Gloria to God:

Dear God, the other morning I bumped into a dear friend who is starting a teen center here and raising money for it. She's never done anything like this in her life, and never thought she would or could. It made me realize how most of us think that, because we haven't done something, that it's not "us". It also occurred to me how many of us, not this lady, but so many of us, wait for someone else to appoint us or urge us on. I can really see how we accept a picture of ourselves as if it were permanent.

God:

There are many whom the world thought couldn't do this or that. And the world was very mistaken.

Your families and societies see certain horizons. They see only so far.

See bigger than you were brought up with.

I appoint each and every one of you to discover your desires. They are Mine. Discover and then fulfill your desires which are also Mine. I urge you on.

You never knew you wanted to do such a thing as Heavenletters until one day it started to happen. You found yourself in the middle of it. Whom would your friends and family have chosen for this work? Not you. You were too quiet. They might not have chosen anyone because it would have seemed farfetched to them.

This is a good reason why people need to choose themselves. Choosing yourself is another way to say to follow your truth. Do not wait for permission. You have it.

Gloria:

Nancy O. has this quotation at the bottom of her emails:

"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Stephen Jay Gould

God:

And yet from cotton fields and sweatshops also have come those who gave greatness.

Gloria:

Or their children did.

God:

My children did.

Gloria:

Dear God, letting go of the past is very much on my mind. In the Jewish religion, a candle is lit every year on the anniversary of a loved one's death. I wonder if religion sometimes helps us hold on rather than let go.

God:

Honoring your loved one isn't holding on. It is letting go.

When you light a candle for your father or another, consider it a symbol that releases the other's soul. Consider it a reminder to you to release rather than to hold on.

And to Whom do you release your father?

You release him to Me.

The candle releases its light, as you release your father.

Lighting the candle blesses your father on his way. When you don't hold on to him, you release him to his own journey. You let him move forward and not be held to his past. Letting go is a sweet surrender. Surrendering is sweet, not arduous. Surrendering is an act of love. Holding on is not.

Gloria:

Then I thought that maybe people age because they hold on to the past, that all the past is stuck in them, crowding out vital energy. If all past stale energy were let go, there would only be fresh new energy.

God:

Now We will talk another way.

The true past is your involvement with Me. That is the pure truth. In that vein, you want to return to the original past which is actually the present.

Truth is where you would be if untruth did not accrue and intervene.

Surrender is the removal of untruth.

It is return to All That Is.

Letting go is receiving.

Letting go is a receiving of freedom.

It is a washing away.

Surrender is being in the flow.

It allows the flow.

It does not dam it up.

Surrender is mighty.

It is good to remind yourself that surrender is to Me. You do not surrender to the winds. You do not abandon aught with surrender. You give with surrender.

Your surrender is an offering.

Surrender is leaving a flower at My feet, or a stone.

You know I love a stone equally to a flower.

Anything you give to Me, I accept with love.

I keep nothing.

I receive, and, poof, it is gone.

It is gone because it never was.

Truth is.

Love is.

Anything else is extraneous.

It is like this:

There is a beautiful painting in a frame. You peer closely at the frame and forget to look at the picture.

The painting does not hang on the wall for the frame. The frame is merely a holder for the picture. It may be a striking prominent frame, but it is nevertheless, only the frame.

So your modern life is the frame in which you are the beautiful picture. The frame exists to house you, the you-ness of you.

We could say that the body is a frame within the larger frame.

The frames are nothing.

You are everything.

* * *

Bev to Gloria:

Hi, Glo, the Heaven letter re my mom helped us so much. The part on judgments was so interesting. It hit me so deep. I know it was just what I needed, although I'm not sure why. It was very deep.

Diane to Bev and Gloria:

I am so touched by God's response to Bev about her relationship with her mother. How wonderful to let her mother be where she is, a lesson I learned with Molly.

A term I learned recently in my gratitude group seems to apply — Divine Discontent — the darkness that brings us back to the light. The darkness which gives birth to desire for connection.

Bless you, Bev, and bless your mother, too.