Seraphim Center and Chapel
Rev. Dr. Robert S. Estling, Senior Minister
Seraphim Center and Chapel
Alliance of Divine Love Chapel # 392
412 NE 16th Ave. Gainesville, Florida, 32601
352/373-3133  352/339-5946 cell   info@seraphimcenter.org

SUNDAY "INNER PEACE - WORLD PEACE SERVICES" AT SERAPHIM CENTER

Three quotes, when taken together, describe our Sunday Morning Services. One quote comes from the mystical Sufi tradition and goes something like this, "THERE ARE AS MANY PATHS TO GOD AS THERE ARE PEOPLE." The second quote comes from a well known church peace hymn that says, "LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH, AND LET IT BEGIN WITH ME." And the third, "WHEN TWO OR MORE ARE GATHERED TOGETHER IN THE NAME OF LOVE, THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THERE ALSO." (paraphrased) We feel this presence at these services.

Our Sunday Services are a mixture of inspiration, fellowship, meditation, prayer, music, fun, bonding, human kindness love, and creation of spiritual community. We are open to all Truth knowing "There is no spot where God is not", we acknowledge all Teachers of God, and we bless the indwelling Divinity that is in each person. We are inter-faith and inter-denominational and accept that each person must find his or her own Truth, and only then will the Truth set us free. We have experienced when we come together in Love, we are greater than the sum of our parts. This has resulted in amazing transformations and healing of body, mind and spirit.

Our Service is a showcase to allow visiting speakers and musicians to inspire us as they demonstrate their talents, messages and truth. It is a practice field for our up and coming ministerial candidates and newly ordained spiritual ministers to practice and share their stories and their wisdom, in an environment of unconditional love and support. Dale Carnegie once said, "The best public speaker is someone who has something to say." Our speakers are all folks that have a fire in their belly, a love in their heart, and some unique ideas about our relationship to ourselves, our brothers and sisters, our world, and the Universe that can be beneficial to each of us. Each service is unique and different. Each is a "Path to God". Each hopes to assist us in finding inner peace, and add our significant contribution to the movement to world peace. The time for this is now!

The following blessing we start out every Sunday service. It was adapted from "A Blessing of a Church" by James Dillet Freeman:

This is God's house.

May we who come here not only find out about God, but find God.

May there be beauty in this place,

but especially may is be a place, where men and women, become aware of,

the beauty within themselves.

May this be a place of worship.

May this be a place of instruction.

May this be a place of singing and celebration.

May this be a place of prayer and meditation.  And,

May this be a place of loving service.

But for us who worship and take instruction

and sing and celebrate and pray and meditate,

and joyfully offer our loving service,

May this be a place of inner stillness,

where we may listen and hear

when God speaks.

May everyone here feel the Joy of Oneness.

May whoever ministers here minister in Love.

May whoever teaches here teach Truth.

And, May whoever serves here serve pleasantly.

May everyone come into this house in expectation and go with thanksgiving,

And may anyone who comes needing help, go feeling blest.

May this be such a house that if any of God's Great Teachers,

Even the Rabbi Jesus, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Moses,

or Mohammed, or Mother Teresa, or Mother Mary,

or Chief Crazy Horse, or any of our Ministers,

or any of the Great Teachers we have each known,

who have held a spiritual door open so we can pass through to the Light,

or any friend or relative, or any stranger, or even one of the lest of these……..

Would feel that he or she was with friends.

In the Greatest Degree of love, Amen!

We have been inspired by a piece written about the Dali Lama. Our Services are about "Deep caring for one another", in the Greatest Degree of Love.

THE DALAI LAMA AND CARING FOR ONE ANOTHER……

The Dalai Lama has asked that the following practice be shared with as many people as possible) A group recently spent days visiting with the Dalai Lama focusing upon what they believe the five most important questions to be considered moving into the new millennium.

The five questions were:

1. How do we address the widening gap between rich and poor?

2. How do we protect the earth?

3. How do we educate our children?

4. How do we help Tibet and other oppressed countries and peoples of the world?

5. How do we bring spirituality (deep caring for one another)

through all disciplines of life?

The Dalai Lama said all five questions fall under the last one. If we have true compassion in our hearts, our children will be educated wisely, we will care for the earth, those who "have not" will be cared for.

The group asked the Dalai Lama, "Do you think loving on the planet is increasing or staying the same?"

His response: "My experience leads me to believe that LOVE IS INCREASING."

He shared a simple practice that will increase loving and compassion in the world. He asked everyone in the group to share it with as many people as they can.

