My dear friends...

You are so wonderful to come here to this publication, and to be reading it. Do you know why? Because your decision to read this material says that you are willing to change your life and change the world.

That’s what Conversations with God is all about, when you think about it. The reason that this material was given to us was to change our lives, and to change our world. God knows that this task is accomplished one person at a time—and right now, that one person is you.

True, God could simply dictate this change. He could simply require it. But He has not done that, and She never will. Not from the beginning of time has there been a Requirement coming from God, nor will there ever be. There are those who believe that God issues edicts, lays down commandments, and has requirements, but that is a mistaken belief, based on centuries and millennia of misunderstanding.

What we are misunderstanding is Who and What God is, who and what we are, and the purpose of all of life. Once this misunderstanding is cleared up, we will never again act as we do in relationship to God/Goddess/Essence of Life, and we will certainly never again act as we do in relationship to each other. Finally—and perhaps most important of all—we will never again act as we do in relationship to ourselves.

In the end, if we wish to change our lives, it is our relationship with ourselves that we must change. That is the first thing we must alter. We do not know Who We Really Are. We refuse to believe it, decline to accept it, shy away from embracing it. And we shy away in fear, which is the saddest thing of all.

What we are afraid of is that we may be wrong, and that if we are wrong, God will never forgive us. So afraid of God are we that we will give up our very Selves before we will take a chance on offending God. That is why a new Cultural Story about God is so hard to come by, so difficult to suggest, and so challenging to adopt.

Yet a new Cultural Story about God, about Life, and about Each Other is the only thing that will change our lives and change our world. And so, someone must step forward and place these new thoughts into the Marketplace of Ideas—and someone else must adopt them. That is the work that is being done right now. That is what is happening on our planet in these very days and times. That is the vineyard.

All around us on the earth we see wonderful, wonderful things. We see sunrises and starry skies and birds in flight. We see snow covered mountains and majestic trees and beautiful flowers. We see happiness in the hearts of children and joy on the faces of people who have found peace and wonder in their lives. We may even see this on our own face.

Yet all around us on the earth we also see misery and heartache, sadness and hopelessness, pain and violence and despair. And we wonder, how soon will it be before we are touched by this side of life, as so many millions are? Indeed, the majority of human beings are. Not the smallest number, but the largest. And all thinking people ponder the question: What can we do to change this? Are we doomed, simply out of being human, to repeating the behaviors that sponsor this? And if not, what would it take for us as a species to discontinue those behaviors?

And even those of us who have plenty, and who live in safety, whose stomachs are full each day, whose body is warm…even we have trouble sometimes remaining happy. Our lives, too, are filled with drama, laced by heartache, touched by its own kind of violence, and deeply scarred by deep disappointment, if not despair. And we wonder: What can we do to change this? Are we doomed, simply out of being human, to repeating the behaviors that sponsor this? And if not, what would it take for us as a species to discontinue those behaviors?

We have been given many answers to those questions already. It is not like we haven’t been given answers. We have. And quite a few of them have come from our religions. Yet, with no disrespect meant, has anyone noticed that those answers have not worked? None of this has been removed from our lives. Even for those who have accepted the answers, embraced them as truth, applied them consistently, there still is no peace, no real, lasting joy, and the world at large continues to remain constant in its miseries, constant in its conflicts and violence, constant in its inability to bring an end to the suffering of humanity.

Could it be that the answers we have been given might not be complete? Is it possible that there is something we do not fully know or fully understand about God, about Life, and about Each Other, the understanding of which would change everything?

These are the questions placed before us by Conversations with God and by the New Spirituality. It is a new spirituality that seeks not to replace the old, but to replenish it, not to reject the past, but to refresh it, not to renounce ancient wisdom, but to revive it by breathing new life into it and by expanding its horizons. There is more to see beyond the hill, and more to see beyond that. Yet if we do not believe that there is anything more to see, we shall not climb the hill, for the path will seem too steep for the effort, and the traveling of it pointless in any event.

No, the only reason we would take a new path would be if we thought it would take us beyond where we have ever gone before.

That is where Conversations with God invites us to go: beyond where we have ever gone before, that we might at last be home with God. Yet it will take courage to blaze the trail, precisely because we have never been there before. And so, you are wonderful to have come here. For you are the blazers of the trail. You are the leaders of a new spiritual movement that can sweep across the land, and circle the globe.

Do you know what a leader is? A leader is not one who says, “Follow me.” A leader is one who says, “I’ll go first.”

Thank you for going first. The world is inspired by you.

With love and hugs,