the huge slave trade; salt, salt taxes and revolutions, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and new prosperity from successful trading voyages, antibiotics and the prevention of millions of deaths, and many others.

So I started thinking. What small things that we do every day can have momentous effects on our personal lives?  I immediately thought back to my 21st birthday, when I was going to register to vote. My mother, who was a Republican, said: “Register as a Democrat. You never know.”  At that time my father, also a Republican, was managing a toy factory and one of his foremen was influential in the Democratic Party. He knew all the bigwigs.

A few years later I joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Dakar, Senegal. I really didn’t want to go there. I wanted to go to Europe. On a Friday I called my father. What can "so and so" do, I wailed. The next Monday, Personnel called me:  I was now assigned to Brussels, Belgium. I called my father. “Don’t do anything. I got Brussels.”

Father said: “The call went out Friday night.”

Later, I discovered Lyndon B. Johnson written in parentheses  on my personnel card. So I owe my husband, who I met at the American Embassy in Brussels, and our two beautiful children, to L.B.J. And to my Mom, for suggesting I register as a Democrat.

That’s not exactly a molecule story, but a story of a small action that brought huge change to my personal life.

Another event, not so small, was my diagnosis of breast cancer that spurred my spiritual journey.  A small event evolving from this larger event was driving by this Center and seeing the sign, Church of Religious Science. “How can religion be scientific?” I mused. I came one Sunday to find out, and never left.

And so it is.

Humanity and Divinity

In my travels through the Internet, I came upon a story recently that intrigued me. The sorority I had belonged to in college, Delta Gamma, was in the news.  So I took a look.

Apparently a DG sister with responsibilities for Greek Week social activities for her chapter was outraged-- outraged-- that she was receiving complaints from their Matchup, Sigma Nu, about how awkward and boring they were, and that the frat brothers would  not want to hang out with them. So she sent an email demanding that the sisters shape up.

Not just any email...but an “exercise in digital rage, worthy of a Quentin Tarantino curse-a-thon or David Mamet dressing down,” according to a CNN report.  It was filled with so many f-words, expletives, and profanities that it was leaked to a site called Gawker, and inspired news articles around the web, a “hilariously unhinged” dramatic reading by actor Michael Shannon, as well as U-tube parodies by Barbie, an animated Joe Pesci, and various standup comics.   You can Google it...Delta Gamma sorority rant. Some of profanities were so new to me that I had to go to Wikipedia to find out what they meant.

The email and parodies stimulated long strings of comments....people love to make judgmental comments.  About half condemned the writer as crazy, hysterical, deranged, shallow, and representative of the depths to which young people today had sunk, particularly those in sororities and fraternities. And she had ruined future job and grad school prospects with this “online tattoo.”

The other half found the email and parodies hysterically funny, and even liked the rhythm and “take no prisoners” writing style. It helped that she looks very attractive and angelic in her photos. In one TV news story, one fellow commented no girl could have written that; it had to have been a guy.  So women’s lib is alive and well. I enjoyed the whole circus.

For me, I flashed on memories of my own college sorority days, some 55 years ago. My freshman year, I definitely was one of those “awkward” and “boring” girls and was cut by all the sororities but one, which I chose not to join. Sophomore year rolled around, and I figured I had nothing to lose by loosening up and having fun with rush. That, plus my 4.0 GPA, brought an invitation from Delta Gamma.

Sororities didn’t have their own houses, so we clustered in different areas of a very large dormitory...complete with house mother, sign-in and out sheets, room inspections, and curfews...9 p.m. my freshman year.  Definitely another era. We had white glove tea parties, as well as parties with fraternities. I wrote and directed some prize winning skits for big campus events, made some great friends, and definitely enhanced my college experience. I even met my first real boyfriend at a party with graduate students.

So how does this relate to Religious Science?
I found the answer in the writings of Walter Starcke.  I was asked to teach a class based on Starcke’s book, “It’s All God.”

Walter Starcke puts it in perspective. He clarifies the necessity of finding a realistic balance between living in the Absolute and the Relative world -- to find the balance between our humanity and our divinity. It's not a matter of “one or the other,” but rather, discovering the key to doing both at the same time. 

God is ever present--he says. God is all there is--the good, the bad, the ugly. The human and the divine are one and the same, that even Christ was flawed and made mistakes. If we can accept our failures and weaknesses and those of others as opportunities for expansion, growth and learning, we can evolve our own Christ consciousness.

The email writer resigned from Delta Gamma; the story has died down.  But who knows, she may show up on "Good Morning America," or "Oprah," who can ask “what were you thinking when you wrote this?”

And she can show she has matured into a thoughtful, compassionate, tolerant young lady. She’s only 20 or 21...lots of time to live and learn.

And so it is.

I Am Living My Best Life Now

There is One Power, One Presence that flows through, in and around all things. It flows to me, expresses as me.  I am an individualized expression of that Power, that Presence.  I am one with the Divine, a Divine being here on this plane of consciousness.

I declare that I am living my best life now, before I step into my next great adventure.  I am living effectively and effortlessly, experiencing the good, the better, the best that life has to offer. I am generating momentum to move forward dynamically in the four pillars of life: health, prosperity, creative expression and loving relationships. I get out of my own way to launch my vision. I release old, worn-out ideas and allow energy to flow into me, activating and powering my new vision of life. 

I live in love, knowing the single most important thing in the Universe IS love.  I release any feelings of fear and emptiness, and of the need for praise, power, pleasure and safety.  I allow love to flow to me, and through me, and for me. I know Divine Love powers my life’s journey through a Universe of limitless possibility. With love, I live my best life now, and in the days and years to come.

I gratefully receive and give thanks for these wonders of life, and more.  I release my word into the Law of Mind, knowing it returns to me, multiplied abundantly.

I Emerge Into My Authentic Self

There is now and always only One: One Creative Mind, One Divine Intelligence, One Universal Power.  As an individualized expression of that Mind, that Intelligence, that Power, I awaken to my spiritual magnificence.  And as I live my purpose in harmony with the Universe, I help to create a world that works for all.

I step forward and allow that greater idea of who I am to emerge.  I AM divinely fulfilled in all areas of my life -- loving relationships, creative expression, radiant good health and financial prosperity -- as my actions, thoughts and feelings attract that good into my experience.  I am emerging with a larger consciousness of my authentic beingness, of my purpose here on this plane of consciousness.

As I live in a Universe of limitless possibility, I am harmonized and powered by Divine Love.  I allow Spirit to express through me, as me, for me so that the perfect actualized ME emerges. I let go of anything that prevents my emergence into my divine purpose, into my authenticity.

I gratefully receive and give thanks for the emergence of my authentic self, and more.  I release my word into the Law of Mind, knowing it returns to me, multiplied abundantly.

And so it is.