The Practice:

MAY PEACE PREVAIL ON EARTH. Love on this planet is increasing. Once we have experienced moments of inner peace, oneness, and reawakening, and we learn to reach out with loving hands to our brothers and sisters, assisting and cherishing each other as we sojourn this life, we naturally recognize our commitment and responsibility to our planet, our Mother Earth. Seraphim Center folks are sensitive to global issues, participate in world prayer and meditation events, and are deeply committed to preserving our planet.

This gives you some idea about our Inner Peace - World Peace services. Come and join us every Sunday morning at 11:00 AM. We will be blessed by your presence as we know you will be blessed by the experience.

Always in the Greatest Degree of Love,

Rev. Dr. Bob E. and all your friends and family at Seraphim Center

Moral Values, by Rev. Dr. Janet C. Moore (c) 2005
(Delivered at Seraphim Center, 3-13-05) (From the editors:  We recognize that any comments about national and international events can be risky, especially in the current culture of "If you are not my friend then you must be my enemy."  It is our hope that by looking at certain issues from a spiritual and loving perspective, and by looking at the world situation, we can better chart our own course of action.   If you find any of these comments objectionable, we apologize.  This article comes from the heart and is intended to help us all create a better world. We must each be willing to "state our truth."  By understanding our mistakes, we are not destined to repeat them.  Thank you for your understanding.)

By way of introducing this subject, I wanted to give you a little background on myself, and why I think this topic is important.  I also warn you that this will be a political presentation, because lately I’ve grappled with trying to make the political, spiritual.

I’m a Baby Boomer, born in 1947, and I grew up in the secure, quiescent 50’s with my parents and siblings, reading a lot and playing make believe a lot, since we didn’t have T.V. or video games in those days.  Occasionally, a bit of news might disturb me:  Maybe some newspaper article about the war in Korea, or “Duck-and-Cover” drills in school where we hid under flimsy desks so that we could avoid that atomic bomb blast headed our way, or perhaps I would catch some word about Sen. Joe McCarthy’s persecution of the innocents, or someone talking about Pinko professors at the University of Florida.  There were a few other things:  Shopping in my sleepy little town’s dime store, getting that exclusive “Evening in Paris” perfume for my Grandmother for Christmas ($.25 a bottle, so you can imagine what it smelled like), I might see a water fountain labeled “Colored Only;” or waiting at the grimy little bus station for my cousins to arrive for a summertime visit, I remember a “White Only” waiting room, meaning that non-whites waited outside in the dust and the heat.  I knew that these things were wrong, and they gnawed at my conscience, but did not create any personal upheaval for me until my teen years – the 60’s – when I began to think.

  The turbulent 60’s followed the serene 50’s and the pace of my life picked up.  Instead of grandfatherly, golf-playing  President Eisenhower, we had the vibrant Kennedys, who seemed to promise a newer, better world.  I, and others of my generation thrilled to his inaugural words: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  We felt that there was a new energy in the land, and we dreamed of being teachers or joining Vista , or agencies that really could help our fellow human beings.

And music opened my heart.  Inane songs about doggies in windows gave way to truly creative, original, and inspired singing and songwriting, and seemed to reflect in the driving beat of rock and roll, a new era of freedom and consciousness-raising about social issues.  The electric guitar led the way with sounds I had never heard before.  With its advent, music, for me, changed forever.  The Beatles, the Beachboys, the Animals, the Byrds, the Stones, the Grateful Dead, the Yardbirds, Crème; and musical giants like Dylan, Baez. Clapton, Hendrix, Joplin , Simon, Cat Stevens, Kristofferson, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Crosby , Stills, Nash, and Young (separately and together), and many, many others.  This flowering of music burst forth in a seemingly endless power and variety that stopped me in my tracks.

  For me, music drove social movement.  The young, rebellious and dismayed with the material life, were tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.  Hippies abounded; so did hair; so did drugs; and a lot of experimentation, and liberalism was a part of my very circulatory system.  Teach-ins, love-ins, peace-ins, feathers, beads, body paint – some of it was silly, but a lot of it was alive and refreshing: a new way to look at life.  We didn’t want, as Benjamin , the Dustin Hoffman character in “The Graduate,” to face life in the corporate world of plastics.

