1948 - 2025

GIST MAGAZINE

Winter 2013

GIST Magazine
Bunny drinking at the Monastery drinking bowl
 
GIST Magazine
Monks create a stone outlined Meditation heart
 
GIST Magazine
Rex standing a meditation watch over the campus
 
GIST Magazine
Early morning mist over University of Healing campus

In This Issue:

God's Pocket
My First Thought

Serendipity
Believe In Yourself

EJ Shares
The Other Side Of Heaven

Rev Mark H Beierle
A Lesson For Bugsy And Me

All Is In Divine Order
Hurrah! It is raining

All Is In Divine Order
Soap Bubbles

Sylvia M Enz
Practice Principle

Practitioner Letter
Thinking Together

 

All Is In Divine Order - Winter 2013 Issue

Soap Bubbles

Anita Lopp

 

Today I went to church. I visited the church service in my hometown Maur in Switzerland. It is the church where my Mami and Daddy got married.

The local gospel-choir is standing ready to fill the church and the hearts of the congregation with their vibrant melodies. This is a special service. The different churches of the community are sharing the service. The catholic and the protestant minister are speaking together as one. To be honest, this is why I am here. I like the idea of different churches speaking to their congregation together. It calls for a universal ceremony.

What does that all have to do with soap bubbles? Just wait and see, as a matter of fact, it is all about soap bubbles.

The service starts with some church shaking songs of the choir. Every person in the room is now alert and ready for a breathtaking ceremony.

The two ministers are very different personalities. I like them both exactly as they are. One is a powerful speaker. He is totally in charge.  He commands attention and has the talent to make the whole congregation burst out in laughter. The other one is a fairly shy minister. His voice doesn’t power through the church like the lead singers of the choir and yet one can hear every single word he says. He is the one who gets up to the pulpit to give the main talk leading the ceremony.

The vibrations settle down in the church with the choir of about fifty people sitting down in front of all of us underneath the pulpit. They look like a field of sunflowers in their black and bright yellow outfits.

The minister standing on top of this field of flower’s, slowly lifts his head from his notes and looks at us, instantly it is completely quiet in the church.

The minister starts with the story of a man who has everything under the sun: wealth, joy, family, success, happiness etc. Yet the man makes a discovery for himself, he realizes that all he owns is fleeting. It is here now and gone the next moment.  The man ponders on his life. He thinks about how he felt when he was young in years. Nothing worried him then, he had the whole future in front of him. All was meant to be fun and naturally work out perfectly. Now he is in his fifties. He thinks about the future and the past. He looks at his life, at all the adventures he had which are now past and he tries to figure out what to do with the future, knowing that one day it will be past too in the human world.

The minister keeps bringing up examples describing that fleeting moment in which one thing is and in that instant it is so terribly important and the next moment it is gone as though it had never existed.

I can’t help but look at all the faces of the choir members sitting opposite me. Their expressions are very serious.  I think to myself, when and how is he going to turn this ceremony into an uplifting event for his congregation?

Then something beautifully surprising happens. Out of nowhere, the minister takes out a wee children’s soap bubble container and starts blowing bubbles at us. Gentle laughter roles through the whole church in a wave of relief. Like little children we watch the bubbles happily dancing through the air.  One bubble pops on my neighbor’s nose, accompanied by a deep delighted giggle; another gets caught in somebody’s hair and pops sprinkling joy and laughter.

The minister puts down the bubble container. He is also wearing a big wide smile on his face and says; “Soap bubbles are magic. We watch them with such joy in our heart like children. We delight in their beauty. Each one is unique; there are big ones and tiny ones, medium ones and long stretchy ones. One pops right away and we only get to see a blink of it. One dances ever so lightly through the air for a little eternity and reflects the colors of the rainbow in it. We watch it enchanted. Eventually it pops. Does our enchantment pop with it? Do we wish it could have floated a little bit longer and do we feel sad about having lost it? Or do we blow a new bubble with the same enthusiasm and joy for each bubble has the whole spectrum of the rainbow colors in it. Each bubble is a whole world in itself. What is our attitude? Do we enjoy the beauty of these worlds we blow into life full heartedly in the moment and feel thankful and blessed for experiencing it?

I think that is what it’s all about; now counting our blessings. Seeing the beauty and delighting in it, seeing the divine in all.

We don’t need to live in memories, yet we can live in the abundance of our counted blessings. We blow each bubble with the knowingness of the divine beauty indwelling.

We don’t need to live in the future either. We can dream through and live every thought of our dream right now and also blow these thoughts like the colors of the rainbow into our world bubbles.

We truly live right now in this moment. We live in the abundance of divine beauty, constantly revealing it. We are the ones who reveal this beauty. We are the ones to enjoy this divinity. We are the ones to thankfully count it as a blessing by our awareness.

Enjoy the bubbles, see the rainbow in them, see the divine in them and delight in them. When they pop, blow a new one here and now.

All is fleeting and yet it is eternal in its divinity. Our life is eternal and we are eternal in our divinity.

We all receive a present when we leave the church a wee soap bubble container. Some people are blowing bubbles while sharing with the congregation out in the church courtyard.

Soap bubbles are divine, as we are.

- Anita Lopp