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Illusion holds power over you when you are not able to remember that you are a powerful spirit that has taken on the physical experience for the purpose of learning. It has power over you when you are compelled by wants and impulses and values of your personality. It holds power over you when you fear and hate and sorrow and fester in anger or strike out in rage. It has NO power over you when you LOVE, when compassion opens your heart to others, when your creativity flows unimpeded joyously into the present moment. In other words, the illusion had no power over a personality that is fully aligned with the soul.

Are we not all members of the same Body and partakers of the same Spirit and heirs of the same blessed hope of eternal life? ... Why do we not, as becomes brethren, dwell together in unity, but are so apt to quarrel and break out into heats, to crumble into sects and parties, to divide and separate from one another upon every trifling occasion? Give me leave ... in the name of our dear Lord ... to recommend to you this new commandment of his, that ye love one another. Which is almost a new commandment still, and hardly the worse for wearing, so seldom is it put on, and so little hath it been practiced among Christians.

No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.

And that's the real incentive, isn't it? It's not so much the fact that you get to bask in their God's love that's the selling point, it's that you avoid damnation. Think of it like Coke putting out an ad that says 'Snapple causes muscle spasms, Pepsi is infected with AIDS, and tap-water gives you cancer. So drink Coke. Not only do we taste good, we're the only alternative to pain and suffering.' It's actually a pretty good marketing tool. Humanity, by nature, is an ambivalent animal, given to fits of inertia, and we're more than likely to sit on our noncommittal behinds unless there's a bogeyman to chase us out of our chairs.

Other people think they know what you are: glamour, sex, money, power, love. It may be a press agent dream which has nothing to do with you, maybe it's something you don't even like, but that's what they think you are. People rush at you from all sides, they think they're going to get these things if they touch you. It's scary, so you build walls around yourself, thick glass walls while you're trying to think, trying to catch your breath. You know who you are inside, but people outside see something different. You can choose to become the image, and let go of who you are, or continue as you are and feel phony when you play the image.

It is easy to be a slave to the letter, and difficult to enter into the spirit; easy to obey a number of outward rules, difficult to enter intelligently and self-sacrificingly into the will of God; easy to entangle the soul in a network of petty observances, difficult to yield the obedience of an enlightened heart; easy to be haughtily exclusive, difficult to be humbly spiritual; easy to be an ascetic or a formalist, difficult to be pure, and loving, and wise, and free; easy to be a Pharisee, difficult to be a disciple; very easy to embrace a self-satisfying and sanctimonious system of rabbinical observances, very difficult to love God with all the heart, and all the might, and all the soul, and all the strength.

AS GOD HAS PLANNED God did not make me in a single hour: He fashioned me for laughter, love, and tears, And as a tree that slowly comes to flower, He gave me time, the blessed gift of years. God did not make me with a single breath: He gave me will to strive and hope and trust, And days for growth, so that the hour of death Might total well, not blow the sun to dust. May I grow graciously, through sun and rain, In tolerance and kindness for all men, And if life's storms should bow my head with pain, Let not my soul be a stunted tree; Let me not fall, but reach toward the stars; And let me grow as God has planned for me.

A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW The surging sea of human life forever onward rolls, And bears to the eternal shore its daily freight of souls; Tbough bravely sails our bark today, pale Death sits at the prow, And few shall know we ever lived a hundred years from now. O mighty human brotherhood Why fiercely war and strive, While God's great world has ample space for everything alive? Broad fields uncultured and unclaimed are waiting for the plow Of progress that shall make them bloom a hundred years from now. Why should we try so earnestly in life's short, narrow span, On golden stairs to climb so high above our brother man? Why blindly at an earthly shrine in slavish homage bow? Our gold will rust, ourselves be dust, a hundred years from now. Why prize so much the world's applause? Why dread so much its blame? A fleeting echo is its voice of censure or of fame; The praise that thrills the heart, the scom that dyes with shame the brow, Will be as long-forgotten dreams a hundred years from now. O patient hearts, that meekly bear your weary load of wrongl O earnest hearts, that bravely dare, and striving, grow more strong! Press on till perfect peace is won; you'll never dream of how You struggled o'er life's thorny road a hundred years from now. Grand, lofty souls, who live and toil that freedom, right and truth Alone may rule the universe, for you is endless youth. When 'mid the blest with God you rest, the grateful land shall bow Above your clay in reverent love a hundred years from now. Earth's empires rise and fall. Time! like breakers on thy shore They rush upon thy rocks of doom, go down, and are no more. The starry wilderness of worlds that gem night's radiant brow Will light the skies for other eyes a hundred years from now. Our Father, to whose sleepless eye the past and future stand An open page, like babes we cling to Tby protecting hand; Change, sorrow, death, are naught to us, if we may safely bow Beneath the shadow of Thy throne a hundred years from now.