My dear friends...

I am re-reading a fabulous book right now by Jim Rosemergy with the wonderful title, Even Mystics Have Bills to Pay . Rosemergy is an ordained Unity minister and has held executive posts at the Unity School of Christianity at Unity Village, Missouri.

In this volume -- which I highly recommend for everyone -- Jim puts everything having to do with the subject of wealth into a wonderful perspective that could reorganize your thinking about the whole topic.

First, he redefines wealth. And while he does it in somewhat predictable ways (we all know that "wealth" is not the accumulation of cash), his verbal approach here is light, easy, and refreshing. True wealth, he says, is "an awareness of Spirit."

Put simply, it is a sure and certain knowledge that God exists, that God is in your life, that God is your supply, that God wants nothing but the best for you, and that in God, nothing can go wrong.

People who hold this kind of immutable faith in God often live lives of essentially trouble-free, worry-free moments that stretch into years of peace and joy. It is not that their lives run into fewer obstacles than those of the rest of us, but that (1) they experience those obstacles differently, and (2) they never doubt for a second that they shall overcome them.

This kind of thinking raises a lot of questions for some people. Who, and what, IS "God"? Does this God have a set of things that He "wants" for us? Is God even aware of our existence, in an individual sense? Is God "watching over us," as it were, standing ready to give us counsel and advice and even a hand up when we need one? Can God be "trusted" to always bring us what we need?

I think that our relationship with God can profoundly shape the course and direction of our lives. How we perceive God, and the role that God plays (if any) in the day-to-day of our experience, can shift everything for us. The truly wealthy, I believe, are not those with unlimited cash, but those with unlimited faith.

Unlimited faith in what? In the Unlimitedness of God Itself. In God's Unlimited Supply (of everything we could want and need), in God's Unlimited Goodness (expressed in a million ways across a million moments in every day), and in God's Unlimited Presence (manifest in our experience continually and without end).

I like to talk in these terms because I like to personify God whenever I think of God. Some people are more comfortable thinking of God in abstract terms. God is energy. God is The Essence. I like to think of God in more personal terms. I like to conceive of God as my best friend. I like the kind of God who I can talk to -- and who talks back to me.

Yet even the God who talks back to me talks of this more abstract kind of God. My God says to me, "Neale, the words 'God' and 'Life' are interchangeable. When the human race comes to fully understand this, all the arguing about God will be over, all the killing in God's name will end. It will become painfully apparent that if 'Life' and 'God' are the same thing, and if you are killing in God's name, then you are ending God in the name of God. Immediately, this makes no sense. The only way you could kill in My Name would be if you thought that God and Life were not the same thing. That thought would be an error."

Because God told me this is true, I have embraced the idea that God and Life are two words identifying the exact Same Thing. Thus, for me, the thought expressed a few paragraphs above about unlimited faith could be rewritten... Unlimited faith in what? In the Unlimitedness of Life Itself. In Life's Unlimited Supply (of everything we could want and need), in Life's Unlimited Goodness (expressed in a million ways across a million moments in every day), and in Life's Unlimited Presence (manifest in our experience continually and without end).

I believe in Life as a positive force in the Universe -- or, rather, as the Universe itself, and everything in it, and also everything that is not in it. That is, the Seen and the Unseen, the Is and the Not Is, the Am and the Not Am, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the All In All. In short, for me there is nothing that is NOT God.

This means that money is God. Wow. Now there was a truly new thought for me. Money is God? How can that be? Everyone has been telling me from the beginning of my life, "Don't make money your god." Now I'm thinking that money IS God????!!! Phew.

Where does THIS thought leave me...

Hmmmm....well, I love God. I truly do. I can feel my love for God well up in my heart when I think of God, because I think of God in wonderful, wonderful ways. And I love life. I can feel my genuine love of life well up in my heart whenever I think of the wonderful experience that I am having...or whenever I hold a baby in my arms, or watch a child at play...or whenever I have seen the peaceful face of my beloved in sleep...or whenever I have smelled the indescribable fragrance of wet grass on a summer morning, or Fall in the air on an autumn eve. Gosh, I LOVE LIFE!

So that must mean I love money. Because if there is nothing that is not God, and nothing that is not Life, made manifest, then I must love All That Is...and that would include cold, hard cash.

A man named Rev. Ike used to go around the country exhorting audiences to repeat after him: I loooooove money, and money looooooves me! I get a chuckle out of this little mantra every time I hear it in my memory. At the same time, I see its power. So I actually use it once in awhile, with joy in my heart and with thanks to God that I can love all that God created, including the cash in my billfold.

 With Pure Love,