Love in the Quiet Garden

“Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softly joyous whispering is ever heard.  This is a feast that honors your holy relationship, and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-19.IV.A.16)

Lovely passage, melodic in its choice of words.  This quotation is meant to lighten our attitude toward the holy relationship.  The holy relationship, unlike the special, is a place of calm and quiet (note the “quiet garden”).  The special relationship has flights of joy, but these are always followed by times of dashed hopes; we climb upward, only to dash our feet on a stone on the ground.

Note of these vicissitudes are present in the calm and peaceful, and joyous always, holy relationship.  This is a relationship that is permeated, through and through, with love.  We don’t have to strain toward some sort of unnatural high; we are cocooned in an ocean of love that knows no bounds.

And, once we have achieved the holy relationship, we would never go back to the unholy, or special, again.  As we make one relationship holy, we would want to make all of our relationships with brothers holy.

And we can.  Just put our minds to it.  It is not hard.  Forgiveness is key, as always.