Peace Within

Love, compassion and understanding has to begin with the individual. We cannot have peace throughout the world unless we first find peace within ourselves and with our neighbors next door. If we cannot achieve that, then there seems to be little hope that we can ever usher in a kinder, wiser, and healthier planet. And there we go with that four letter word again–love, love, love!

~Don and Linda Pendleton, from Whispers From the Soul, the Divine Dance of Consciousness.

Mattie Stepanek, Poet and Peacemaker

Tonight I watched Friday’s Oprah show with Jeni Stepanek, the mother of young Mattie J.T. Stepanek, poet, author, and peacemaker. Mattie died in June 2004, not long before his 14th birthday. Again seeing Mattie brought me tears but also smiles. I have always had a place in my heart for that kid with that warm smile and the twinkle in his eyes. I’ve always been so moved and inspired by the wisdom and love he possessed. If you do not know Mattie’s story, please visit his website and read about him. He came into life with such hardship and he lived with pain and yet he set that aside and lived with joy and hope, and dedicated his life to love and peace.

I have all of Mattie’s Heartsongs poetry books, and his book, Just Peace, A Message of Hope by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, with Jimmy Carter, Edited by Jennifer Smith Stepanek.

I also have Messenger: The Legacy of Mattie J.T. Stepanek and Heartsongs, written by Mattie’s mother, Jeni, and with a Foreword by Maya Angelou. This memoir gives readers intimate details about Mattie’s earliest years through his final days of life.

I believe former President Jimmy Carter said it best at the memorial for Mattie when he said, “since I left the White House, my wife and I have been to more than 120 nations. And we have known kings and queens, and we’ve known presidents and prime ministers, but the most extraordinary person whom I have ever known in my life is Mattie Stepanek.”

Although Jeni has the same disease her four children had, she is carrying on Mattie’s cause of peace in our world.

As Jeni’s book says, Mattie was a Messenger. He was an angel and while here on earth he deeply touched many of us. And I’m sure he is now carrying on his inspiration from the Other Side.

One of his last comments:

“Choose to inhale, don't breathe simply to exist." -Mattie J.T. Stepanek (1990-2004), Poet and Peacemaker

Read my review of Mattie’s book, Just Peace.

~Linda

Heaven's a Fairy Tale??

Physicist/Cosmologist Stephen Hawking is at it again. It seems ever so often he denounces God or anything to do with an afterlife. This time he says that there is no heaven or afterlife and that it is a “fairy story.”

He will be giving a talk at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: "Why are we here?"

The article in the Guardian states he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life emerged. He is quoted as saying, "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in."

He also states. “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Sure doesn’t seem like chance or nothing in my opinion. Life is complex and beautiful, and yes, full of mystery and magic. I would have thought as he aged his views of life and death would have broadened. He made a comment of people being afraid of death. It appears those who do believe in an afterlife and believe that consciousness and love lives on after death of the physical body tend to have less fear and even a sense of comfort. And those who believe in God hold the universe and life more sacred than those who do not.

I feel bad for him that he has not found a sense of connection to a higher Universal power. I wrote a previous blog several months ago about his comments then, and in that I quoted what my husband, Don Pendleton wrote nearly 20 years ago about Hawking, in his book, A Search for Meaning From the Surface of a Small Planet:

"Why do I worry for Stephen Hawking? I suppose it is a fear that I have misinterpreted his moving forces, and that what I have characterized above as "unemotional scientific detachment" is in fact an almost passionate desire to live in an alternative universe without God. If that be true, to whatever degree, then his inner world will almost certainly be at cross purposes to his work in the outer." ~Don Pendleton, A Search for Meaning From the Surface of a Small Planet.

Read more of what Don wrote in regards to Stephen Hawking: An excerpt from A Search for Meaning From the Surface of a Small Planet
Read the Guardian Hawking Interview

Available in Print and Kindle




Linda

Angelic Whispers of Love, Inspirational Messages from the Angels

 Angelic Whispers of Love is now in print and in kindle

We are never alone. We are surrounded by the love, wisdom, and guidance of spiritual Beings of Light-our angels and spirit guides from the Other Side. Within the pages of Angelic Whispers of Love, Linda Pendleton shares messages she has received from the world of spirit, messages overflowing with love and inspiration.

"Listen for the flutter of an angel's wing as it softly touches you with love. Embrace it and join in the dance!" ~Linda Pendleton