And more seriously, the notions of equality and justice were flowering in me.  I watched breathlessly as a Black Baptist preacher from Atlanta, led people in the streets of Alabama and Mississippi, boycotted buses, rode buses, sat in all-white lunch counters, registered to vote, and PEACEFULLY, despite snarling dogs, fire hoses, bull whips, and lynch mobs, confronted the powers of violence, hatred, prejudice, and discrimination that had not gone away with the Civil War.  I listened to Dr. King’s speech during the March on Washington ; it remains the best speech I ever heard.  I read about Gandhi.  I read poetry and literature that inspired and uplifted my spirit.  I recognized that we are all one:  A victory in Selma by the NAACP was a victory for me, for it opened up my precious democracy to elevate and embrace all peoples.  It was a time of excitement, of belief that we could make this country better:  We could raise the consciousness of women and eliminate gender bias; we could challenge the patriarchy wherever it raised its ugly head, in everyday life, government, and religion; education was for everyone because everyone counted, and we owed it to our brothers and sisters to work toward a system in which any person could fulfill his potential if he were willing to undertake the task.  The Civil Rights Act was only the beginning.  We would build the Great Society with opportunity for all. Sounds pretty idealistic, doesn’t it?  But I, and many of my generation believed it.  Eventually, with peaceful demonstrations, we would even end the useless, deadly quagmire of a war raging in SE Asia , and we would return the troops home where they would happily readjust.  We all knew that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and we thought that the body counts of the so-called enemy were a tad high, (i.e., “Losses this week: US 10; North Vietnam 60,000”) and we wondered about the rumors we were hearing, about the Gulf of Tonkin and the invasion of Cambodia; and then, with Watergate, our Age of Innocence was truly over.  We realized that government could and would lie to us if it cared to; it might even kill us, as the students at Kent State could attest.  It marked a new watershed in my understanding and maturity.

  I thought of the 60’s and 70’s as both the best and worst of times: Conspiracy in the highest levels of government, but also Woodward, Bernstein, and the Washington Post to report on the corruption; three major political assassinations and the searing grief we felt, but also three days of peaceful assembly and music at Woodstock, for almost half a million people; and a walk on the moon with our first view of our sweet planet from outer space.  Astounding technical advances, which could be used for both positive and negative outcomes.  Throughout it all, I had hope.  I still do.  A popular song says, “Though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill.”  I have hope because I have faith in my fellow human beings to see the right; to use their God-given intelligence to see how congruent or incongruent are the words and actions of those in government; to see the moral in behavior, not just because someone lip-syncs the word.  We have an inherited tradition of right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. As Jesus said, “By their works (not their mouths), you shall know them.”

  I know that our nation was founded upon moral values – the vision of Thomas Jefferson, whose eloquent pen articulated the dream of America (not necessarily the reality, but what we as a nation aspire to):  “That all people are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: That of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Or what is inscribed in the Constitution as the purposes of government: “To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense (not offense), promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

  Incidentally, one author, Walter Semkiv, M.D., writes that reincarnated revolutionaries of 1776 are among us today.  I hope that they are, and can see the mess we’re in 230 years later, and do something about it.

  Now, in this last presidential election, we heard a lot about moral values; here are a few of the reasons that I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side; in doing this, I have borrowed from the work of Dr. Robin Meyer, a Congregational Church minister from Oklahoma City, and professor at OCU:

  When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God’s will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and living our faith, who believe that this is not only just not moral, but immoral.

  When you live in a country that has established international rule of waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you have set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.

  When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head, you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff, like returning violence for violence, and those who live by the sword will die by the sword, in order to hypocritically justify your actions, you are doing something immoral.

  When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse even to count them, you are doing something immoral.

  When you forbid cameras to record the truth about hundreds of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq , you are doing something immoral and un-American, for we have the right both to see what this war has cost us in American lives, and to honor our dead.

  When you, yourself, find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam , and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.

  When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel you claim to revere, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, and you make certain that the wealthiest among us get tax breaks so that the strong will get stronger, and the weak, weaker, you are doing something immoral.

  When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called enemy combatants of the rules of the Geneva Convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral.

  When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with the terrorists - - and then launch a war that enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are all addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit with renewable sources of energy, you are doing something immoral.

  When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.

  When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved nation on earth, and act like it doesn’t matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral.  We have become, in the eyes of the world, a rogue nation, a lawless bully that follows no international rules and may strike at other nations whenever and wherever it pleases.

  When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution – the Constitution! – as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.

  When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth, which is God’s gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air, and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral.  The earth belongs to all, and to its Creator, not to Halliburton.

  When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, then we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral.  We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

  When the buck private offender at Abu Ghraib prison is court-martialed and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, while the top brass at defense who set policy in the first place go scot-free, that is immoral.

  When our troops must rummage in garbage dumps in Iraq , to armor themselves and their vehicles, for their own protection, that is immoral.

  When you tell people that you intend to govern as a “compassionate conservative” using that word, compassion, which is the essence of spirituality, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.

  And while we are on the subject – stolen elections make a mockery of the democratic process.  They are immoral too.

