Author: millig2

Life can hit hard and sometimes it feels impossible to believe that there’s a Divine Hand guiding things. But if we can find even the smallest light of hope, clarity can find us and we can grasp that Divine Hand, fully awakened. Join us as we find that light and join hands with Divinity!

April 20 – Resurrecting Hope (Easter)
On this Easter Sunday we look at the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as a metaphor for how far Ego will go to destroy peace, sabotage our relationships, and deflect the miracles of our Divine inheritance and how God’s power, through love, can conquer it all.

April 27 – Light of Hope
Bad news and personal struggles can leave us feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and emotionally drained. The last thing we want to do in such times is work on finding hope, but that is exactly what we should do. Taking steps like expressing gratitude, learning something new, acknowledging an accomplishment, and delighting in the simplest thing – no matter how small – can break up the negative thought patterns we get stuck in and re-orient our thinking. In doing so, we rediscover a sense of hope, and a belief that things really will be okay.

May 4 – Hope Is In…
Taking inspiration from Tim Burton’s 2010 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and her own personal struggles, Rev. Gina reminds us that there is always hope. Having trouble finding hope? Seek evidence. Look at your life and see evidence of your having survived and grown through other challenges.

May 11 – Here’s Hoping
“I hope they get what they deserve.” This not uncommon thought, despite using the word “hope,” is actually a judgement. Being able to find hope – true hope – when the going gets rough takes effort in acknowledging there is a Divine Hand in everything. This Divine Hand, the Spirit of Love, moves even the worst situation toward good.

May 18 – Only Hope
Rev. Gina closes this series by bringing pieces of seemingly shattered life events together to form a beautiful kaleidoscope of hope showing that even when it looks like all hope is lost, in our deepest winter, Spirit was planting a seed we’d one day call our greatest gift. When the Light seems entirely gone, even when the world seems so dark you can’t imagine it spinning any more, inherent in the darkness – bringing you vivid color – is a glorious reality waiting for you if you only choose to see it.

What they are, why they are, and how to stop, so you can experience your best life yet!

March 9 – Guilt? Innocence
We are not the things we tell ourselves we are. Our inner voice is far louder and far meaner than anyone else’s words have ever been or could ever be. Rev. Gina begins a story from Jane Middleton-Moz’s Shame & Guilt: Master of Disguise to illustrate this point.

March 16 – Zero Shame
Rev. Gina concludes the story from Jane Middleton-Moz’s Shame & Guilt: Master of Disguise and introduces a new method of journaling to release dark, fearful feelings and bring peace to your life by seeing past events through the eyes of love.

March 23 – Guilty of Shamelessness
There is no room for shame when we move into Love. To the Universe, we are and always will be its perfect children. In that perfection, there is no shame. No guilt. No, God sees only that beautiful spark of Love it placed in each of us. Rev. Gina Milligan draws from an unexpected source this week to express what God’s love is like, and why there is no need for shame; no need for guilt.

March 30 – No Guilt – Period.
Have you ever idealized someone and wished or tried to be more like them? Well, there’s something you’re missing when you do that. You think you’re not those things you see in them, but in reality, you possess all of the same attributes. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be drawn to them. You’re actually looking into a mirror, seeing a reflection of yourself, but not knowing it and therefore not embodying it. And that’s all thanks to our ego. Rev. Gina shares a few stories to show how our ego often fills us with guilt or shame and how to move past them to align to our highest self.

April 6 – No More Stories!
Those stories we’ve told ourselves about not being enough, not being worthy, or about being defined by the things we’ve done or the things we’ve left undone are as hollow and fragile as balloons. They have no real power over us and today, we release those false beliefs we know as guilt and shame through a powerful meditation – and by physically popping balloons – revealing our inner essence, the Divine Truth that we are whole, perfect, beautiful expressions of God.

April 13 – Marvin Rolnick
Author Marvin Rolnick returns to the podium to introduce his first book, Erasmus Joseph Lion, the inspiration for the text, the impetus to write it, and the process of transforming a distant memory into reality though employing the teachings of A Course in Miracles.

Anger is largely used as a means of creating distance, to gather some toward the conflict or to push some away. What anger truly is, is a modality for keeping us asleep to the reality of the perfection we are a part of. Anger isn’t real. It’s a destructive force, contrived by ego, to allow us to feel somehow superior. This series serves to point out the damaging effects of anger so we can move past it and get back to, as our last series laid out, how to be Love.

February 2 – So, You Big Mad?
Using the trending social media bit, “You Big Mad”, as a jumping off point, Rev. Gina shifts our tendency to play the blame-game when we are angry to a people of peace through a return to love. Drawing on steps from Neill Gibson & Shari Klein’s What’s Making You Angry? and insight from the Testament of Dan found in the The Apocrypha, we are reminded to turn to love to move past anger.

February 9 – Madness?
What do we do when our egos start hollering and our fists ball-up and there’s nothing happening to stop us from forgetting that love is the only thing that’s really real? How do we take the lesson from that initial angry emotional response and come from love before we start yelling? Rev. Gina shares from the knowledge of Thich Nhat Hanh and Carol Tavris, distilling the lessons down to a seemingly simple, but often challenging task of living in the now – as we focused on some months ago – to let go of fear, release anger, stop the ‘what-if’ doom scrolling, and recall that our thoughts and beliefs shape our experience.

February 16 – Madness!
Rev. Gina recounts two recent stories where turning to love instead of anger resulted in blessings to the local community, both within and outside the church.

February 23 – Fed Up or Fed?
Stepping through The Cranky Code from Anger is a Choice by Tim Lahaye and Bob Phillips as the basis for the different forms of anger we see around us, Rev. Gina asks us to pinpoint those we identify with. Then taking a deeper look at the Cherokee story of two wolves, we are shown that both wolves are needed and both must be cared for if we are to attain our highest good.

March 2 – Let it Melt Away.
As Marvin Rolnik noted, “There is one language everyone in the world is fluent in: Victimeses.” Closing out the series on Anger, Rev. Gina guides a meditation with an exercise that allows participants to write down those vestiges of victimhood and anger – emotions or thoughts which cause discomfort – to literally watch their sources of anger melt away.