2026 Theme: Bringing Your ‘A’ Game

 

Welcome to the Month of Caring

 

Weekly Message Highlights: “Easter”

 

To practice the Presence of God is to awaken within us the Christ Consciousness. Christ is God in the soul of man. The resurrection is the death of the belief that we are separated from God.—Ernest Holmes

 

The date upon which Easter is held varies from year to year and corresponds with the first Sunday following the full moon after the March equinox.—Sorensen and Economou, Wholehearted Living

 

The word Easter is of Saxon origin, Eastra, meaning the goddess of spring. Often the Easter story of crucifixion and resurrection is considered a symbolic renewal and rebirth telling of a cycle of the seasons, and the return of the sun.

 

It is a story from the beginning of recorded time. Some feel the Sumerian epic myth, the Descent of Inanna, inscribed on clay tablets dated 2100 B.C., influences some springtime celebrations.

 

The legend tells of Inanna's journey through the underworld, in which she is judged, killed and then hung on display. In her absence the earth loses its fertility, crops no longer grow and animals stop reproducing until she returns.

 

It's only one of many returning spring stories. The Babylonians have their story of Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, who descended into the Underworld to find and release her lover, Tammuz.

 

There is the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone representing the three-phase cycle of descent or loss, search, and with the main theme being ascent.

 

Other springtime resurrection stories include Egypt's Horus or Persia's Mithras, where the prevailing theme is one of renewal, descent into darkness, and the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil.

 

When a story transcends cultures and time, its personal relevance is worthy of self-reflection.

 

Ernest Holmes, the founder of the Science of Mind movement, viewed Easter not merely as a religious commemoration but a profound spiritual teaching about immortality, transformation, and the eternal nature of the soul.

 

Holmes taught that the physical body is a temporary manifestation of a more subtle, ethereal plane, and that the soul is immortal. He emphasized that "this physical body is but a counterpart of an immaterial body" and that the Spirit which gave life to man cannot "unbreathe" it.

 

In his April 1950 Easter address, he said "We are in heaven right now. This is the meaning of Life and of Easter and our relationship to God." For Holmes, Easter was a dramatic reminder of eternal existence-that there is nothing to fear but our own thoughts, and that through spiritual alignment, we can live in the "glory of an everlasting protection of the One Presence." From Science of Mind Archives

 

In essence, Holmes' Easter message was:

• The soul is immortal and part of the universal Spirit.

• The body is temporary; the soul is eternal.

• The Spirit that raised Jesus lives in all of us.

• Easter is a call to spiritual awakening, transformation, and living in eternal life now.

 

Spiritual Contemplation:

• Have you descended into a darker personal time in your life?

• What have you learned about yourself through your soul searching?

 

Affirmation

I rise with the spring energies with a renewed passion for life!—And So It Is!