  When you cut funding for health care and education for children, and your “No Child Left Behind” program leaves most poor children behind, you have done something immoral.

  When you cut health care and VA benefits to the very combatants you sent to fight the war you initiated, you are doing something immoral.

  When you talk constantly of Jesus, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to ensure that anyone who is ill can see a doctor, even if she doesn’t have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.

  When you put judges on the bench who are racist and sexist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say that gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.

  When you seek to destroy a governmental safety net for elders that has worked well for 70 years, and replace it with a scheme to enrich your pals on Wall Street while most Americans lose their shirts, you are doing something immoral.

When you ignore strong scientific evidence for global warming and at the same time, support the teaching of one religion’s creation myth as truth, in public schools, that is immoral.  Science lives in the house of evidence, which can be supported and held to a rigid standard of validity, and so it must remain without influence of religious doctrine.  If Galileo, survivor of the Inquisition, were alive today, I am certain that he would agree.

  When you buy off dishonest journalists to promote your agenda, while trying to put the upright ones in jail for doing their jobs, that is immoral.

  When the agency charged with responsibility for ensuring that prescription drugs meet safety standards, accepts the results of studies funded by the pharmaceutical companies, then the fox is guarding the hen house, and that is immoral.

  When Americans must pay higher prices for necessary drugs than any other country on earth, and it’s unlawful to go anywhere else on the planet for those drugs, that is immoral.  It is immoral to hold Americans hostage to high drug costs to pay for pharmaceutical advertising, pushing their wares, and forbid governmental negotiations or price controls, that exist in other countries, which might alleviate the problem.

  When a CEO whose inept or corrupt leadership destroyed a viable business escapes with a golden parachute while workers lose their homes, their livelihoods, their savings, their retirement, and perhaps their families, that is immoral.

  And most recently, changes to the bankruptcy laws now require that when middle-class Americans beset by job loss or medical emergency must file for bankruptcy, they will lose everything, while the wealthy may retain their mansions and assets.  This defies any rhetoric claiming “compassion” and “equal justice under the law.”  This is an outright attack on working people, and full-blown class warfare.  And it is immoral.

  I will tell you this:

I will not allow the Right Wing to pigeon-hole me – to tell me that because I am a person of faith, that I must support their destructive agenda or that because I support civil rights and gay rights, I cannot be a person of faith.  Yes I can.

Yes, I CAN support the troops and oppose the war at the same time.

  I heard that same line “You can’t do it” when I was just a little older than my youngest son – when the Vietnam War was raging.  We knew that war was wrong, just as we know this one is wrong.  The question is, when will momentum build enough, when will people get sick enough of this frightful agenda to do something about it?  When will the pendulum swing back the other way, and will we live long enough to see it?

  I do feel that these Dark Ages are part of the great cleansing as we move from the martyrdom of the Piscean Age into the humanitarianism of the Aquarian Age.  This is the time of hardship - of the re-balancing of forces - of the last great gasp of “might makes right” energy which has enslaved us for thousands of years.  This is its last heart beat before it gives up the ghost to the radiance of a new energy – love – which will create the Aquarian Golden Age of Peace.  

  But at present, we deal with war.

  The Vietnam war was morally bankrupt.  The Iraq war is morally bankrupt.  The claim of this administration to be Christian is morally bankrupt.  But this nation is not morally bankrupt.  It is our nation to take back – our future and our faith.

And there are quiet rebellions everywhere: In some places, librarians are shredding their check-out records rather than possibly be required to turn them over to a government they feel has lost its mind, its heart and its judgment, and could well see your reading of “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” as an act of sedition. 

  To the young I say, “Help us.”  Don’t be afraid to speak out, despite the Patriot Act. Don’t back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous, and that the flag ought to be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.  Real Christians take chances for peace; so do real Jews, so do real Muslims, so do real Hindus, and real Buddhists - - so do all the great faith traditions of the world who, at their heart, believe one thing:  That life is precious.

  Every human being is precious. All life is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith.  Greed is the opposite of charity.  And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.

  And war—war is the greatest failure of the human race --- and thus the greatest failure of faith.  There’s an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all:  “War…….. What is it good for?  (audience response) "Absolutely nothing.”

  And what is the dream of the prophets?  That we should study war no more; that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.

  Remember the WWJD bracelets, the ones that ask, “What Would Jesus Do?”  What would Jesus do?

 Indeed, whom would Jesus bomb?

How many deaths will it take till we know…….. (audience response) "That too many people have died?"

What if they gave a war………….  (audience response) "And nobody came?"

(DVD's of Rev. Dr. Janet's presentation are available from the Seraphim Center Bookstore)